Paper short abstract:

In its 30-year history, the Cornerstone Theater Company has developed an artistic practice in which caring for the people they work with is a moral, aesthetic, and practical necessity. With Cornerstone, I consider how social justice arises in artistic process and the implications for ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Since its founding in 1986, Cornerstone Theater Company has been continuously practicing and developing its community-based theater approach. They produced an adapted and translated Clay Cart performed in four different languages at a Los Angeles senior home; toured a 10-community-based adaptation of Winter's Tale; staged an exploration of Venice, CA past, present, and future with dancing houses; and more. Cornerstone's model is iterative. They develop relationships in a community, work with that community over a period of time to develop a play, and then stage the play. The practices they bring to each project, however, help them adapt their work to the needs of the community and the needs of the individual people who work on the productions.

Pulling from my own ethnographic fieldwork during Cornerstone's summer 2016 production in Venice, CA, and the remembered stories of past productions, I explore how systems of care emerge in Cornerstone's practice. By caring for the individuals in the room, members of Cornerstone create the group necessary for putting on a show: community members make up the majority of the cast, work in the production crew, and provide the material that makes the play. Social justice is woven into their work as they simultaneously attempt to address issues of power, oppression, and representation, as well as meet peoples' physical, logistical, and emotional needs—intertwined actions that can come into conflict with and enhance one another. Lessons learned from community-based theater can help us consider ways that ethnographic work intersects with social justice.