May 27, 2007 Los Angeles Times. "Getting it right for 'Los Illegals'"
Read it here or at http://www.latimes.com.

Los Angeles Times
CALENDAR, CULTURE MIX from Saturday, May 26, 2007 edition

Getting it right for 'Los Illegals'

By Agustin Gurza, Times Staff Writer

There was a real-life feeling to Tuesday's rehearsal for the new play "Los Illegals," which explores the issue of illegal immigration by re-creating the characters and clashes at a day labor center outside a Home Depot-like store.

Adding to the air of authenticity, the bilingual drama (which opens June 7) features a cast of actual day laborers and is being staged in an outdoor parking lot in Pasadena.

This is one of the rare sets where the director can admonish a distracted actor by calling out "Ese!" India-born director Shishir Kurup held a firm but polite rein on the cast of almost 30, some of whom only spoke Spanish, others only English. Sounds like Babel but somehow it worked.

One of the actors is Betto Arcos, best known locally as former program director at KPFK-FM (90.7). Arcos has never acted before but he turns out to be a natural, with a booming voice for a big role, that of Jimmy, who switches allegiances between the two worker camps ? the sanctioned and the wildcat.

Another cast member, Bahni Turpin, a professional actress, also stood out. In the role of Brenda, an anti-immigrant activist, Turpin delivers a show-stopping speech expressing the anger and frustration felt by African Americans on the immigration issue.

Hers is just one of many convincing voices in the work, based on extensive research by writer Michael John Garc?s, the new artistic director at L.A.'s Cornerstone Theater, which produced the play. His goal was to show a human face on the issue, to help us see ? and understand ? the individuals on all sides, instead of just "immigrant hordes" and "angry protesters."

"Los Illegals," Thursdays through Sundays at 8 p.m. Opens June 7; previews Thursday to June 3. Ends June 24. Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. Pay what you can (suggested donation $20). For reservations, call (213) 613-1700, Ext. 33.

Gurza covers Latino music, arts and culture. E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with comments, events and ideas for this weekly feature.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2007 Los Angeles Times. "Cornerstone puts the immigration issue center stage"
Read it here or at http://www.latimes.com.

Los Angeles Times
ARTS & MUSIC CALENDAR, THEATER from Sunday, May 27, 2007 edition

Cornerstone puts the immigration issue center stage

By Sean Mitchell, Special to the Times

While the president and Congress were struggling to reach a consensus on what to do about illegal immigration, the ensemble at Los Angeles' Cornerstone Theater had already agreed to address the issue with its next play, "Los Illegals," written by the theater's new artistic director, Michael John Garc?s.

Opening June 7 at the Armory Northwest in Pasadena, "Los Illegals" will be the first play in a new Cornerstone cycle organized around the theme of justice and "how laws shape and disrupt community," in the theater's description. Subsequent productions will cover reproductive rights, incarceration and the environment.

Like all Cornerstone works, "Los Illegals" is the result of a playwright and director researching a subject with people from the community under scrutiny, then casting some of those people in a production with professional actors. Such community-based drama has been the special province of Cornerstone, a national theater company based in Los Angeles since 1992.

The community in question in "Los Illegals" is the hordes of day laborers who congregate in parking lots at Home Depot stores and on street corners hoping to get temporary work, much of it in construction and landscaping. Most, but not all, of these workers are undocumented Latino immigrants, and their true stories have provided Garc?s with the inspiration for "Los Illegals." Under the direction of longtime company member Shishir Kurup, the play will be performed in an equal mixture of English and Spanish, reflecting the bilingual inmigrante subculture.

Cornerstone is familiar with the challenge of initiating ordinary people into the rigors of the stage, but "Los Illegals" brings another challenge: that of incorporating workers into the ensemble who might be facing legal jeopardy. While the show was being cast, fresh Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in San Diego were making news. "We thought about having people wear masks," says Kurup. "We didn't ask anybody about their status."

And although there is always the danger of attrition with amateurs who don't realize at first how hard theater can be, Kurup says, "people here have felt the great need to tell this story, and so they have come and been willing to work."

The bilingual approach

Garc?s, the son of a Cuban father and Minnesotan mother, grew up in Colombia and attended the University of Miami, but he says that calculating the blend of English and Spanish proved to be a new kind of math for him as a playwright, even while he saw it as a necessary strategy given the subject at hand.

"Most undocumented workers do not speak English," Garc?s says. There are some stretches of Spanish in the play where people who don't speak Spanish may be somewhat befuddled, "but I think that reflects a certain reality of Los Angeles. And then there are clearly stretches of English where the monolingual Spanish speakers will wonder what's going on and will have to glean it from the action."

Getting plot points across in both languages is essential, he says. "We're still struggling with it; that's what's exciting about this play."

Cornerstone has done its share of multilingual theater in the past, but "Los Illegals" will be its first thoroughly bilingual play.

"There's not a lot of truly bilingual theater going on," says Garc?s, who has directed plays in Spanish as well as English and been a director at INTAR, the long-running Latino theater in New York. "We'll learn about the viability of a truly bilingual experience."

Garc?s came to Cornerstone from New York last year after 15 years working as a freelance director at major American nonprofit theaters like the Hartford Stage Company, Yale Repertory and the Humana Festival but also after spending time with a consensus-based collective theater group in Chiapas, Mexico, staging similar community-based plays using farmers and other residents. Last year, he was initiated in the Cornerstone method by its founder, Bill Rauch, when Rauch invited him to co-direct a play about the history of a local neighborhood at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. (Rauch, who co-founded Cornerstone with Alison Carey in 1986, departed to run the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.)

Unlike the traditional hierarchy at not-for-profit theaters, where the artistic director chooses the plays, at Cornerstone the 15 permanent ensemble members discuss ideas and possibilities, achieving consensus before moving ahead with the next show.

In Garc?s' first discussions with the company, "a lot of things seemed to be on the table and in flux ? immigration, reproductive rights," he says. The meetings led to a slight change in approach. "For the first time we're looking at community through the prism of issues as opposed to looking at issues through the prism of community. It's a little different, deciding what we want to grapple with and then finding communities that are at the front lines of this issue."

Cornerstone's last major project, the Faith-Based Theater Cycle, examined the diversity and divisiveness of religions in Los Angeles and culminated in James Still's "A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters," with 57 actors, staged in June 2005 at the Ford Amphitheatre.

For "Los Illegals," Garc?s and Kurup contacted the National Day Laborer Organizing Network to help introduce them to workers. They went to street corners to meet the indocumentados and invited some of them to continue the conversation in more elaborate interviews. Some were then invited to auditions.

"I learned a tremendous amount about the world that I didn't know," says the 40-year-old playwright. Among other things, Garc?s was struck by "the diversity of the community" and the number of countries represented. While some were illiterate, others were highly educated. "In New York, I met Russian doctors who were driving cabs; I don't know why I thought this would be different."

He also spoke to a federal immigration judge and a number of lawyers. He tried to speak to the anti-illegal immigrant California group Save Our State to get a different point of view but in the end was able to engage members only amid the noise and distraction of a protest rally.

"We focused on the day laborers themselves. We found some really interesting tensions in that community ? between the workers who are in the organized sites versus those who don't want to join the organized sites ? how they perceive each other.

"There is tension between the day-laborer community and the activists against them, but the actual tension of the play is about the uneasy relationship between the undocumented workers and their employers and among the workers themselves."

Some of the workers see the play as a mirror of their lives. "This is exactly what happens on the street corners," Hector Perez, a 40-year-old hotel worker from Mexico City, says in Spanish during a rehearsal while actors shout at one another on an outdoor stage in Pasadena. "Sometimes we fight when there are not enough jobs for everyone."

Perez, who last acted in high school in Mexico City, auditioned for the play after his brother brought home a flier from the Home Depot in Hollywood. He has not seen his wife and two sons since he came north five years ago.

"It's what we live every day," says Rafael Molina, 54, a construction worker from El Salvador whose experiences during his 10 years in Los Angeles are among those Garc?s used to inform his script. "There are too many laborers. We all fall."

Molina has not decided if he is going to go onstage himself. He changes his mind from day to day and says it depends on whether he is going to leave town in the next month to find work in New York.

Garc?s stresses that "Los Illegals," like other Cornerstone projects, is not to be confused with documentary theater that reconstructs real events. Nor is it a work written by committee. The author of the plays "Acts of Mercy" and "points of departure," Garc?s has taken his research and created a work of fiction, loosely basing it on the 17th century Spanish classic "Fuente Ovejuna" by Lope de Vega, about a group of villagers who kill an oppressive military officer and stand united under prosecution for the crime.

Activism and artistry

Garc?s prefers to invoke the model of Clifford Odets writing the stirring pro-union drama "Waiting for Lefty" for the Group Theater in the 1930s.

"It's not consensus-based art making," Garc?s says. "Once we consent to work with a playwright and director, the ensemble does not micromanage the creation of the work. We value idiosyncratic artists with idiosyncratic visions.

"Some of my work has been congruent with an activist goal. But I'm not an activist; I'm an artist. And I think everybody in the ensemble is. We're a collective of artists, not a collective of social workers."

Still, one of the theater's goals is to fill the audience with members of the community whose story is being told. "It's hugely important," says Garc?s, that day laborers and their families come to see "Los Illegals" along with the regular theatergoing public. To encourage this, the box office maintains a "pay what you can" policy during the four-week run.

As for working with amateurs after years of directing and writing for big-time professional theaters, Garc?s says, "At its best, the professionals elevate the people around them by example. And what the nonpros can bring to the table is a kind of unpolished visceral connection to the material and to the sense of place and time that forces the actors to let go of some of their tricks and get real."

*
'Los Illegals'
Where: Cornerstone Theater at Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena
When: Opens June 7. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays
Ends: June 24
Price: Pay what you can, $20 suggested donation
Contact: (213) 613-1700, Ext. 33

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

June 14, 2007 Pasadena Weekly. "A world in itself"
Read it here or at http://www.pasadenaweekly.com.

Pasadena Weekly
ONSTAGE from June 14, 2007 edition

A world in itself

By Leigh Kennicott

Visitors to the Cornerstone Theater's Pasadena residency at the Armory Northwest get three plays in one with ?Los Illegals.? The performance is the first to be crafted from real experiences of day laborers by the group's new artistic director, Michael John Garc?s. It is also the first in a new series of community-based theatrical events that attempt to deal with community issues in a way that is unique to Southern California.

The first in the group's ?Justice? cycle, ?Los Illegals? uses both Spanish and English to depict the plight of undocumented workers. It does not sugarcoat internal factional discords or their uneasy relationships with the world outside on which they depend for subsistence wages.

The play demands much of its audience: Even with some familiarity with Spanish, some sections are difficult to follow due to its heavy use. Director Shishir Kurup, however, has cleverly made audience members a part of the action by placing them at tables among the performers in an enclosure known as The Center. The audience tends to be swept away in the infectious emotion regardless of any language barrier.

Garc?s has grafted three different stories together to embody the heartbreak of immigrant journeys to the United States. The main narrative, loosely based on ?Fuente Ovejuna,? a 16th century story of oppression by Lope de Vega, involves the story of one worker who destroys his work when his employer refuses to pay him at the end of the day. It is a classic example of failure to communicate.

With The Center's future then at stake, all the workers must work together to save it. During this time, a muralist paints a large portrait of his brother during his border crossing through the desert. This tragic story is contrasted with the tale of a woman traveling by truck in stifling heat and brutal cold, and both relate back to the plight of ?Los Illegals? as they fight for their rights.

The cast, too numerous to mention, is uniformly impassioned and moving. Cornerstone veteran Peter Howard, however, stands out as ?George,? the manager of a fictional big-box hardware store where The Center is located. His character engages current conflicts between commerce and justice.

Although no answers come from Cornerstone's innovative creation, this is a production that brings home the enormity ? and the complexity ? of the intractable immigration issue.

See "Los Illegals? at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays through June 24 at the Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena. A $20 donation is recommended. For reservations, call (213) 613-1700, ext. 33, or visit www.cornerstonetheater.org.

Copyright 2007 Pasadena Weekly

December 5, 2001, Christian Science Monitor. "Under construction: more-connected communities"
Read it here or at http://www.csmonitor.com

Christian Science Monitor
FEATURES, HOMEFRONT from the December 05, 2001 edition

Under construction: more-connected communities

Sara Terry Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

PASADENA, CALIF. - They have come from around Los Angeles - from different faiths, or no faiths at all; some 80 people - to sit in the auditorium of a private Muslim school and deliberate over a burning question:

Should "the Center for Exquisite Balance" - a small band of believers in an obscure, alternative religion - be granted a conditional permit to build a huge center for worship?

During the course of the meeting's two-hour debate, questions and accusations about religion and faith bounce around the room. Participants meet one-to-one and in small groups, discussing their own religious encounters and their experience of other faiths.

By the end of the hearing, the entire group gathers in a large circle, and each person offers the one question he or she will take away from this debate. No one offers answers to the questions, which include: How diverse is my own religious experience? Can we make judgment a positive thing? Can people of different beliefs be in the same heaven? What do we value most?

Welcome to an evening with Cornerstone Theater, a Los Angeles-based performing company that

has been using theater as a tool for community-building for the past 16 years. The "hearing" they have staged on this recent Friday evening is pure fiction. But it is also a means to an end: honest dialogue.

Cornerstone members have performed this play at several venues around the city over the past several weeks. Cast members playing roles mingle with the audience, using the play's device of a "public hearing" as a means to spark impromptu conversations and discussions among the people who've come to see the play.

Part of a festival of faith-based productions that has been in the works for three years, "Zones" has unexpectedly taken on an added urgency in the nation's post-Sept. 11 environment.

Civic activism - will it last?

"Among the communities I've been working with, I really do feel more of a hunger, not only to make connections, but to assert those connections publicly," says Bill Rauch, the group's artistic director.

"When you ask about the impact of world events on the work we do, in terms of hope for building bridges, bridges that last," he says, "that's on our minds every single minute here at Cornerstone."

Mr. Rauch and his colleagues are not alone. All across the country, grass-roots activists, community leaders, and cultural observers are grappling with the remarkable aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks - a surging desire for connectedness and a willingness, not seen in this country for decades, to engage in civic life.

It's a change in attitude, say these activists and experts, that holds powerful possibilities for community-building and social change.

But at the same time, they warn, this sea change of sentiment could simply fade into memory if nothing is done to harness it and put it to work at both the grass-roots and national levels.

"This is where we have the opportunity to shore up civil society," says the Rev. Robert Franklin, president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. "We've demonstrated [since Sept. 11] that we can work together, that we can collaborate. Groups that didn't know each other in the past are now going to regard each other as colleagues, if not friends.

"But how do we create sustainable programs of activity that can rebuild our civil society?" he asks.

Experts note that some national programs are already in place, which can provide institutional outlets for individuals who want to pitch in. They also welcome signs of leadership at the national level, such as President Bush's proposal that American children raise money for Afghan children and his speech calling on Americans to get involved in their communities.

Some observers say they wish the president would do even more to focus attention on community-building. But they also are quick to point out that some of the most effective change will happen at the grass-roots level, as individuals take greater responsibility for building bridges in their own neighborhoods and towns.

"We have to turn [these feelings] into habits of the heart," says Amitai Etzioni, author of "The Spirit of Community" and director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University. "I think people should look in the mirror. Once we can [say], 'I did the best I can,' then we can start pointing the finger at other people."

Metropolis St. Louis is one of many grass-roots groups around the country whose members are looking in that mirror. Started in 1997 as a way to attract and retain young professionals in the city of St. Louis, the organization now includes more than 1,000 members of all ages who engage in a variety of social and civic activities, from park cleanups to tutoring.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, says president Melanie Adams, more people have been calling Metropolis to find out what they can do to work on community issues. Metropolis members are considering a number of projects that involve closer collaboration with other community groups, including setting up an old-fashioned "welcome wagon" neighborhood service, and trying to develop policies for improving public schools.

Committing for the long term

"I think we have a great opportunity," says Ms. Adams. "Because people are starting to look back to community, and they're realizing the importance of knowing [their] neighbors. Everyone is asking, 'What are the ways to keep this community feeling going?' "

Experts say that historically, events such as floods or earthquakes always trigger a sharp increase in civic-mindedness and increased benevolence. But as tragedy recedes, they say, those feelings ebb, too.

Even in Oklahoma City, where citizens were drawn together in the wake of the bombing of the federal building, divisiveness has begun to creep back into civic affairs, according to Thomas Sander, executive director of the Saguaro Project. The project, based at Harvard University, focuses on developing tools and strategies for civic re-engagement.

"Obviously, we hope that this [current] civic spike is a long-term trend rather than a short-term trend," says Mr. Sander. "But the key determinant to that is going to be whether Americans start changing their daily practices based on their changed world views.

"More Americans now are reexamining their lives, everything from what's safe to what gives their lives meaning," he says. "But the data we have from most of these disasters show that unless people put in place real changes to their lives, such as volunteering on a daily basis, or mentoring a child, then this civic spike is unlikely to persist."

Sander suggests that one way to encourage more civic involvement would be for every nonprofit organization in the country to create a "9/11" position. Individuals looking for a way to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks could serve as volunteers in those 9/11 positions, or could donate money to underwrite the cost of hiring someone to fill the job. He's hopeful that the Internet can play an important role in spreading news about which grass-roots efforts are working where.

"My hope is that we can find things that can be repeated," he says. "This is an important period of exploration for Americans who are involved, to share what kinds of approaches seem to be working, so that other Americans can try the same thing."

At least one organization has already begun spotlighting community activists and their work. Under an awards program announced just prior to the September tragedies, the Ford Foundation has singled out 20 grass-roots leaders from some 3,000 nominees, among them Bill Rauch of Cornerstone Theater.

"Leadership for a Changing World," as the program is called, includes financial support for the awardees and is intended to focus attention on their work.

Finding effective solutions

"There was a feeling out there that there really are no solutions to the problems we face," says Melvin Oliver of the Ford Foundation. The leadership program, which was developed over the past four years, is meant "to antidote that view. We know from our continuous work throughout the world that there are amazing people and organizations out there who are tackling these problems in an effective way," he says.

"We need to understand how they do it, what kind of qualities they bring to it. We need to make them models for people to aspire to, so that we can have generations of those leaders to come."

Still other experts say they hope the nation's current mood of goodwill - and the disappearance, at least for now, of "hyphenated" Americans - can help lead to a renewed national dialogue on larger community issues such as race relations.

"It's one of those rare moments in history when things are molten enough that a learning curve can get started," says Jim Sleeper, a newspaper columnist and author of "Liberal Racism."

Even before the terrorist attacks, he notes, the country's cultural conversation was changing, as more and more experts and critics began to explore how to broaden the dialogue beyond ethnocentric concerns and racial grievances.

"It's not that those things don't count," says Mr. Sleeper, a liberal who has criticized the left's obsession with multiculturalism. "It's just figuring out that other things count, too. Some of us think we have to work overtime on identifying a few of our common bonds, on what keeps things going."

What happened on Sept.11, he says, "scrambled the categories, the lenses through which many of us have been accustomed to viewing these things. It forces people to go inside and say, 'What do we really stand for?' "

Mr. Franklin, of the Interdenominational Theological Center, agrees. "We've discovered a common ground, which is the basis for dropping the hyphen," he says. "The new terms of conversation are community and citizenship and character."

But he says there's no guarantee that lasting change will result from recent events and the emotions they have triggered in Americans. That kind of change takes long-term commitment.

"I'm hoping it's not just a blip," says Melanie Adams of Metropolis St. Louis. "I'm hoping that even if the whole thing is solved tomorrow, that people will still realize the importance of [being involved with] their communities and their neighborhoods.

"I hope people see the benefits of that," she says, "of how it makes a better community for everyone."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

November 17, 2001, Los Angeles Times. "Goodwill Permeates Festival of Faith"
Read it here or at http://www.latimes.com

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, November 17, 2001

Goodwill Permeates Festival of Faith

By DON SHIRLEY, Times Theater Writer

It wasn't a typical opening night for Cornerstone Theater's Festival of Faith, now playing at New Horizon School in Pasadena. Theatergoers had to show photo IDs before entering the venue. The box-office attendant carefully noted driver's license numbers.

Thursday's performance was taking place at an Islamic school. And after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, new precautions were in order--especially since many New Horizon students were taking part in some of the five plays that made up this final installment of Cornerstone's multi-venue festival dedicated to examining the relationships among religious faiths in theatrical terms.

However, any apprehensions that lingered as the audience gathered dissipated once the performance began. The evening proved to be an island of peace and goodwill.

Gathering in an outdoor lunch area, the audience--numbering about 120--was greeted by the sight of more than 20 New Horizon children dressed as birds. Wearing feathers, beaks and colorful makeup, they twittered around the playground. The students were part of "They Simply Said Enter," a play based on a Sufi story that tied together the evening's other four plays.

Two other plays were also child-oriented. "The Green Parrots Speak" featured a cast of three girls as soccer players who discuss aspects of Ramadan and Muslim dress, plus two unseen adults who voice the roles of parrots in a massive tree overlooking the playground.

After "Green Parrots," the audience broke into small discussion groups of two or three each. In one group, a self-identified "soccer mom" (who declined to be identified by name) said she thinks it is important for soccer teams to keep playing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, despite the required fasting. But her sister, Mashael Almoammar, disagreed, saying that she stops going to the gym during Ramadan, which starts today.

"Note From the Bottom of a Well," a monologue presented in a classroom, also focused on children, with Ferdinand Lewis playing an elementary school teacher in a Christian town. One of the character's students is a pen pal of a Muslim child in the Middle East.

After that play, the audience assembled in an auditorium to see somewhat more adult-oriented material: a short film, "Glimpses," whose characters also appeared in person at the sides of the screen; and "The Swami and the Sisters," based on the Hindu Swami Vivekananda's visit to South Pasadena a century ago. The children then returned in full force for the concluding portion of "They Simply Said Enter."

Perhaps because it was the first of five performances, the majority of the audience consisted of parents or friends of the performers and school staff. However, at a reception after the show, kindergarten teacher Roxanne Camus said she had heard members of the school community speaking with other theatergoers about the significance of their respective faiths.

Sammy Abdelal, a parent, said he hopes the performances will "get people to know each other instead of staying behind their doors."

Amira Al-Sarraf, director of the middle school, said the event is "a glimpse of each other--not a heavy-duty, long-term dialogue. It doesn't serve to explain the religion. It just joins people in an understanding of faith and opens the window for us to see faith in other people's lives."

Added Sheila Abdulmalik, director of the lower school: "We were very excited to expand the horizons of New Horizon."

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

 

October 4, 2001, Backstage West. "In Your Faith"
Provided courtesy of Backstage West

Backstage West
October 4, 2001

In Your Faith

Cornerstone Theater Company turns its talents to the subject of religion--precisely at time when interfaith dialogue seems most loaded.
by Scott Proudfit

As artistic director Bill Rauch admitted, the cornerstone of Cornerstone Theater Company's work for the past 16 years has been faith-perhaps not in the most common religious sense of the word, but faith nonetheless. "Why should any community trust a group of artists to come in and make work about it, and why should a group of artists trust that a community is going to be open to it coming in? It's a leap of faith," said Rauch.

Traditionally, Cornerstone is a theatre known for its clever and caring productions of adapted classics, which combine members of a particular community and professional actors from the theatre's ensemble. Facing one faith hurdle after another, the group in its "rural years" leap-frogged across the U.S., mining theatrical gold out of such small towns as Norcatur, Kansas, and Eastport, Maine. Since 1992, Cornerstone has made its home in the diverse and divergent neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where it has bridged the streets and cultural enclaves of our multinational, multi-centered metropolis with such collaborations as The Central Ave. Chalk Circle and Candude, and reflected its own take on L.A. and the world at large in such ensemble-only creations as Everyman at the Mall and California Seagull.

Yet, as early as its second production - The Marmarth Hamlet in Marmarth, North Dakota, in 1986 - Cornerstone members were confronted with another defining aspect of community, outside of geography, race, ethnicity, and class, with which they had to grapple: religion. Midway through the production, members of the Marmarth community brought up concerns that the script was blasphemous in the way that a character called out to God. The show went on but the seeds had been planted for what has grown into Cornerstone's three-year faith-based cycle, beginning this fall.

In the same way that Cornerstone in the past has worked with residents of Beverly Hills, Baldwin Hills, and Boyle Heights, as well as employees of the U.S. Postal Service and the Bus Riders Union, so now will the group explore creating theatre within L.A.'s communities of faith and religion. In some ways, the preface to this three-year commitment was actually this past holiday season's For Here or To Go at the Mark Taper Forum, a show that celebrated diverse traditions, from Kwanzaa to Christmas. The production depended on the conceit of "fake" audience interaction. As scripted, planted actors in the audience interrupted the show in progress to adjust the plot and contribute their two cents. While planned, these seemingly spontaneous bursts of audience input were another example of Cornerstone's ongoing interest in examining the role of the public in their productions, an interest that accounts for the very genesis of this organization.

"I think the founding impulse of the company really had to do with audience," said Rauch of the early years of the group, a company that then primarily consisted of Harvard undergrads considering a future in regional theatre. "We could imagine doing work that excited us for the same folks who already went to the theatre--a relatively narrow segment of the population--and then waking up 30 or 40 years later, even having been blessed with success, and saying, 'Wait a minute. We didn't do any work for and with the vast majority of our fellow citizens.' " This impulse led to Cornerstone's trek throughout the nation in the late '80s. It is also at the center of Zones, the first official show of Cornerstone's upcoming Festival of Faith (Oct. 18-Nov. 18), the celebration that begins the group's three-year faith-based project.

Hybrid Species
Rauch, who directs the ensemble production Zones, invited Back Stage West to sit in on rehearsals of this unique piece. Described as a "model process" of how Cornerstone works, the five weeks spent with the cast and crew proved an enlightening view of business as usual at the theatre as well as a glimpse of new and different challenges to come.

Zones takes Cornerstone's audience consideration to a new level. Conceived as a kind of hybrid of theatre and facilitation by playwright and company member Peter Howard, the show moves between traditional theatre convention in which the audience is invited to sit and watch the actors at play, and dialogue exercises in which audience members are expected to share their thoughts and feelings on the subject at hand-namely, religious diversity and tolerance in the U.S. The setting for the show, which will be performed in churches, synagogues, and temples throughout L.A., is a zoning administration public hearing, in which the case is being made for and against allowing a relatively obscure faith to build a residence and place of worship nearby. Judith Tetley-Stone, the hip, open-minded administrator in charge of the proceedings (played by the delightful Amy Hill), takes the temperature of, and gathers opinions from, her attendees through a series of unexpected participatory exercises that gradually increase in their level of commitment as the evening proceeds.

Howard, a longtime member of Cornerstone as well as a staff member at NCCJ (the National Conference for Community and Justice), a group that specializes in interfaith dialogue, has worked on hybrid theatre pieces like Zones before-but never quite like this.

"The experience of For Here or To Go exemplified that we at Cornerstone have a continuing interest in playing creatively with audience relationship, with theatrical realities, and that we find a certain amount of joy exploring that purely artistically," said Howard. "But we became very interested in the extra challenges that might happen if we attempted to mix up that dynamic a little bit-to find out what would happen if real audience response was allowed on some level as the piece was unfolding. And really what it comes down to is experimenting with giving up a certain amount of control, with giving up a certain amount of power."

For NCCJ (formerly known as the National Conference of Christians and Jews), Howard wrote three solo shows, which are currently touring California high schools under the umbrella title "Interactions." These shows operate as conversation starters, setting up carefully crafted post-show dialogues led by professional facilitators from NCCJ's staff. Zones, on the other hand, calls for audience dialogue within the run of the show-a scarier proposition.

Trying to marry facilitation and theatre was the root challenge for Howard as the writer, but it also became the primary concern of the director and cast as rehearsals progressed.

Balancing Act
From initial production meetings about promotional materials to rehearsals a week before previews, the conversation at Cornerstone time and again has revolved around balance. Audience members were tricked into the participatory For Here or To Go. They showed up unaware that planted audience members would be piping up during the action. The initial stirrings of the plants often led to slow-on-the-uptake audience members shushing the actors as they stood up from their seats and called out to the players onstage.

This kind of sleight of hand, however, wouldn't be conducive to a production like Zones, which asks for often intimate sharing of backgrounds and beliefs from its participants. So Cornerstone has tried to be very upfront about what the Zones audience should expect. In press releases the show is described as "part play, part community conversation-a participatory theatre experience that invites audiences to share their thoughts and experiences."

"A given of any dialogue process is willing participants," said Howard. "People gather in order to speak and listen in a way that might be extraordinary or at least unusual in the course of day-to-day life. The beginnings of any NCCJ dialogue process are very much about agreeing what we're here for, talking about creating guidelines for communication and for the boundaries for the conversation that we're about to engage in-and that takes time and requires patience. While in the facilitation process we might be more careful about upfront clarity and making sure that no one is in the dark at any moment, in a theatrical process a certain amount of the energy of the piece comes from the suspense of not knowing what comes next. The balance of exposition vs. people feeling way ahead of us is again a theatrical thing that doesn't really enter into a dialogue process."

Drama is conflict, and while dialogue exercises allow for conflict, it is certainly not their goal. Balancing drama with dialogue, for Howard and Rauch, began with them being fair to all the characters involved. Throughout the rehearsal process, the question arose: How to create dramatic conflict without creating villains and heroes? After all, any given character would be espousing the views of at least some of the audience members, and to paint him or her black would stifle any responses from like-minded attendees in subsequent exercises.

The central discord in Zones is between a Christian mother (Barbara Roberts) and her daughter (Diana Elizabeth Jordan), who has left the faith she was raised in to become a follower of the tradition that is applying for permission from the zoning board to build. Issues of belief and betrayal divide this family, whose conflict is often exacerbated by the presence of the mother's pastor at the meeting. Meanwhile, throughout the play the petitioning church's representative, more of a straight-shooting lawyer-type than a believer of any sort, grapples with administrator Tetley-Stone's dialogue-based agenda and pushes for more combative, no-nonsense arguments to clear the air. This leads to rows between Tetley-Stone and the rep over proper methods and the best way to cull opinions from a crowd. Thrown into this mix is a crusty old maintenance man with a secret past (Donald Bishop), who's in charge of the meeting's A/V needs--and who ends up playing an important role in the emerging faith of the daughter.

Embracing Change
In this complex scenario, the most likely candidate for villain would have been the Pastor. As the representative voice of the establishment-the Christian majority--the Pastor might seem a stumbling block in Tetley-Stone's process, which focuses on open dialogue and tolerance of other ideas. However, from the first, Howard and Rauch were determined for this not to be so. The role originally went to company member Armando Molina, a wry, soft-spoken actor who excels at certain enlightened but down-to-earth characters in Cornerstone's repertoire. Molina's laidback, comfortable persona was the obvious choice in terms of defusing a potentially explosive character.

Yet a week into the show, Shishir Kurup, who was playing Byron, the church's contentious-and atheist-legal representative, approached Rauch with the idea that he and Molina switch roles. Kurup, who brings a certain electric intensity and smart-ass humor to a number of his turns at Cornerstone, knew that the switch would be a stretch for him and his fellow actor-the very reason he proposed it. And the fact that Rauch-after confirming Molina's interest-accepted the role change gets to the heart of what makes Cornerstone unique.

In terms of process, Cornerstone has been led as much by its interaction with its audiences as it has by its commitment to democracy in the creative process. Taking into consideration the casting desires of his actors seems to be the norm for Rauch as opposed to an exception to the rule. This is not to say that Rauch is wishy-washy or a weak leader, by any means. On the contrary, he is a kind of philosopher-king in rehearsals. Frequently, in the production team circle, Rauch will allow everyone to give their opinion of whatever decision is at hand. It's a bracing and unique openness that nevertheless typically ends in Rauch considering everyone's input but ultimately making the decision himself. Likewise, despite his love of everyone having their say, Rauch is a stickler for schedules-respectful of the time people are committing to his projects-and has no problem with cutting off the brainstorming if it goes on too long.

Beyond the standard for democracy that Rauch continues to set at Cornerstone, his re-casting decision also showed that in terms of artistic vision he was willing to deal with the Pastor in all his complexity. Being fair to the character didn't mean softening him. By allowing the more in-your-face Kurup to take on the character, Rauch set up a tougher path for himself in rehearsals-opening the way for a character that was more prickly, more real, and more of a challenge to represent fairly. At the same time, Molina was instantly able to bring a certain harried sympathy to the rep, again putting an interesting wrinkle in a character that might have seemed more easily dismissible in the earlier casting.

Circular Logic
Originally, Howard conceived the ending of Zones as some sort of ritual to be performed by the audience and cast together. However, he later realized that getting everyone together in a circle for a discussion at the play's conclusion was a ritual of sorts in itself, one which is very closely tied to Cornerstone's process. Said Rauch, "The play starts as a meeting space and ends with everybody in a circle. In makes sense in terms of the weight that circles have for Cornerstone. In reality, it's in circles that our company meetings, ensemble meetings, our first read-throughs happen, but the circle is also a metaphor. It's on our logo, on our letterhead. In Zones, it's about the journey from listening to the experts in rows to being in a circle together."

The need for this final circle also meant flexible seating. Initially, Cornerstone had considered performing Zones in actual sanctuaries and sacred spaces at various venues. They soon realized that a church social hall or temple's community meeting space would better serve them.

The democracy implied by a circle of artists is at the center of Rauch's work as a director. At one particularly difficult rehearsal, when actors were struggling to realize a certain emotional moment, Rauch whispered to me: "Directing is learning when to shut up." Indeed, in the rehearsal process, he strikes a healthy balance (that word again) between hands-off and hands-on steering of the group. He'll always wait for an actor's idea on a piece of blocking before offering his own. At the same time, Rauch is very respectful of every word of the text and adamant that the cast doesn't paraphrase without permission. In fact, he's one if the few directors around who seems to know every line of the script, and often cues his actors when they stumble. Stage manager Bridget Kirkpatrick need hardly be on book when Rauch is in the room.

In developing works, Cornerstone depends on the input of the communities with which it is working as much as the artists involved. Rauch considers the community partner of this play to be anyone with a faith viewpoint-which includes everyone in the cast, whose backgrounds range from a Methodist Bishop's daughter to a lapsed Hindu. All of the cast members' particular faith viewpoints were revealed and discussed during a facilitation seminar that the group, along with Rauch and Howard, attended, led by Cornerstone collaborator and NCCJ facilitator Dani Bedau.

The reason Rauch insisted that the cast participate in this seminar was both practical and philosophical. Through the course of the play, three different characters act as facilitators for the audience, leading them through such exercises as Stand Up/Sit Down, in which audience members do just that depending on whether they agree or disagree with a statement, and the Wagon Wheel, in which pairs of audience members briefly share their religious backgrounds. However, on a more spiritual level, Rauch also felt it was important that the cast didn't ask anything of its audience that it wasn't willing to do itself. After all, in the show the cast gets to respond in character, not as themselves, when sharing in the dialogue sections-not fair, perhaps, but necessary to the unity of the piece.

In rehearsal, it often became a point of discussion how expert each character should be at running his or her particular exercise. After all, some were supposedly very comfortable leading these dialogues, while for others it was their first time. This was a key example in which theatre and facilitation had to be balanced. Molina, as the rep, wouldn't be as efficient a leader as Hill's Tetley-Stone, and yet if he were completely incompetent the audience would get uncomfortable and would be less willing to participate.

Said Howard, "I think a lot of the creation of the piece has been about finding out how to, within the contrivances of this play, make the dialogue exercises feel as organic and emotionally logical and connected to character as possible--crafting the shape of the facilitation and crafting the play around that. But also always keeping them side by side and trying not to subordinate one to the other. It's also an aesthetic experiment as to whether the exercises can illuminate character while also illuminating each other in our experience as audience members."

Pastor Problem
The development of Howard's Zones script often came through the actors' character interpretations and especially through early improvs based on Howard's and Rauch's suggestions. At the time of casting, there was no actual script-merely a seven-page outline that, remarkably, nevertheless follows very closely the events of the later fully realized product. Input into the ever-changing text has also come from two run-throughs of the show in which an invited audience participated and critiqued the work afterwards. Fielding this wide-ranging response had led to a surprisingly fun and profound script, in which the characters' voices are truly distinct and the playwright's point of view is refreshingly barely discernable.

Of course no amount of opinion and expertise within or outside the group could easily answer certain tough questions that Rauch and Howard continue to grapple with into previews week, such as the aforementioned problem of the Pastor. Initially, the idea was to have a sort of Caucasian Chalk Circle moment near the end of the play, in which the mother was asked to choose between her faith--represented by the Pastor--and her daughter. Torn between the two, she chose neither. It worked as drama, but it was unfair within the context of facilitation. The Pastor seemed heartlessly to be asking the mother to make a terrible decision. Moreover, invited audience members admitted that no one actually thought the mother would not choose her daughter in the set-up.

Director and playwright therefore decided that the Pastor should leave the meeting, and release the mother from making the decision. But having the Pastor not take place in the final circle seemed counterpoint to the entire process of the play. How can true dialogue exclude anyone?

Watching Rauch, Howard, Kurup, and the others wrestle with the Pastor's position was fascinating in the way that it clearly demonstrated how character and theme develop in an emerging work. Staying true to the character in the dramatic sense might indeed mean that the Pastor would leave and not come back. But thematically it was inconsistent to the work. Perhaps the character needed to change to make the choice of staying logical. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, a balance was struck. The Pastor leaves, but comes back. All the wrinkles haven't been ironed out yet, but that's what this week's previews are for.

As Howard noted, "Creating a character who compassionately articulates some of the boundaries that his beliefs involve continues to be a challenge of the piece. By having a spokesman for Christianity onstage, does that imply that he speaks for all Christians? I don't know. That's a wave that we're going to have to continue to ride."

After the Fall
The metaphor of inviting the Pastor back into the meeting speaks volumes about the work at Cornerstone Theater Company, historically and in the future. While American theatre in recent years has contented itself with catering to an ever-shrinking, more specific audience, Cornerstone has reached out to vast, untapped resources. Instead of defining their audience, the members of the company have allowed themselves to be defined. Thus the circle of Cornerstone widens every year.

It's interesting to note that the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11 happened while the cast was on a one-week break, a time Howard was using to re-tool the script. What was amazing about the script he brought back to the group after the break was how little it had changed.

"I guess I wasn't feeling that more direct response in the context of this piece would necessarily serve anyone," said Howard. "I felt hitting things on the nose and highlighting and bold-facing and underlining was not necessarily conducive to free association. It would be hard for the play to more directly address the events of Sept. 11 than perhaps it already does. Given the fact that the audience is a creative partner in this piece, who knows where those responses will go? But a piece that is about religious difference and about limits of tolerance and acceptance--the parallels are there."

Many theatre makers, in the wake of recent events, are considering how to address a changed audience, how to make important work when everything seems trivial. For Cornerstone, in many ways it's been business as usual, because their usual business is about really digging into the complexities of human ignorance, belief, distrust, and spirit. It's hard to imagine a time in U.S. history when the political and the personal have been so charged and weighty in their interaction. How L.A. theatre will reflect this atmosphere remains to be seen.

One thing is clear: If any theatre company has the chance to do it fairly, I have faith that Cornerstone will be the one-and Zones is the beginning.

"Zones" will be presented in previews Oct. 5-7 at Westwood United Methodist Church; Oct. 11 at the University of Judaism in Bel Air, and Oct. 12 at the Vedanta Society in Hollywood. The show runs Oct. 13 at the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights; Oct. 14 at St. Philomena Church in Carson; Oct. 21 at the Los Angeles' Baha'i Center in Baldwin Hills; Oct. 28 at Faith United Methodist Church in South Central; Nov. 1 at the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles; Nov. 3 at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, and Nov. 9 at New Horizon School in Pasadena. All performances are pay what you can. www.cornerstonetheater.org. (213) 613-1740. For more information on Cornerstone's Festival of Faith, consult the above website or look for an article in our Oct. 18 issue.