Theatre Topics

Kuftinec, Sonja, 1966-
A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre
Theatre Topics - Volume 6, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 91-104

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Sonja Kuftinec - A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre - Theatre Topics 6:1 Theatre Topics 6.1 (1996) 91-104 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...