Cornerstone Theater Company

Cornerstone Theater Company is a theater company based in the United States that specializes in community-based collaboration. According to the mission statement published on the company's website,

"Cornerstone Theater Company is a multi-ethnic, ensemble-based theater company. We commission and produce new plays, both original works and contemporary adaptations of classics, which combine the artistry of professional and community collaborators. By making theater with and for people of many ages, cultures and levels of theatrical experience, Cornerstone builds bridges between and within diverse communities in our home city of Los Angeles and nationwide."

Typically, Cornerstone artists take up residence in the community they will be working with and develop the script for a production. Using members of the community, Cornerstone creates a performance company mixing the professional Cornerstone ensemble with local talent. The resulting plays are often adaptations of classics, but they are always informed by and often address local concerns. These plays are often organized into "Cycles" which include several related communities. For example, Cornerstone's Faith Based cycles included plays created with members of the Jewish community, Catholics, Muslims, and so on. [1]

This artistic strategy is specifically aimed at developing and serving new audiences, and yields a unique theater form that blends professional actors, playwrights and stage designers with artists and actors who are in some way telling their own stories, or the stories of their community.

Cornerstone was founded by director Bill Rauch and playwright Alison Carey in 1986. The impulse behind the group, according to Carey, was to create theater for audiences that they otherwise would never come in contact with.

Gathering a group of theater artists they had worked with while students at Harvard University, Rauch, Carey and their fellow artists picked a destination for their theatrical experiment that none of them had ever visited before: Marmarth, North Dakota. There they performed the Old West Shakespearean adaptation Marmarth Hamlet. For the next five years they traveled to small towns in America, including Port Gibson, Mississippi; Norcatur, Kansas; Dinwiddie, Virginia; and many others, creating theater with the local inhabitants.

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