After 20 years of touring to thousands of communities in 43 states, Roadside is convinced that art and expressive culture are present in every community--only a small part has been bottled and sold off. Citizens in communities across the United States want to send something of themselves and their place out, not to be always the object (never the subject) of the unrelenting incoming media for the masses. Two other things we've learned: Americans want their children to inherit their heritage, and citizens from all walks of life believe art is good for their souls and the soul of the nation. Roadside's work is about collaborating with communities to achieve these ardent wishes. Now the National Endowment for the Arts--and other public arts and humanities agencies--are attacked as internal enemies, just as the Work Progress Administration's Federal Theater Project was attacked in 1940-41. The attacks are from the few who, generically in the nation's history, have persistently wanted to tell most of us what to think and who we are. Doesn't the record show that whenever the federal government has played an encouraging role with the arts, the nation has been uplifted? To try wrapping one's mind around the vast creative output sparked by the WPA's theater, writers', and visual arts projects and by the National Endowment for the Arts is to marvel: Without such stories, songs, and art, how would we even know it's us? One example among countless many: Without the WPA Writers' Project, the nation would not have 95 percent of the slave narratives extant. Roadside Theater's plays tell about a particular, and to us special place, the Cumberland Plateau where southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and upper east Tennessee back up on one another. Roadside's ensemble of actors, directors, designers, writers, producers, and administrators all have roots in Appalachia's rocky soil. Our dramatic musicals, often set in the past, are always about the future. They make clear that we in the present moment have not just dropped in from outer space. Roadside's challenge is to keep on, to keep on making the new work that we as an ensemble have been building toward for 21 years. We've got bigger shows, deeper community collaborations, and larger audiences in mind. We expect to show up with added vigor. The joy of theater is that there is no viable way to do it alone, without community. Dudley Cocke, Director, Roadside Theater