A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre

Sonja Kuftinec

Theatre scholars and professional practitioners tend to refer to "community theatre" in pejorative terms, conjuring images of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland rummaging through Granny's trunk in the barn, puttin' on a show. This idea of community theatre may now be as clichéd as the genre itself is perceived to be. Recent collaborations between experienced theatre artists and a wide variety of communities have generated renewed appreciation for the social and aesthetic possibilities of community theatre. This field of performance, termed "community-based theatre," or "grassroots theatre," has begun to enter our consciousness in descriptive, practical terms but has yet to be clearly situated in a theoretical context. Some practitioners may fear that, perhaps, critique amounts to criticism, endangering the fragile foundations of nascent projects. In order to legitimize the field and investigate its potential for making meaning, however, it is essential to scrutinize community-based theatre and the ways in which the collaborative process helps to build, perform, and destabilize community.

Analysis of Cornerstone Theatre's production process is an appropriate site for this critical exploration of community-based work. Founded in 1986, Cornerstone has worked in collaboration with rural and urban communities across the country. In the fall of 1994, I served as dramaturg for two productions with Cornerstone, as part of the company's yearlong residency in Watts, Los Angeles. This experience complemented dissertation research conducted through newsletters, a company oral history, formal and informal interviews, and observations on process. My research and production experience have led me to propose that Cornerstone's community-based work generates complex, aesthetically intriguing and engaging productions and contributes to a growing discourse on the nature of community and identity.

"Community" has been a problematic term for sociologists since at least the 1950s when, to the consternation of the field, George A. Hillery, Jr. described ninety-four use-definitions of community with very little in common among them (qtd. in Bell and Newby 27). The term serves as a convenient symbol encapsulating a number of contradictory ideas. As Raymond Williams notes in Keywords, references to "community" suggest positive connotations without clear meaning (66). This ambivalence of meaning is, in fact, an important element [End Page 91] of how "community" functions. In The Symbolic Constructions of Community, sociologist Anthony Cohen suggests that "community" operates as a "God word," used symbolically to avoid the confrontation of its connotative differences (Introduction). "Community," like "God," symbolically unites those who believe in and employ the concept, even though these individuals may have vastly varying ideas as to its connotations.

We generally understand community as a function of commonality, whether that commonality is one of location, class, interest, age, or ethnic background. This idea of commonality lends community the positive connotation that Williams cites. However, as sociologists and cultural theorists such as Cohen, Paul Gilroy, and Iris Marion Young point out, commonality also implies boundaries, difference, and exclusion. ¹ In order for a community to distinguish itself, its members must differentiate themselves in some way from other communities through boundaries of land, behavior, or background. These are fluid rather than stable boundaries, dependent on individual perceptions and definitions. Cornerstone's local collaborations ground this discourse of "community," defined by both commonality and exclusion, in concrete examples.

Original company members founded Cornerstone as a way to expand and diversify one particular community: the theatregoing audience. Co-founders Alison Carey and Bill Rauch were frustrated by what they felt to be a limited idea of national identity as defined by the audience of the American Repertory Theatre. Carey and Rauch felt that, despite its titular claims, this theatre's mainly white, upper-middle-class audience did not represent the full diversity of America. Rauch, Carey, and other founding Cornerstone members decided that if they wanted to engage a truly diverse American theatre audience they needed to travel beyond the geographical and economic confines of East Coast regional theatres. Further discussion led to the insight that engaging an audience required working with them rather than merely performing for them. Carey comments, "if we were sincere in our desire to learn from people what makes good theatre, and whether theatre is important, then we had to be in the trenches together" (qtd. in Lelyveld 6). Cornerstone's shows thus involve the community in every aspect of the production process, from planning and adaptation to publicity, rehearsal, and performance.

Cornerstone's collaborative productions manifest community meaning through both social and symbolic systems. Transactions with Cornerstone stimulate the social networks that build and strengthen community. Initial contact with potential collaborators establishes and reinforces leadership structures and enables community discourse through formal and informal means. In Marmarth, North Dakota, the State Historical Society connected the group with Mayor Patty Perry. Planning sessions took place in Marmarth's one bar. These conversations eventually drew community participants, most of whom frequented [End Page 92] this local social hub, into the production process. On the Walker River Reservation in Schurz, Nevada, Tribal Educator Lucinda Benjamin served as Cornerstone's local contact. Attempts to recruit auditioners linked the school board with tribal elders, enacting community through this interaction.

In Norcatur, Kansas, the mayor called a town meeting to discuss Cornerstone's arrival, involving the entire community in the decision to sponsor the project. Cast member Dorothy Kelly articulates the way in which the production process animated the community in program notes to Tartoof (or An Impostor in Norcatur--and at Christmas!) (1987):

Since the Centennial celebration in 1986 the town has been in the doldrums, coasting along with nothing specific needing to be done and consequently not doing anything. . . . [Cornerstone's arrival initiated] a big clean-up day, and everyone helped to make a good impression. So old tree limbs were hauled away, vacant lots were mowed, everybody tried to put their best foot forward. (4)

According to Kelly, the theatrical event provided an occasion for the town to "do something specific," precipitating an activation of social networks involving "everyone." Working together, implies Kelly, reinforces a sense of common purpose, and hence of community, for Norcatur residents. In various other towns introductory events such as potluck suppers, lemonade socials, and church breakfasts brought residents together, reinforcing the social bonds that can construct community identity.

The production process also may symbolically express community identity through performance and adaptation. Adaptation involves the community in a way that frames and performs local culture. The adaptation process originated in Marmarth in 1986, where auditioners pushed for specific textual updates. Cornerstone members had envisioned a radically cut, but textually unchanged, Wild West version of Hamlet. That, claimed one local rancher, would go over "like a turd in a punchbowl" (Cornerstone Newsletter I.1:2). Auditioners had difficulty understanding the archaic language of the play and requested contemporary translations of the text in auditions. "I remember the day . . . we decided to do it," explains Rauch, "we actually said that to rewrite Shakespeare is blasphemous, but what the hell?" (Durfee 3:8). "It was 'the shit we take from assholes,'" recalls David Reiffel, that Cornerstone members substituted for "the proud man's contumely" that initiated the process of local textual adaptation (Durfee 3:7).

Further community reaction and involvement complicated the adaptation process. Marmarth participants voiced concerns with what they perceived to be too many "bad words" and blasphemous references in the adapted text. Members of the community asked that the phrase be changed to "the crap we take from assholes." In an emergency meeting called by the Marmarth Historical [End Page 93] Society, Cornerstone, community actors, and several members of the local church sat down with the script and discussed each textual problem. The meeting illustrated to Cornerstone members that their word choice reflected Harvard's urban collegiate rather than Marmarth's rural ranching culture. The committee re-evaluated such phrases as "downright prick" and changed it to the more locally acceptable and accessible "horse's rear end" (Durfee 3:10). Through this interaction, Cornerstone members and Marmarth residents began to understand that resonant cultural references are often contextually specific. The adaptation allowed for further collaboration with resident participants as well as yielding a play that more fully engaged a local audience. Contrary to the expectations of the skeptical rancher, after viewing The Marmarth Hamlet one local cowboy nodded, "[y]ep. A guy should see it twice" (Cornerstone Newsletter I.1: 1).

While textual adaptation allows for a locally specific performance of community identity through resonant references, the performance event itself can unite the community through common experience. In The Ritual Process, anthropologist Victor Turner proposes that narratives, rituals, and performances can structure and create meaning for a society. Experience becomes meaningful and complete when "expressed" or "pressed out" through the performance event (13-14). Turner describes the experience or "sense of community" derived through this event as communitas. The term refers to the ephemeral sense of connectedness and bonding experienced by a group through the common experience of a unifying ritual. The theatrical event functions as a unifying ritual in Turner's terms, momentarily manifesting and underscoring a feeling of community identity.

As Anthony Cohen points out, this sense of communitas may operate only symbolically to unite a group of people whose values, beliefs, and backgrounds do not cohere (55). Implicit in Turner's discussion of performative or cultural expression resides an assumption of commonality. By virtue of their attendance at a unifying event, Turner suggests that participants share some preliminary bonds of community. Communitas, suggests Cohen, reinforces this commonality and conceals difference. Further exploration of Cornerstone's production process reveals challenges to assumptions of homogeneity implied by this notion of commonality, and questions the idea that a community marked by differentiation can perform any kind of cohesive identity through local adaptation.

As well as disrupting assumptions of cohesiveness, the production process can reveal the internal boundaries of community. Sometimes these divisions are clear upon Cornerstone's arrival, as those between Mexican and European Americans in the border town of Marfa, Texas, and between blacks and whites in Port Gibson, Mississippi. In other residencies, Cornerstone members [End Page 94] encountered less visible divisions among community members. In Eastport, Maine, the group worked to involve residents of the nearby Passamaquoddy Native American tribe but were surprised to hear from an Eastport waitress that they had not succeeded in casting any "natives." Apparently, non-Native American residents of Eastport who had lived in the area for more than fifty years distinguished themselves in this way from the "from aways" who had moved to town more recently (Sagal "Update" 27). This less visibly perceptible differentiation within the community points towards the difficulty of performing a cohesive performance adaptation.

Residencies have also shown that members of a geographically defined community do not necessarily share the same values. Eastport encompassed a group of publicly "out" homosexuals as well as homophobic high school students. In Long Creek, Oregon, community residents performing a version of Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan (1988) disagreed on the definition of a good woman. Cast members of Port Gibson's Romeo and Juliet (1989) and Dinwiddie County's The Pretty Much True Story of Dinwiddie County (1987) differed in their feelings about the appropriateness of depicting interracial marriage.

As well as revealing value differences, Cornerstone residencies also illustrate the multiplicity inherent in defining identity through community. A resident of Maine can simultaneously live in the Eastport area, belong to the Passamaquoddy Indian tribe, identify with the homosexual community, and act in a Cornerstone production. These multiple communities do not necessarily cohere. Other residents of Eastport are not identified as Native Americans or homosexuals. Individuals who identify themselves as homosexuals exist outside the Eastport area. Production work demonstrates the difficulty of using the term "community" to imply stability or permanence. Thus, when Cornerstone and residents of an area participating in a production speak of the work as celebrating community or unifying the community, it is essential to bear in mind the unstable and temporary nature of this community.

Cornerstone sometimes operates with a certain idealism and mythology about the purpose and affective impact of their work. Their rural plays tend to perform a unity that may conceal the differences and boundaries revealed through the production process. Most rural productions end with a moment in which all the characters join on stage and sing. In The Pretty Much True Story of Dinwiddie County, director Rauch composed a progressive unity through his casting of choruses. The first act chorus consisted of white males, played by friends who met daily to converse on a bench outside the local store. A chorus of black church women commented on the second act. Rauch envisioned the third act chorus as a "multi-ethnic family of man." The play ended with the cast gathered around this family's dinner table singing a hymn (Cornerstone Newsletter II.1: 3). In one way, the progression towards integration represents a [End Page 95] triumph for the company's mission of bringing people together. Rauch notes, "back during the casting process we had been warned not to let our Family suggest interracial marriage, but we never heard another word about it after the [play]" (Cornerstone Newsletter II.1: 3). However, this performance of inclusiveness, according to former ensemble member David Reiffel, can conceal the difficulty and complexity of differentiation revealed through the rehearsal process.

I felt there were things that needed to get said that weren't. That resolution is not always possible. The endings of our shows were going more and more toward a sort or resolution; everything was okay, everything has been resolved there. And that wasn't happening in my life, I wasn't seeing it happening in the lives around me, and it seemed like a false--It seemed false to end as we did a lot of shows, you know, glibly, I say, with a group hug. (Durfee 8:25)

The difficulty of performing differentiation as opposed to "a group hug" resides in the negotiation of agency between Cornerstone and community members. As outsiders to the community, Cornerstone members may perceive issues and differentiations that community members interpret from their own perspective or simply do not wish to perform. Cornerstone's Port Gibson, Mississippi production of Romeo and Juliet exemplifies the difficulties inherent in attempting to rehearse and exorcise community conflict.

After choosing the text in consultation with Cultural Crossroads, Cornerstone's sponsoring agency, ensemble members decided to experiment with their tradition of color blind casting by reflecting through the casting of the Montagues (blacks) and Capulets (whites) what they perceived as a division in the town. Patty Crosby of Cultural Crossroads, an organization promoting the integration of blacks and whites, expressed reservations about this depiction of division. Many of the white cast members, on the other hand, asserted their discomfort with an interracial bedroom scene. Following a rehearsal period that had been characterized by uneasiness, the company held a post-show discussion. Though the process had been about bringing blacks and whites together, and the final moment of the play showed the opportunity for reconciliation in a more subtle way than most Cornerstone shows, the discussion revealed cynicism about long-term results. Cast member Mary Curry noted "that her son Allan and another 10-year old cast member, Athena Hynum, a [white] Academy girl, may be playing together now, but as soon as the show is over everything will return to normal--whites will once again pass black people in the streets without so much as a hello" (qtd. in Coe 57).

The show provoked further dissent within the community as to its authenticity and efficacy. Curry and other black cast members accepted the adaptation's premise of racial division but questioned the notion that the project would lead to permanent change in the community. Port Gibson Mayor James [End Page 96] Beasley challenged the show's depiction of racial division itself. The white mayor, who pointedly did not see the production, conveyed his belief to a local reporter that the townsfolk had lived together in racial harmony for twenty years, thank you, and chastised Cornerstone members for representing a contradiction to this belief (Myers 1).

Curry and Beasley's responses to the production underline that boundaries of exclusion within a community are perceptual. Whether Port Gibson is, as Mary Curry suggests, a town marked by racial division or, as Mayor Beasley insists, a harmonious integrated community, this difference in perspectives illuminates the difficulty of defining a single view of the community. This differential experiencing of community illustrates its constructed and subjective nature. Through the Port Gibson residency, Cornerstone members became more aware of the political nature of performing local adaptations; they discovered that the inclusive nature of performance does not necessarily erase differences in perceptions and beliefs.

The issue of how to represent a community through locally-situated adaptation is a thorny one. Cornerstone members often find themselves negotiating between standing by their values and respecting the different values of community members. Conflict in values often leads to a verbal or symbolic articulation of the bounded nature of the community: a statement defining who is considered inside and who is considered outside of a particular community. Cornerstone member Ashby Semple describes a conversation she had with a rancher in Long Creek, Oregon about the morality of premarital sex. They disagreed, and Semple discovered that the fresh milk that had been delivered to her doorstep each morning ceased to arrive. Meanwhile, a same-sex couple who lived together but did not advertise their relationship continued to receive milk. When the rancher perceived an explicit challenge to his value system, he enacted differential exclusion through milk delivery. This relative exclusion of Semple and the inclusion of the same-sex couple, of whose relationship the rancher was unaware, suggests the perceptual nature of value boundaries. These boundaries may be redrawn if a more inclusive enabling device displaces the impact of contradictory values. In this case the performance process acted as an enabler, and, as the production of The Good Person of Long Creek approached, Semple began receiving her milk again. The appearance and disappearance of the milk illustrates the instability of the boundaries of inclusion into a community.

The fluid boundaries of community, and of Cornerstone's acceptance into the community, relate to the community's perception of co-ownership of the production. The production process engages this agency through both social and aesthetic methods. One of the ways in which residents achieve social ownership of the production is through the inclusion of community leaders. Cornerstone [End Page 97] first recognized the importance of these leaders in lending validity to a project in Marmarth. Explains ensemble member Peter Howard, "it was certain that [Mayor Patty Perry] was gonna be in the show right from the start. She kept saying no, but it was certain in our minds" (Durfee 3:7). Perry played the gravedigger, and her presence was instrumental in getting residents off barstools and on the stage. In Schurz, Nevada, Tribal Chairman Wayne Johnson's acceptance of a role lent a similar validity to Cornerstone's project. Tribal educator Lucinda Benjamin explains, "I must admit there was some reluctance surrounding the project . . . certainly the boost was when the Tribal Chairman auditioned and was cast in one of the leading roles in the play" (Benjamin letter). The visible presence of Perry and Johnson and of other community leaders in Norcatur and Watts emphasizes co-ownership. At the same time, this casting can reflect an intriguing doubleness of community and performance roles.

Cornerstone's casting of Tribal Chairman Johnson as Chairman Agamemnon in their adaptation of the Oresteia reflects this social and aesthetic doubleness. Bill Rauch discusses the adaptation process in Brechtian terms, "that which makes the familiar seem strange and the strange seem familiar" (qtd. in Good Person program notes 3). Brecht based his ideas on those of early twentieth century Russian Formalists who posited that the framing of an object through estranged language rendered it more visible. This defamiliarizing, or in Brechtian terms, "alienation," forced an audience to re-perceive the everyday world. The casting of local actors in roles that reflect the roles they play in the community familiarizes the strangeness of the cultural context of the source text as well as legitimizing the piece as a community co-production. A local audience who may not comprehend the way in which Agamemnon functions in an ancient Greek city-state, understands the role that Wayne Johnson plays as chairman of the tribe. The framing of Johnson as a Greek leader makes the familiar strange as well, reinforcing Johnson's role of leadership within the community. The community becomes engaged in the production as it reflects its own leadership structure and reawakens an understanding of that structure.

This recontextualizing of the familiar through the performative can also be described in Bakhtinian terms. Bakhtin suggests that a recontextualization of the signifier alters its meaning, as meaning is produced through a dialogic interaction between speaker and listener. He explains that a word can invoke a "double-voicedness" when pronounced in a way that comments upon another's usage of that word. For example, the impact of the word "nigger" depends on context. A white woman calling a black man a nigger in the streets of Port Gibson, Mississippi carries a doubled connotation when that woman uses the phrase "thou art a nigger" in Romeo and Juliet set in a small town in Mississippi. The word maintains extremely negative connotations, but framed by a [End Page 98] performance, it is contextualized to demonstrate the maliciousness of an interracial feud. ²

The physical space of performance can also be read in this double-voiced manner, contributing to the sense that the community has a stake in the artistic product, as well as recontextualizing the familiar. ³ The theatrical site of a production is specific to each performance, while maintaining its local function within the community. Cornerstone's design aesthetics remind the audience of this functional presence. This aesthetic engagement with and framing of the community space reflects an essential difference between Cornerstone's community-based work and most community theatre. In general, community theatre productions attempt to mimic conventional notions of theatre design: the design endeavors to conceal the auditorium-ness, or the city hall-ness of the space. In contrast, Cornerstone designer Lynn Jeffries employs elements of the community space that remind the community audience of its ownership of the space. Jeffries views this approach aesthetically rather than socially, explaining: "We try to take every interesting element of the [home] theatre and use it" (qtd. in Thiele-Escher). In Norcatur, Jeffries incorporated a basketball goal and scoreboard into the set of Tartoof (1987), performed in the school gymnasium. Storage space underneath a church auditorium stage provided surprising entrances for the young angels and devils in Los Faustinos (designed by Katherine Ferwerda, 1994). Jeffries took on the ultimate aesthetic challenge in Long Creek, Oregon, creating a design that worked against the most prevalent of community theatre clichés: Cornerstone staged The Good Person of Long Creek (1988) in a barn. Rather than conjuring shades of Mickey and Judy, Jeffries framed the iconicity of the setting, working with Rauch and technical director Benajah Cobb to remind Long Creek residents that they actually were in a cattle-sale barn in Long Creek. Rauch staged much of the action on a centrally-located cattle gate. A rotating stage and a vertically elevated chair, upon which a knitting woman occasionally descended to comment on the action, invited the eye to travel through and take in the entire barn. The imaginative staging that results from working with, rather than against, the given space suggests a kind of found aesthetic that is less available in either conventional community or regional theatrical sites.

In contrast, when Cornerstone's set does not engage as fully with the performance space, the resultant design suggests a complex and potentially problematic social reading. In Schurz, Nevada the company performed an adaptation of The Oresteia with members of the Walker River Indian Reservation in an unused welding shop. Production posters and flyers did not designate the space by its community function, or former function, but as "the building across from the Tribal Hall." This literature also referred to the way in which the performance had changed the space. "[T]he pipes and metal junk's all gone, it's cleaned and painted and someone's stuck in these huge wooden rocks . . . the [End Page 99] floor's all swept neat and smooth." In renewing the space for production, the company also removed vestiges of its past performance as a welding site, perhaps erasing some elements of the community's ownership.

In general, the semiotics of Cornerstone's production sites suggest a more inclusive approach to theatre. Many rural and middle- to lower-class potential audience members view conventional regional theatres, with their high-priced subscription bases and downtown urban locations, as cultural palaces that they would feel uncomfortable entering. This discomfort is related to a theatre's location in an urban field as well as to the theatre's architecture. Louisville's Actors Theatre is located within the city's financial district, and Chicago's Goodman Theatre is attached to the Art Institute of Chicago; both locations are far removed from lower-income housing. New Haven's Long Wharf and Washington DC's Arena Stage are difficult to get to using public transportation. A centrally-located and familiar space can invite community members to attend a performance more readily.

The architecture of most conventional theatres may also reinforce divisions between audience and performers that Cornerstone members hope to break down. In his chapter on "The Semiotics of Theatre Structures," Marvin Carlson describes this conventional theatre space as one in which the viewer and viewed are separated by performance and supporting spaces, each of which often maintains a hierarchical spatial division. The backstage area in many theatres is divided into more or less privileged dressing areas, according to size and closeness to the stage. The balconies, boxes, and orchestra pit, priced according to their prestige and distance from the performance area, can socially stratify the audience. Cornerstone's found locations work against these conventional semiotics. The staging and set sometimes surround an audience, as in the production of That Marfa Fever (1987). "Pay what you can" bleacher seating allows for little stratification among audience members. A makeshift backstage area shared by all the participants erases semiotic differentiation among cast members. Ideally, the semiotics of location, space, and architecture work together to invite and include resident audience members as they reinforce ownership and frame elements of the community's cultural identity.

The demystification and co-ownership of artistic elements such as production, acting, and performance space work with Cornerstone's initial goals of engaging the community and the audience in the process of creation. A result that is not articulated by Cornerstone members, but nonetheless arises from the work, is a postmodern awareness of the construction of culture and identity. The fact that community performers are generally untrained in the "method" of psychological realism keeps them from "disappearing" into the characters that they play. As reviewer Steve Vineberg notes of a production of The Winter's Tale: An Interstate Adventure (1991): "every time these actors opened [End Page 100] their mouths, they told us, 'This is who I am.'" (Threepenny Review). Vineberg suggests that the community actors remain present in performance. Wayne Johnson does not "become" Chairman Agamemnon, he presents the character and remains recognizable to the community as Wayne Johnson. By remaining outside the roles that they perform, these actors call forth the constructed nature of character and the instability of representation.

The performances of community actors also suggest the instability of identity as constructed through social roles. While performing as a character, Wayne Johnson, Patty Perry, and Mary Curry are not performing the roles of Tribal Chair, Mayor, and Town Election Commissioner. A gap opens up, suggesting the elusiveness of the "real" identity of the actor. He or she is authentically performing neither character nor social role. This performative gap can be situated within François Lyotard's depiction of the postmodern moment. In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard proposes that the postmodern moment occurs within the modernist presentation of the unpresentable. "The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable . . ." (81). For Lyotard, the unpresentable suggests what is outside of consensus, of common understanding, reminding a community of their uncommonality. In various mission statements, Cornerstone members articulate their efforts to achieve the opposite effect of Lyotard's postmodern moment. The company's productions work to include, to perform, and to build community.

And yet, in the gap of community performance may reside, in one sense, the presentation of an unpresentable. Through their lack of experience, their physical and emotional awkwardness, community actors are present as both actor and character, community member and artist. This very presence suggests absence. By never fully "disappearing" into the role of Agamemnon, Wayne Johnson remains present in performance. Yet, in his performance as Agamemnon, Johnson temporarily disappears from the performance of his role as Tribal Chair. The performance presents the unpresentable instabilities of individual identity. Cornerstone's performances may just be postmodern in spite of themselves.

I began this essay by submitting the necessity for legitimate critical inquiry into community-based performance, proposing that Cornerstone's process reveals ways in which community is created, constructed, and destabilized. Community-based theatre has even richer potential as a site for inquiry into the complexities of identity formation. Cornerstone members founded the organization as a way to engage an American audience and discover an American aesthetic. In the process, the group uncovered the elusiveness of this American [End Page 101] identity, or, indeed, of the identity of even the most cohesive rural community. The production process revealed the fluidity and multiplicity of social identity. The performance event itself, while enabling and expressing a moment of community cohesion and suggesting potential sites for a community to express identity and ownership, also opens up another realm for the exploration of the constructed nature of individual identity. The production process remains a rich terrain for this exploration.

Sonja Kuftinec is a PhD candidate in Drama at Stanford University.

Notes

1. In a definition of community related to use, Cohen focuses on boundary as a distinguishing concept that requires both similarities and difference (12). In There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, cultural theorist Paul Gilroy notes in his study of British blacks that "Community is as much about difference as it is about similarity and identity" (235). In her study Justice and the Politics of Difference, Iris Marion Young suggests that the ideal of community may repress difference by encouraging an assumption of unity (230).

2. It is significant that Cornerstone members did not impose this phrase. It was decided upon by the consensus of the racially-mixed cast. Thus it can be said that the community cast maintained a sense of ownership of the word choice.

3. In England, where community theatre evokes alternative and political as well as non-professional theatre, community theatre producer Ann Jellicoe notes, "If a community theatre performs in a village hall, say, the community is inevitably in the role of host, because the hall 'belongs' to the village . . . so at the very least space is exchanged for performance" (qtd. in Kershaw xvii).

Works Cited

Bell, Colin, and Howard Newby. Community Studies: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Local Community. London: Allen, 1989.

Benjamin, Lucinda. Letter to Cornerstone. June 1988.

Carlson, Marvin. Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

Coe, Robert. "Verona, Mississippi: Cornerstone Reinvents 'Community Theatre' in America." American Theatre May 1989: 14+.

Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York: Youngstock, 1985.

Cornerstone Newsletter. I. 1, II. 1, May 1988, Dec. 1988.

Durfee Retreat: An Oral History of Cornerstone. Conducted 28 May-4 June 1994. Transcribed. Notations refer to tape and page number.

Gilroy, Paul. "There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.": The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. London: Hutchinson, 1987.

The Good Person of Long Creek. Adapted from The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Long Creek, Oregon. 1988.

----. Program Notes.

The House on Walker River. Adapted from The Oresteia by Aeschylus. Adapted and Produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Schurz, Nevada. 1988.

Kershaw, Baz. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge, 1992.

Lelyveld, Nita. "In Cornerstone's Shakespeare, Romeo Raps." New York Times 7 May 1989: 5-6.

Los Faustinos. By Bernardo Solano. Produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Watts, California. Dec. 1994.

Lyotard, François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.

The Marmarth Hamlet. Adapted from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Marmarth, North Dakota. 1986.

Myers, Leslie R. "Racially Mixed Production Prospers in Port Gibson." Clarion-Ledger [Port Gibson, MS] 19 Mar. 1989: 1.

The Pretty Much True Story of Dinwiddie County. By Doug Petrie. Produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Dinwiddie County, Virginia. 1987.

Romeo and Juliet. Adapted from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Port Gibson, Mississippi. 1989.

Sagal, Peter "Update: Cornerstone Theatre, Downeast Maine." Theater Week 25 June-1 July 1990: 27-29.

Semple, Ashby. Personal Interview. 15 Nov. 1994.

Tartoof (Or, An Impostor in Norcatur--And at Christmas!). Adapted from Tartuffe. By Molière. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Norcatur, Kansas. 1987.

----. Program Notes.

Thiele-Escher, Deborah. "Cornerstone Theatre 'An Impostor in Norcatur.'" Clarion Ink, Oberlin, Kansas. 2 Nov. 1987: 1

The Three Sisters from West Virginia. Adapted from The Three Sisters. By Anton Chekhov. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company. Montgomery, West Virginia. 1989.

Turner, Victor Witter. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ, 1982.

----. The Ritual Process. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.

Vineberg, Steve. Rev. of The Winter's Tale: An Interstate Adventure. Threepenny Review Spring 1992: 3-5.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1976.

The Winter's Tale: An Interstate Adventure. Adapted from The Winter's Tale. By William Shakespeare. Adapted and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company, 1991.

Yeatman, Anna. Postmodern Revisionings of the Political. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.

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