Letters, Etc.: Touchstone--How Radical Is Radical?

"Welded to the Ladle: Steelbound and Non-Radicality in Community-Based Theatre" by Sara Brady (TDR 44, 3 [T167] Fall 2000) evoked a bunch of responses from those participating in the 1999 production in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. We are publishing a selection from those responses--and Brady's answer to those who are protesting what she wrote. What surprises me is the intensity and coordinated quality of the responses. I am glad that something in TDR has stirred the pot a bit. And I would like to see more vigorous debate in our Letters section.

--Richard Schechner

To the Editor:

In "Welded to the Ladle" (TDR 44, 3:51-74) Sara Brady says that Steelbound was an opiate, passive and non-radical--that the community we created/gathered was contrived and that nothing was changed. Other Steelbound collaborators untangle Brady's arguments below and document for TDR the true rationale and impulses behind the process of making Steelbound. (Brady's poor fact checking should be an embarrassment to TDR and is quite puzzling coming from someone who participated in Steelbound "on several levels" and had "a six-year relationship with Touchstone" [52].)

For myself I'd like to relay a little story about a former steelworker/Steelbound cast member who, since the play, now volunteers regularly at Touchstone, trains with our apprentices and auditions for other local community theatres. As Brady points out: Steelbound did not get him his job back nor did it aggressively demand an apology from the execs who shut down his job. That's not what he was looking for, but Brady would have us believe otherwise. He told me just yesterday: "You people lit a fire in me. All my life I had these thoughts, these ideas, and I didn't know where to put them. Nobody would listen. You'll never get rid of me now." What we did was make a commitment to believing in and nurturing his creative ability. We cherished it. That was a radical experience for him, but that seems incomprehensible to Brady. She would de-value as sentimental his new enthusiasm to express himself--to create in a new way. The artists of the Steel Festival helped hundreds of people tap back into what I can only describe as an awe for and need to be a part of creation. Would Brady call that radical? Along with many of the Steel Festival artists, I would call it essential.

--Mark McKenna
Artistic Director and
Ensemble Member, Touchstone Theatre

To the Editor:

It is sad to see such a remarkable achievement as Touchstone's Steelbound find its sole representation in intellectual theatrical circles as reflected through the narrow prism of Sara Brady's twisted dialectic. [...]

The cast of Steelbound was comprised of over 60 folks from all walks of life, race, class. The event had an electric and deeply profound influence on the people in it and those who experienced it that their understanding of what theatre is, what the Steel was, and who "we" are as a community will never be the same. This is a fact.

Knowing it to be a fact, it is difficult to allow Sara's intelligent but strangely confused account of affairs to stand in public unchallenged. To state my understanding of Sara's argument in her article, she maintains that Steelbound refrained from "radicality" in order to curry favor with those in power--Bethlehem Steel. As a result of this, no, little, or not enough change took place in the community. In other words, we who were creating Steelbound copped out. Sara argues that she does not believe attempting to bring together opposing groups in a unified expression of their shared history can be a liberating experience. Those with the money and power invariably protect themselves from the painful truth. She states flatly: "I don't buy it" (67). It's difficult...