Sunday, November 20, 2005
Why Cornerstone isn't the SF Mime Troupe
I've been reading through some of the articles written about the company (notably "To Work and Be Proud of It" in HARVARD magazine), and there's an interesting twist in the road that comes out in the production of THREE SISTERS FROM WEST VIRGINIA.
There's a sense in which becoming the overtly political, provocative theater company would have been the simple path for Cornerstone. Having completed work on an interracial ROMEO AND JULIET in Port Gibson, Cornerstone went to a town that had been devastated by the cresting and then collapse of the mining industry. The easy choice would have been to go at the politics in plain sight: industry choking a small town, etc. The easy choice would have been AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
James Bundy, then managing director, says they would have been able to create their niche: people love to fund that sort of stuff. It's still true...tweak the obvious problem and it's easier to explain your work, it's easier on the journalists, it's easier on the foundation committee, etc. Rather, as Peter Howard says in the HARVARD article, "The political thing that we do is to say that the place where you live and the way that you live is a thing worth considering."
So they decided to do THREE SISTERS, but what's really interesting is they set it not in West Virginia but in Detroit...the place the sisters yearn for is West Virginia, not Moscow. So many people have moved in order to make a living that the deeper story of this community and its identity is diaspora.
I am interested in the way that idea emerged. Movements are interesting that way when they don't have a manifesto: when did that idea of approach and engagement become "the political thing _we_ do?" Much of the rest of the piece is taken up with the sheer salesmanship involved in those residencies: working desperately to fill an audition hall, and then deperately again as people begin to drop out! Perhaps the secret to the methodology is that Cornerstone simply drove itself to edge of the world and had to find a way to get back. They did so one person at a time, and stumbled on an idea about art and political engagement that is both epic and obvious.
Other interesting trivia in the THREE SISTERS story is that the bridge show is in the air (although it's called a "reunion" show), and that in this piece and one Peter Sagal wrote about PIER GYNT the company is already trying to figure out how to settle down.
There's a sense in which becoming the overtly political, provocative theater company would have been the simple path for Cornerstone. Having completed work on an interracial ROMEO AND JULIET in Port Gibson, Cornerstone went to a town that had been devastated by the cresting and then collapse of the mining industry. The easy choice would have been to go at the politics in plain sight: industry choking a small town, etc. The easy choice would have been AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
James Bundy, then managing director, says they would have been able to create their niche: people love to fund that sort of stuff. It's still true...tweak the obvious problem and it's easier to explain your work, it's easier on the journalists, it's easier on the foundation committee, etc. Rather, as Peter Howard says in the HARVARD article, "The political thing that we do is to say that the place where you live and the way that you live is a thing worth considering."
So they decided to do THREE SISTERS, but what's really interesting is they set it not in West Virginia but in Detroit...the place the sisters yearn for is West Virginia, not Moscow. So many people have moved in order to make a living that the deeper story of this community and its identity is diaspora.
I am interested in the way that idea emerged. Movements are interesting that way when they don't have a manifesto: when did that idea of approach and engagement become "the political thing _we_ do?" Much of the rest of the piece is taken up with the sheer salesmanship involved in those residencies: working desperately to fill an audition hall, and then deperately again as people begin to drop out! Perhaps the secret to the methodology is that Cornerstone simply drove itself to edge of the world and had to find a way to get back. They did so one person at a time, and stumbled on an idea about art and political engagement that is both epic and obvious.
Other interesting trivia in the THREE SISTERS story is that the bridge show is in the air (although it's called a "reunion" show), and that in this piece and one Peter Sagal wrote about PIER GYNT the company is already trying to figure out how to settle down.
# posted by John J. Flynn, Ph.D. @ 11:15 AM 
