Other Books:
Performing Communities
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Ensemble theater is one of the hottest American performance forms today. It’s more than art — it’s a movement.
Performing Communities is an inquiry into a genre of theater that arises from and empowers the grassroots. The book profiles established ensemble groups from inner-city Los Angeles, small-town northern California, African-American South, multicultural southern Texas, low-income central Appalachia, economically struggling South Bronx New York and cross-continental Native America.
This compendium of critical writing about the role these theaters play in building community shows how these artist groups are forged by working in and with their communities over time. Ensemble theater is discovered to be neither alternative nor marginalized, but vanguard, a natural evolution of the movement that propelled regional theater “away from the commercial restraints of New York and toward a theater expressive of the rich diversity of American culture.” It is theater that is politically and emotionally charged. It can be cathartic, healing and has proven ability to effect social change.
The book Performing Communities is a project of the Community Arts Network. It has been created from interviews, analytical essays, and play excerpts from the “Grassroots Theater Ensemble Research Project,” an inquiry into American ensemble theaters that have been working in communities for 10 to 35 years. Although originating from a scholarly report, the language has been edited for a popular audience and offers an intimate glimpse into each local ensemble community. The book will appeal to followers of contemporary and popular theater, social change activists, community building specialists, and a public curious about cultural development in the United States.
About the authors:
Robert H. Leonard is Professor of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech and former artistic director of the Road Company, an acclaimed ensemble theater that produced two dozen original plays reflecting the issues of Central Appalachia.
Ann Kilkelly is Professor of Theater Arts and Women's Studies at Virginia Tech and a nationally recognized scholar and performer who created the Diversity Training Laboratory that uses performance techniques to examine diversity issues.
Jan Cohen-Cruz is Director of Imagining America and former Director of Theatre Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is author of Local Acts: Community-based Performance In The United States (Rutgers University Press 2005).
Linda Frye Burnham, editor, is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network. She founded High Performance magazine and is editor, with Steven Durland, of The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena (Critical Press 1998).