• Articles about Roadside Theater
• Articles about Grassroots Theater
• National Conversations about the Arts
• Articles about the Region
• Articles about Art and Community Organizing
• Past Roadside Theater Newsletters

Articles about Roadside Theater

Appalachia on the Move
By Dudley Cocke,
2010: Published in Longleaf Style magazine.

Appalachian Advocate Preserves Local History
By Colleen Birch Maile,
Atlantic Southeast Magazine,
November/December 2006;
An article about Roadside Theater's
Ron Short

Arts Presenting and the Celebration of a Community's Culture
By Donna Porterfield
From: The Citizen Artist: An Anthology, High Performance Magazine 1978-1998

Class and the Performing Arts
By Dudley Cocke
An essay explaining how Roadside has been able to consistently attract an audience fully reflective of the nation’s economic, racial, and geographic diversity.
Fall 2008

Connecting Traditions
By Lynn Cline
Pasatiempo, a weekly arts supplement of The Santa Fe New Mexican, March 2002

Fire and Promise: A Saga of Collaboration
By Arnaldo López
American Theatre magazine, March 2000

Invisible Threads and the Place We Call Home
By Sally Voris
A report on Roadside's multi-year, community-building residency in Patapsco, MD

Mountaineers, Farmers, and Cowfolk Create Two Plays about Place
By Donna Porterfield and Dudley Cocke
An NEA case study of a Roadside Theater residency

Only Connect
By Dudley Cocke
Theater, Vol. 31:3
The magazine of the Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre

Take Charge of the Stories We Are Telling
By James Smorada
The Jamestown (ND) Sun, September 1988

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Articles about Grassroots Theater

Grassroots, Community-based Theater: A View of the Field and its Context
By Robert H. Leonard
From: the Community Arts Network website, a project of Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University’s Department of Theatre Arts and Art in the Public Interest

A Matrix Articulating the Principles of Grassroots Theater
By Dudley Cocke
From: From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective
Dudley Cocke, Harry Newman, and Janet Salmons-Rue, Editors.
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1993.

In Sync? For American Ensembles, Questions Come First – Then Creativity
By Ferdinand Lewis
American Theatre magazine, May/June 2000

Performing Communities: The Grassroots Ensemble Theater Research Project
Community Arts Network website, November 2002

Reaching for the Valley of the Sun: The American Festival Project’s Untold Stories
By Linda Frye Burnham
The Drama Review, Fall 2000

A Short Story of Multi-Culturalism
By Dudley Cocke
The author recounts what it’s like to be part of a white, rural, and working class theater company at a national multi-cultural festival at Dartmouth College. Fall 2008

Some Historical Threads of the Community Arts Story (and why they are important)
By Maryo Ewell
From: the Community Arts Network website, a project of Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University’s Department of Theatre Arts and Art in the Public Interest

Tamejavi
By Dudley Cocke
Originally published in Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005

Telling Tales and Connecting Communities
By Dinah Zeiger
Inside Arts magazine, November/December 1999

Toward a Theatre of Action
By Moira Brennan
American Theatre magazine
December 2002

Using Arts to Bind the Community
By Sara Terry Gabrels
The Christian Science Monitor, March 19, 1998

A Week-Long Immersion in the Activist Theory and Practice of Appalshop
By Jamie Haft,
New York University Tisch School of the Arts undergraduate students immerse themselves in the creation of grassroots film, theater, audio, and photography.

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National Conversations about the Arts

Art in a Democracy
By Dudley Cocke
Text from The Drama Review, Fall 2004, Social Theatre, Vol. 48, Issue 3

Artists Call for Cultural Policy
By Arlene Goldbard, Dudley Cocke, and Dee Davis
A petition addressed to all presidential campaigns, May 2004

The Art of Social Imagination: A Discussion of New Creative Community
A Conversation with Nick Rabkin, Jennifer Williams, Jamie Haft, and Arlene Goldbard; Facilitated and Edited by Dudley Cocke;
Grantmakers in the Arts Reader,
Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2007
Also included with this article is: Community Cultural Development: The Next Generation by Rene Yung, touching on many of the same themes discussed by the authors of The Art of Social Imagination.

The Arts and Humanities in a Democracy
By Dudley Cocke
Walter Capps Memorial Lecture
2003 National Humanities Conference
Savannah, GA
November 8, 2003

"Bridging Social Capital"
By Robert Putnam
Excerpted from: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

A Call for Cultural Development
By Dudley Cocke and Ruby Lerner
1989: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A Call for Experimentation: Why Ensembles Are Especially Ready to Lead the American Theater into a New Period of Discovery
By Dudley Cocke
A Keynote Conversation
Network of Ensemble Theaters Festival
Amherst College, July 23, 2003

The CAN Report
"The State of the Field of Community Cultural Development: Something New Emerges"
By Linda Frye Burnham, Steven Durland and Maryo Gard Ewell
Art in the Public Interest, July 2004

Change
By Dudley Cocke
Keynote Speech
Kentucky Arts Council Statewide Arts Conference
October 20, 2000

Class and the Performing Arts
By Dudley Cocke
An essay explaining how Roadside has been able to consistently attract an audience fully reflective of the nation’s economic, racial, and geographic diversity.
Fall 2008

Community Participation and Civic Dialogue
Remarks by Dudley Cocke
Renewing Democratic Civil Society
The Centennial Assembly of the Commonwealth Club
San Francisco, CA
February 27-28, 2003

Coming Through the Wire
By Dudley Cocke
American Theatre magazine, March 2000

Connecting Californians, Finding the Art of Community Change: An inquiry into the role of story in strengthening communities
Dudley Cocke, Craig McGarvey, Linda Burnham, Erica Kohl, et al., Editors.
San Francisco, CA: The James Irvine Foundation, 2001

Contemporary Artists on Contemporary Arts
By Dudley Cocke,
NETWORK Conference
International Network of Schools for the Advancement of Arts Education
Miami Beach, Florida, October 13, 2006

Conversations at the Intersections
By Linda Frye Burnham
Community Arts Network Website

Cultural Organizing: A Conversation at the Intersection
An exchange among eight artist activists, community organizers, and funders, August 2006

End Cultural Isolationism
By Dudley Cocke
American Theatre magazine, February 2002

Independence, Not Isolation
By Dudley Cocke
From: "On Cultural Power," American Theatre magazine, May/June, 1997
One of 13 commentaries

The Joy of Producing Some Lovely Thing and Freeing Some Craving for Expression
By Dudley Cocke
Lecture to the Biennial State Arts Conference
Des Moines, IA
March 25, 2000

Populism is Not the Problem
By Dudley Cocke
American Theatre magazine September, 2000
Letter to the editor

Progress
By Dudley Cocke
The author warns of the dangers of global free-market capitalism, describing its devastating impact on Appalachia.
Grantmakers in the Arts Reader,
Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 2006

Rural/Urban
By Dudley Cocke
From the Urban Institute study, Investing in Creativity

Toward A Durable Pluralism
By Dudley Cocke,
The author argues for ending the current U.S. policy of cultural isolationism in favor of a new policy of national and international cultural exchange grounded in the principle of cultural equity.
2007

"Styles"
By Dudley Cocke
Grantmakers in the Arts Reader
Winter, 2001

Where Has All the Grassroots Touring Gone?
The transcript of the May 1, 2006 symposium “Seeking Solutions to the Past Decade’s Radical Reduction in the National Touring of New American Plays,” sponsored by Roadside Theater and Pregones Theater in The Bronx, New York. Published by Community Arts Network (CAN).

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Articles about the Region

Appalachia on the Move
By Dudley Cocke,
2010: Published in Longleaf Style magazine.

Appalachia, Democracy, and Cultural Equity
By Dudley Cocke
From: Voices from the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity
Marta Moreno Vega and Cheryll Y. Greene, Editors.
Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1993.

Central Appalachia and the Founding of Appalshop and Roadside Theater
By Donna Porterfield

The Mountains: My Hopes
by Dudley Cocke, Blue Ridge Country Magazine, September/October, 2005

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Articles about Art and Community Organizing

The Art of Social Imagination: A Discussion of New Creative Community
A Conversation with Nick Rabkin, Jennifer Williams, Jamie Haft, and Arlene Goldbard; Facilitated and Edited by Dudley Cocke;
Grantmakers in the Arts Reader,
Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2007
Also included with this article is: Community Cultural Development: The Next Generation by Rene Yung, touching on many of the same themes discussed by the authors of The Art of Social Imagination.

A Bridge Conversation on New Paradigms of Artful Change
by Dudley Cocke, Craig McGarvey, and Peter Pennekamp,
Community Arts Network,
March, 2008

Community Arts 2007
A Muscular Year
by Linda Frye Burnham,
Art in the Public Interest and Community Arts Network,
January, 2008

Community Arts 2008
The Year of the Great Leap
by Linda Frye Burnham,
Art in the Public Interest and Community Arts Network,
December, 2008

Cultural Organizing Session Opening Remarks
By Dudley Cocke
Grantmakers in the Arts Annual Conference
Boston, November 13, 2006

"Tamejavi festival mixes it up on the cultural front"
By Don Mayhew
The Fresno (CA) Bee,
April 26, 2002

"Taming Tensions: Multicultural festival could help unite the Central Valley immigrant community to remedy common ills"
By Tyche Hendricks
San Francisco Chronicle,
April 29, 2002

Theory of Change
By Dudley Cocke, drafted in response to a series of meetings he facilitated in New Orleans on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29, 2006

Thousand Kites Summit: A Community Arts Focus Group
by Linda Frye Burnham,
Art in the Public Interest and Community Arts Network,
Fall 2007

A Time of Questioning
By Dudley Cocke,
a reflection on philanthropy,
2007

A Week-Long Immersion in the Activist Theory and Practice of Appalshop
By Jamie Haft,
New York University Tisch School of the Arts undergraduate students immerse themselves in the creation of grassroots film, theater, audio, and photography.

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Roadside's Past Newsletters

Spring/Fall 1999
Fall/Spring 1997-98
Spring 1996 - Fall 1997

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