Convenings

Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Minneapolis, March 8–10, 2002

Andrea Assaf
2002
Cornerstone Theater and the National Conference for Community and Justice: Challenges and Possibilities of Art & Dialogue Working Together
In its Faith-Based Theater Project, Cornerstone Theater Company created original community-based plays, in collaboration with specific faith-based institutions as well as inter-faith communities, to address the issue of how faith both unites and divides American society. Working in partnership with the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), Cornerstone’s and NCCJ’s experimentation with a range of dialogue formats offered fertile ground to look at what happens to art and to civic dialogue in trying to balance the goals of each.  When are art and civic dialogue mutually supportive? When are they at odds? The session incorporated an interactive/creative opportunity for participants to explore their own experiences of these relationships; and presentations from Cornerstone Theater Company, NCCJ, and Michael Rohd about their collaboration.

Presenters

  • Peter Howard and Mark Valdez, Cornerstone Theater Company (CT)
  • Diane Burbie, NCCJ
  • Michael Rohd , Sojourn Theater and collaborator with Cornerstone Theater Company and NCCJ

Peter Howard, Cornerstone Theater: Focus on the collaboration between Cornerstone and NCCJ.  Introductions will present missions and methods of both Cornerstone and NCCJ, and the Festival of Faith and Zones production. We’ll engaging in a few low-key activities, invite personal connections, and leave ample time for Q&A. 

Casting the art-dialogue relationship in heightened relief:  Cornerstone has as a deep part of its identity in community development, and this project is not NCCJ’s first use of art as an entry point into dialogue.

Quotes:

  • It was nice. I mean…we talked.  But was it dialogue?
  • People came to see a play. Do we have to ask them to share more than their time?
  • Dialogue sometimes means giving up control and going where the group wants to go.  From what I’ve seen, artists don’t like to give up control of the script.
  • The interfaith dialogues always seemed to be about ‘making nice.’ People politely tiptoed around each other and avoided confrontation.
  • There’s this constant tug-of-war between the safety/trust needed for good dialogue and the risk-taking needed for good art”
  • When you try to meet the needs of both art and dialogue at the same time, you end up meeting neither.
  • The needs of theatrical pace and timing conflict with the slow approach needed for dialogue.
  • Can the dialogue be about art?  Does it have to be about ‘social issues’?

Responses to the Quotations
Joan Schirle, artistic director,The Dentalium Project: I’ve heard lots of those own voices in my own head—trust needed to create dialogue and risk-taking associated with art.

John Malpede, Los Angeles Poverty Department: Anybody can take a risk, but the idea is to take a risk and succeed.

Treva Offut, The Kitchen: I reacted to the time it takes to put together a piece versus the time it takes to do dialogue.  In my project, the two were always at odds, keeping in mind that the dialogue was supposed to inform the re-mounting of the piece.

Bernardo Solano, playwright: It is hard to give up control over the script; it’s a hump to get over, but it’s worked. I’ve had a good result when I’ve done it. 

Judith Shatin, artist: Art vs. social issues—it’s hard to separate those.  Whatever art you’re doing, you’re taking a stance on social issues.  It’s not either/or.

PQ Phan, composer: Sometimes when you give up control, you forfeit a smaller circle, but you form a bigger circle.

Michael Warr, consultant: To me it’s a question of intent.  You’re not giving up control, because you’re engaging your art to achieve a goal. 

Tory Peterson, Perpich Center for Arts Education: Are you giving up control of the dialogue or the aesthetics?  It comes down to what your goal is.

Caron Atlas, consultant:  I could read that comment the opposite. I’ve been in dialogues that I felt were controlling, and I felt liberated by the art.

Sondra Farganis, Vera List Center for Arts and Politics: There’s a difference between giving up control and democratizing the process. There is a way to bring more people into the process and not let anarchy reign. How do you give up control but retain an authoritative voice?

Introduction to the organizations
Mark Valdez, Cornerstone Theater: Cornerstone Theater (CT) was founded in 1986.  In early years, it traveled doing adaptations of classics for small towns.  After the first bridge show, the company settled in L.A. in 1992. It’s worked with about 20 communities since ‘92.  There’s always an aspect of dialogue and exchange in CT’s work. It’s inherent in their methodology.  Faith-based work has very high stakes, dealing with people’s beliefs. We set up a system to have an artistic coordinator and a facilitation coordinator for each venue. Many of these artists were working with CT for the first time, as there was an RFP and selection process. Artists were selected by artistic quality and excitement for the project. Our original plan was to do three plays per venue in five venues. Turned out to be four pieces per venue and a film. I created a play for a temple—worked with members of the temple, learned about the rituals of the temple. All shows operated independently and then came together, with something to tie them together; in the back of our minds, we thought it was the dialogue component. Neighbors complained about noise, we tried to find alternate venues. CT decided to approach neighbors individually to let them know about the performances and invite them in, so they were able to perform outside. 

Diane Burbie, National Conference for Community and Justice: The idea of the festival kept evolving. From a facilitation standpoint, the light bulb went on very late for the facilitation end of the project. The meaning evolved for us. At my venue, there was good coordination between artists and facilitators, but the lead artists had never worked with CT before. Their concerns of impressing CT got in the way, scripts were late. The good relationship between CT and NCCJ comes from an organic process of being there from the beginning to end of the artistic process. This wasn’t the case for the Festival of Faith. NCCJ was not involved in the development of the art. The artists were not aware that they were supposed to be collaborating in creating an evening, which was the facilitator’s understanding. The Islamic piece was not as strong artistically, and became very important after September 11. We thought that the evening was already so packed that people wouldn’t want to talk after sitting through four plays and a film. So we thought about it as trying to engage people in what they were experiencing rather than adding another program to the evening. NCCJ is a human relations organization. We use theatrical arts as one way to engage people, particularly youth. 

Michael Rohd, Sojourn Theatre: I have experience with both CT and NCCJ, separately. CT is about community engagement, and NCCJ is about using dialogue to bring about social justice. There were 27 definitions of dialogue in the room when everyone came together. All of the artists, artistic coordinators, facilitation coordinators, and venue representatives came together for a weekend in August to discuss the festival, and the discussions they had got everyone on the same page and helped avoid train wrecks down the road. Artists came with the assumption that dialogue facilitators were there to facilitate dialogue between artists and venues, not with the public. The tension was among the artists around each other’s content, and whether it was appropriate for the venue, order of the piece, etc. They had expected tension would be between artistic coordinators and facilitation coordinators. Each of the events was provocative and interesting, even if the quality wasn’t as good as CT would have liked; but people came together and were drawn in, and everyone survived, including the relationships with the venues, which is important for partnership building. There were separate dialogue events at each venue, and it was OK that some of the dialogue was happening between the artists.

Diane: Some audience members attended multiple venues, and I noticed that some people were processing what had happened the previous week at this week’s performances. The dialogue cafés were a new form for NCCJ because of creating the physical space. We got a lot of comments because the atmosphere was very inviting. People talked, but they talked to people they knew. We would use it again, but only if it makes sense given the situation.

Peter Howard, Cornerstone Theatre: It’s been a real challenge to sit in both of these organizations, in terms of suspicion and fear about the other side. The perception artists had of working with NCCJ: joyless, humorless, rigid dialogue process allows for no spontaneity, things are truncated to move on, agenda-ed take on dialogue process. Those who are leading the dialogue are leading from a specific point of view. Perception NCCJ had of working with artists: Flippant, controlling, unwilling to give up a single-minded artistic vision to honor the needs of a group, resistant to responding to reality of people in the room.

Zones is 90-minute play written to include an NCCJ-type dialogue process. It’s a highly scripted play with five distinct unscripted dialogue segments. Forced choice and wagon wheel exercises are woven into a plot set in a meeting of a fictional community zoning board. People were told that the performance was about engagement, an interactive experience, but were not told exactly what would be asked of them. And this wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Not everyone wanted to get that involved, but it worked well. Zones performed at all five festival venues. It was written to be performed at places of worship or religiously affiliated, but not in a sanctuary—a community space, or social space within the place of worship. Hopefully the host would be there to welcome the zoning board and give the history of the host organization.

Michael Rohd: This was a very exciting experience, because as soon as people walked in the door, there was no indication that they weren’t at a zoning board meeting. Many people thought at first that they were at a meeting. 

Peter: There were many people who attended more than one and cumulative audiences as the festival went on.

Diane: Attending a Zones performance brought audiences into the Festival.

Questions and Discussion
Q: Did any elected or planning officials attend?

Peter: I invited them, but they did not attend. Funny, because zoning is a hot issue in Southern California. 

Caron Atlas, consultant: The people from the Islamic school questioned whether they should engage in the Festival. Wondered if they were safer pulling out or staying in and participating with allies. They decided it was better to stay in. 

Q: It’s an interesting position for the audience to be in, not knowing what was going on.  What have you learned by doing that? What decisions went into it? 

Diane: I was struck by that dynamics in Zones. Was it ethical? We felt that Zones came closest to NCCJ’s goals of dialogue. There was time for the audience to do something with those emotions. They were able to engage with each other and the characters, knowingly or unknowingly. As a participant, it was hard to get out of it. You were pulled in, and you had to talk about it. 

Peter: We ended the performance with hanging questions, like: Is tolerance enough? Can we still love each other if we believe different things? Why was this piece prejudiced against Christians? Dani Bedau (NCCJ) aspires to taking the Zones model and conceiving of maybe a 3-actor experience, with a simpler structure: 2 people in conflict in a meeting and a facilitator, a hyped up context where the audience should be prepared for anything in order to generate the emotion to take people to the next level of engaging with each other. 

Mark: Going into Zones, your very first stop was a box office, so it was somewhat known that they were attending a play. 

Q: I would assume by going through the Zones experience, that the audience members would begin to speak with each other about what they experienced, so that they would talk to each other at the next show, since you said this was a cumulative audience. 

Diane: We did find there was carry-over conversation from Zones, but because they had so many venues to choose from, there wasn’t much overlap. 

Q: With the cumulative participation, did you see audience members role-playing too? 

Peter: Yes. 

Q: What discussions were important to help you, Peter, shape the piece? 

Peter: A lot of the process was about casting actors who would believe in this and could make it work.  There was a vital preview process. We took honest feedback about their experience. Since the event was in the hands of our actors—they were the facilitators—the important thing was making sure they felt comfortable and trusting a new facilitator with this important topic.

Q: Once it was out of your hands, did you hear any further feedback? 

Peter: The festival was really about relationship-building in the community, which we did. 

Diane: Also, the leadership of the different venues has come together. 

Q: Do you think that in the human relations field there is recognition of art and artists? 

Diane: I think the argument is over who is going to have control and who is going to set the goal. You have to be more forthcoming in admitting what your goal is and how you see art as a way of accomplishing that goal, which is a much more earnest way of entering into a partnership. NCCJ and CT did a lot of pre-work in finding we had a shared commitment in what we thought was our goal for the festival, but the artists invited into the festival had disparate ideas. 

Q: Do you know if the artists have changed their perspectives from this experience? 

Mark: They were very inspired by their work in the festival. We’ve had requests for performances of certain pieces from the festival. There were a lot of good things that came out of this partnership, but we decided to present the tensions so that you could learn from our experience.

Q:  What looked different to the dialogue specialists? 

Diane: I felt it authentically illustrated what the dialogue processes should do for people. I felt better seeing the actors in the play doing it, rather than the facilitators I see doing it all the time, because it showed that it was the process and not the facilitators. 

Peter: Lucky Altman said she thought she needed to script the facilitators more after seeing Zones. 

Q: Can we get copies of the quotes on the walls? A copy of the script? 

Peter: As we look toward open space tomorrow, imagine what it would be like to have this circle of people leave the room with hanging questions.