All art is community-based. Whether it’s a multi-million-dollar commercial venture or a neighborhood youth project, all art is rooted in community. So how as artists do we take responsibility for the ways in which our work is connected to our communities? Consciously or not, we are constantly addressing three questions with our artistic work: What’s being communicated? Who’s doing the communicating? To whom is it being communicated? Different artists begin to answer these questions in a different order. At Cornerstone Theater Company, for instance, we always start with the audience or the “to whom” (our collaborating community); from there, we build who’s doing the communicating (selecting the artists), and finally, what’s being communicated (artistic content). But whatever the order in which they are approached, artists ultimately have to answer all three questions.

But let’s back up for a moment and define community. Or rather, let’s acknowledge that the first step in building a work of art in collaboration with a community is to define that community. As individuals, our identities are almost infinitely complex and fluid, and at any given moment we may choose to self-identify with communities different from the ones with which others identify us. And yet, an artist defining a community is starting with the notion of something shared by a group of people: perhaps the geographic boundaries of a town or neighborhood, perhaps a shared ethnicity or language, or perhaps even something as deliberately random as a shared birthday.

The impetus behind a project may come from a member of the community or from an outside artist, or from an individual who is both a professional artist and a community member. Wherever the initial idea comes from, however, the project will have the best chances of success through the building of strong partnerships. All communities have cohesion but also divisions. The artist’s job is often to reach out to multiple constituencies, to collaborate with as many sectors of the community as possible.

Respect is the single most important principle in creating a work of art in collaboration with a community. A professional artist working in a community setting brings a valuable set of art-making skills and past experience as an art-maker. A community participant brings to the table the equally valuable asset of life experience as a member of that community. For the project to flourish, the artist must recognize the value of what the community offers, respecting the needs, issues, and traditions of the community as embodied in its members.

Respect is best manifested through listening: not mere politely-nodding listening, but hardcore, deep, “I’m willing to rethink my entire way of looking at the world” listening. As you listen, remember that each encounter with a member of your collaborating community, however unlikely a collaborator on the surface, may carry the key that unlocks the heart of your artwork—and often, in the process, changes your life.

A few questions and practical steps in building a work of art with a community:

Why does the project need to exist? Is there a burning community issue or need? Who are the stakeholders in the question at hand? What are the multiple contexts, including the historical context? Keep your process open enough to be surprised and to reverse the expectations you start with.

Identify a community liaison or, better yet, a group of community advisors that represent the diversity within the community you want represented in your project. Meet with them on a regular basis, keeping them informed, and seeking their input at every stage of the project’s life. Seek unlikely alliances.

Meet with members of the community to learn what’s at stake for community members, and ultimately to develop the content of your artwork. Judith Baca of Social & Public Art Resource Center in Venice, California, has a useful principle in her community-based mural-making: the community has final responsibility for content, while the artist has final responsibility for the aesthetic form in which that content is communicated. One-on-one interviews, story circles, and workshops are possible ways to interact. Set clear guidelines and boundaries about ownership of material that is generated so that no one feels taken advantage of.

Spend as much time in the community as you possibly can, not only through formal meetings for your project, but also informally. Walk the streets, attend religious services, eat in the restaurants. Go where people gather, share, and listen. Food is a great way to bring people together.

If you are creating with members of the community who are nonprofessional or first-time artists, recognize and respect the many pressures that your collaborators will be balancing along with their participation in your art, including school, work, and family. Time management is often the single biggest challenge in working with community collaborators.

Seek partnerships with other artists or groups of artists, when appropriate. A cross-disciplinary approach may deepen your efforts.

Share the work with an audience that is community-based. Don’t “create and run.” Once the artwork is created, what will be left behind? Are there skills that can be imparted through the process? What about capacity-building, materials, or other resources? How can you maximize the chances that more art will be created in this community?

Perhaps you see divisions within a community and want to help build bridges across those differences. Perhaps you want to celebrate the lives of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you want to challenge certain accepted values. Perhaps you simply want to start with a blank canvas and begin to explore from scratch with a group of fellow human beings. Whatever your starting point, community collaboration is a journey that will take you to unexpected and deeply rewarding places. In my experience, it is always hard and always worth it. As artists, we have the ongoing opportunity to set an example about how to remake the world. Let’s get to work.

Bibliography

Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. Trans. Charles A. and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985.
General theory/practice of theater that resists social dominance. Related, but not necessarily exclusive to, community-based arts.

Broyles-Gonzalez, Yvonne. El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Though somewhat academic and focused on a particular company, Broyles-Gonzalez’s book is a useful history of this important ensemble movement.

Burnham, Linda Frye and Steven Durland, eds. Citizen Artist: Twenty Years of Art in the Public Arena. Gardiner, NY: Critical Press, 1998.
This collection of essays and interviews addresses a wide range of topics relating to public art projects. “Of the People, By the People, For the People: The Field of Community Performance” by Richard Owen Geer is an especially useful introduction.

Cocke, Dudley, Harry Newman, and Janet Salmons-Rue, eds. From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1993. Excellent summary of conference focusing on community-based theater.

Cohen-Cruz, Jan. “A Hyphenated Field: Community-Based Theater in the USA.” New Theatre Quarterly 16.4 (2000): 364-378.
A recent, concise overview.

Cohen-Cruz, Jan, ed. Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology. New York: Routledge, 1998.
An extensive array of writings by scholars, activists, performers, directors, critics, and journalists on performance in Europe, Africa, China, India, and both the Americas, describing engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment, and homophobia, to name a few.

Kershaw, Baz. Politics of Performance: Radical Theater as Cultural Intervention. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Kershaw theorizes the social-change potential of radical community-based theater in England in the latter half of the 20th century.

Kuftinec, Sonja. Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003.
Includes excellent historical background on community-based theater, along with Cornerstone Theatre case studies and theory around the field in general.

Lacy, Suzanne. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Washington: Bay Press, 1996.
This book is more about public art in general than theater. It deals with the role of the critic and the history of public art practice in the late 20th-century United States.

O’Brien, Mark and Craig Little, eds. Reimagining America: The Arts of Social Change. Santa Cruz: New Society Publishers, 1990.
Includes a broad range of social-based art forms, including community theater.

Rohd, Michael. Theatre for Community, Conflict and Dialogue. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Press, 1998.
The purpose of this manual is to provide a clear look at the process and specifics involved in the “Hope Is Vital” interactive theater techniques. The organization is sequential, providing a blueprint for creating a workable plan.

Bill Rauch is artistic director and co-founder of Cornerstone Theater Company. He has directed over 40 of the company’s productions, many of them collaborations with diverse communities within Cornerstone’s home city of Los Angeles and across the nation. Representative works include Steelbound, a collaboration with former steelworkers and Touchstone Theatre in the empty iron foundry of the Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, PA; The Central Ave. Chalk Circle, the culmination of a 15-month residency in the LA neighborhood of Watts and winner of LA’s Ovation Award for Best Production of the Year; and A Community Carol, an Arena Stage mainstage production in collaboration with communities east of the Anacostia River. Rauch has also directed Anthony Clarvoe’s contemporary adaptation of The Wild Duck and Alison Carey’s adaptation of Peter Pan at Great Lakes Theatre Festival, a commissioned community collaboration with residents of New Haven on the Long Wharf Theatre mainstage. He directed Cornerstone’s largest-ever community collaboration, For Here or to Go?, as a special holiday event on the mainstage of the Mark Taper Forum. In recent years, Rauch directed the world premiere of Lisa Loomer’s Living Out at the Taper, Robert Schenkkan’s Handler, and the world premiere of Jerry Turner’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He also conceived and co-directed Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, the season-opening show of new artistic director James Bundy’s tenure at Yale Repertory Theater.

Rauch sat on the board of Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for professional nonprofit theatres, from 1992—1998 (member of executive committee, 1996—98), and has served as a peer panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission, The Durfee Foundation, the Very Special Arts “Art & Soul” Festival, and the Playwrights Center.

Rauch gave the keynote address at Theatre Puget Sound’s inaugural conference. In April of 1999, he testified to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the NEA. In 1994, he was one of four US-based artists chosen for the TCG International Observership Grant to Mexico. Rauch has lectured extensively about community-based art and Cornerstone's methodology, and most recently taught a course in directing at the University of California at Los Angeles. Rauch has won L.A. Weekly, Garland, Drama-Logue, and Helen Hayes awards for his direction of Cornerstone shows, as well as having been nominated for Emmy and Ovation awards. He has been nominated for both the CalArts Herb Alpert Award (twice) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Network, and was the only artist to win the inaugural Leadership for A Changing World Award.