Using Arts to Bind the Community (cont'd)

Off-off-Broadway
Among those tied to his community is Dudley Cocke, who for more than 20 years has directed the Roadside Theatre in the Appalachian town of Whitesburg, Kentucky. Now working with rural communities nationwide, the theater stages plays that draw from the lives and oral histories of local people. The purpose, says Mr. Cocke, is to help communities "find and amplify their own voices." The result, he says, is that "local life starts to become aware of itself, which is very different from what people get from mass media, which always takes you somewhere else and says the grass is greener."

Cocke says the theater's work has drawn interest from groups as disparate as the U.S. Forest Service, which is interested in the way the plays can help promote conservation, to rural development planners, who see the work in schools fostering regional pride among youths.

"The content and form of art doesn't come from Mars," says Cocke. "It's about a whole set of values, including participation, which seems to me to be a real worthwhile democratic value."

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