Telling Tales and Connecting Communities (cont'd)

COMMUNITY

"Stories are so simple and so overlooked as a way to explore community concerns," says Dudley Cocke, director of Roadside Theater, one of the AFP member-companies participating in the festival. "A lot of people don't believe their stories any more, and there aren't as many opportunities to tell them today." The festival was a way to rectify the situation.

For ASU, the stories and the festival were a device to "bridge the language and cultural gaps" that separated it from its surrounding communities, says Jennings-Roggensack. "Our mission is to connect communities. We're good at big ritualized cultural experiences, like graduation and similar ceremonies, but we didn't have much presence in the local community."

Like many Sunbelt cities, Phoenix - and its suburbs, like Tempe - has grown phenomenally over the past decade, a magnet for retirees, blue-collar workers and young urban professional alike, drawn to its sunny climate and the prospect of high-paying jobs. But the city's roots lie deep in the past, anchored by indigenous Indian and Hispanic communities. In fact, nearly a third of Phoenix's 1.2 million residents are either Hispanic or Native American. Another 4 percent are African-American, and 1 percent are Asian-American.

During the fall semester of the festival year, Bonnie Eckard, chair of ASU's Department of Theatre, team-taught a course in grassroots theater with Theresa Holden, AFP's project director for the festival.

"It's extraordinary for people to hear voices that they haven't heard before, or perhaps even their own voices from their own communities," Eckard says. "I have a strong belief that theatre is important to the community at large, and that it is very possible to make [it] relevant to a large population as opposed to a select elite. On the community level, people can use this art form to make their lives and their communities better," she says.

Jennings-Roggensack began courting Tempe's various communities seven years ago, meeting with religious leaders and social activists, attending Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Asian Economic Council events, taking outreach programs into schools. "This is a long process, but we're here for the long term," she says. "It's a lot of small steps."

The first step was identifying communities, and one thing that set this festival apart was the breadth of the concept. It wasn't confined to mere geographic proximity or shared government, but included a host of qualities that make a community into a fellowship. For the Untold Stories Festival, "community" included campus student groups, like the ASU Asian Student Coalition and the Hillel Jewish Student Center, as well as ASU classified staff, which comprises campus police, janitors, secretaries, plumbers and gardeners. It included African-Americans who had attended Phoenix Union Colored High School in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as kids from area Boys and Girls Clubs and the St. Peter Indian Mission School on the Pima Reservation. One community was a senior citizens' group, calling themselves The Entertainers, who lived in the nearby retirement community of Ahwatukee.

Ultimately, some 15 "communities" were identified and paired with the five participating American Festival Project members - El Teatro de la Esperanza, based in San Francisco; Idiwanan An Chawe from Zuni Pueblo; Junebug Productions, based in New Orleans; Liz Lerman Dance Exchange from Washington, DC; and Roadside Theater of Whitesburg, KY.

AFP's emphasis is on community participation. "We're interested in an exchange with a community, not about exposure to a 'professional' performer," says Theresa Holden. "We want people in the community to think about and share what's already good about the arts."

It's a time-consuming process, where cultural traditions and stories first have to be remembered or uncovered before they can be celebrated. It was a challenge at ASU because of the sheer diversity and size of the communities. But there were other hurdles, as well.

"Higher education is perceived as an elitist institution," Holden says. "We've already said to millions of people, 'You can't be here because you don't qualify,' and the notion spreads to all aspects associated with higher education." So even when the university reaches out to communities, there's a certain wariness about why and resistance to it, she says. "That perception was the biggest barrier we had."

It was also difficult to hold community groups together long-term and long-distance. One of the groups O'Neal and Junebug worked with had a constantly rotating roster. "Every time we came back for rehearsals (five times during the 1998-99 year), it was like the first time," he says. "We need to understand that what we're really doing is more like community organizing than 'art.' That means uncovering the community's needs and wants," he says.

"If our goals don't connect with long-term community concerns, then we can't answer the question of why we're doing it in the first place."

Page 1 2 3

Read "Behind the Barrier", a sidebar
article on Roadside's work with the
ASU Department of Public Safety

Back to Reading Room