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Community Performance Inc. has helped
develop more than a dozen projects across the United States and
abroad.
Click below to see the various and diverse communities CPI works
with, as well as the many different ways Community Performance is
used in Organizations, Neighborhoods, Schools, Religious
Establishments and Communities.
Boogaloo
Broadcasting Company, Union County, South
Carolina
City Bridges, Newport
News, Virginia
Grit and Grace, Ft.
Walton County, Florida
Hill Fire, Montgomery
County, Mississippi
ICA
millennium Connection, Denver, Colorado
Instituto Central do Povo, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
Imagine Southwark,
London, England
Let my People Go!
Washington, D.C. Kennedy Center
Peaks and Passages,
South Routt County, Colorado
Pieced Together,
Newport News, Virginia
Pot Luck in the Muck,
Belle Glade, Florida
Scrap Mettle SOUL,
Chicago, Illinois
Steppin' Up, Chicago,
Illinois
Swamp Gravy, Colquitt,
Georgia
The Bauen Camp,
Parkman, Wyoming
BOOGALOO BROADCASTING
COMPANY
Union County, South
Carolina
TURN THE WASHPOT DOWN
THE FIRST OFFICIAL FOLK LIFE PLAY OF SOUTH
CAROLINA
"Even if Turn The Washpot Down doesn't save
Union's life, it has already saved its soul"
~American Theatre Magazine
I slept in the same bed with my grandmother, and she was a
slave...
Granny lived with us. My children ask me
about granny, ‘cause I was left at home with her. She’d tell me
things from when she was a girl. I’ve got a living memory going back
a hundred and fifty years. I get together with my mother and aunts
once a year and do what we used to do, work and talk. Granny taught
us we gotta do that once in a while, let someone hear them stories.
Otherwise, they’ll get
lost.
~From Turn The Washpot Down, by Jules
Corriere
TURN THE WASHPOT DOWN was
the first full-length production produced by The Boogaloo
Broadcasting Company of Union County, South Carolina. The
performance enjoyed eleven sold-out shows, was featured in People
Magazine, American Theatre, The Utne Reader, South Carolina
Television, Associated Press, The Charlotte Observer, and
more.
 
Prior to this incredibly successful production,
CPI created a Main Street Christmas Production, entitled "Old
Fashioned Radio Christmas", where separate vignettes were performed
in several storefronts on Main Street, as well as some performances
on the street. Planners expected an audience of three hundred and
fifty people over the weekend production of the show, and were
overwhelmed when final ticket counts had totaled over one
thousand-four hundred, in a town of only three
thousand citizens.
Boogaloo Broadcasting Company is now
a fully independent project, and continues to produce new full
length productions, as well as Main Street Christmas productions
each year. The local playwright, Betsy Vanderford, who began working
with the Boogaloo Broadcasting Company from the very first Christmas
Production, recently won a statewide playwrighting contest in
2003.
CITY BRIDGES
Newport News, Virginia
Daddy had just gotten back from his
second tour inVietnam, I was five...
We were out shopping at
the commissary at Ft. Eustis , you know, near Patrick Henry Airport
, and down from Langley Air Force Base , so, lots of air traffic.
We’re walking to our station wagon, and a plane overhead breaks the
sound barrier—boom! Being near the air fields, my mom and I are used
to it. We jump, and laugh. But this is daddy’s second day back from
the war. He was carrying a bag of groceries, we’d gotten fixings for
hot dogs and hamburgers. Well, my dad hears the boom, tosses the bag
to the ground, and dives across the parking lot under a truck.
Everything in the bag splatters everywhere. My dad is laying belly
down on the ground, shielding his head with his arms. My mom starts
rocking him back and forth like a baby. I just remember standing in
the parking lot, looking at this. Other soldiers coming out of the
commissary, passing by, while all this was going on. The thing I
remember the most, is that I was the only one surprised.
I had nightmares. I knew the world had
monsters. I knew something spooked my father, at least, and if it
could scare him, it must be pretty awful. I drew pictures of what
this boogeyman might look like. Long nosed demons, wolf men with
blood on their teeth, creatures with fire and smoke circling around
them. And then one day I found a picture in the trash can. From when
my dad was in Vietnam . His first sergeant sent it to him, it was a
soldier, his buddy, wearing a necklace made out of ears. I don’t
have to draw pictures anymore. I know what the boogeyman looks
like. ~From Storylines, by
Jules Corriere
The
Community Performance project founded by Jules Corriere in Newport
News, Virginia, that examines the cultural diversity of the city.
Partnering with the Peninsula Fine Arts Center for Story Gathering
and Civic Dialogue discussion, StoryLines is the play created by the
CITY BRIDGES LIFE STORIES PROJECT, created from the stories of the
Jewish Community, African American Community, Military Community,
Mennonite Community and others.
StoryLines, written by Jules Corriere
with music by Don McCullough and Denny Clark, was performed at the
Yoder Barn by seventy five community members, facilitated by the
artists of CPI, expert in the field of place-based art. In addition
to the cast members performing in the play, the larger public was
invited to be a part of a civic dialogue during the process,
discussing issues and themes in the script, some of the same issues
currently facing this community.
The project, at every phase, is open
to all and draws its strengths from the diversity of culture, race,
gender, age, religions-- of the participants.
GRIT AND GRACE
Walton County,
Florida
This girl came in, she was young, she said 16
but I had my doubts. I'd say 13 or 14.
Her mother and her boyfriend brought her
here. She was white, she was poor, she was filthy like she had been
rolling around in dirt, she was undernourished, and she was having a
baby. A child having a child, she had had no pre-natal care, hadn't
been to anybody not even once, hadn't been to the doctor herself
since she was a baby, and she had been in labor almost thirty hours
already. They came in a storm. They banged on the windows to be let
in. The girl was exhausted and crazy with pain and afraid she was
going to die. We had to hold her down to keep her from falling off
the bed to try to get the baby out of her. She'd run out of the
energy to jump off things. Looked like she had already been doing
that. She was the very kind of patient we didn't want, a high risk
delivery, she should have been in a hospital. But her mother and
this boyfriend didn't take her there. And the storm was bad, the
ambulance couldn't get out here to us. Didn't know when they'd be
able to get here. The baby started to come, except it wasn't a head,
it was a foot, and then, at least, there was a second foot. We held
the girl down, tried to get her to breathe and push. And my mother
and I both looked at those little feet and they were chalk white.
There is only one thing that means, the baby is dead. We had to grab
those little feet and help. It wasn't coming out on it's own and the
girl wasn't helping much. And it was chalk white all over, it had
the umbilical cord wrapped around it's neck, and it was a girl and
it was as dead as I've ever seen. My mother turned her upside down
and back up, put her in warm water, blew air into her lungs, did
everything she knew to do. Nothing. The girl's mother said, its
dead, before we did. And then said, you poisoned her with that brown
stuff. That make me so angry. They'd done nothing for this girl or
her baby, and we had done everything we knew to do. And we had given
her blackberry tea. We give every woman who comes to us blackberry
tea. I turned away because I couldn't look at the woman, and I heard
my mother say "dear God, if you want me here, I need a miracle now."
I looked at her and she turned away from the baby, too. We both knew
what this would do. This was the ammunition Florida needed, this
would put her out of business. And we all just stood there, not
long, but it seemed like a long time. And a voice said "look again."
I heard it, and my mother heard it, too. And we both turned to look
at that dead baby, and we stood there and watched her turn pink and
start to cry. ~From Grit and
Grace, by Jo Carson
GRIT AND GRACE is the Folk Life Play of Walton County, Florida,
begun in 2000. Richard Geer, along with Carol McCrite, brought the
artists of CPI: Jo Carson, Brackley Frayer, Joe Varga, Kevin Iega
Jeff, and Jules Corriere to Walton County and created northern
Florida's first ever folk life play, Grit and Grace, written by Jo
Carson, with music by local musician Jim Cooper.
Since that time, GRIT AND GRACE has gone on to create a new
annual play, drawing from their own local talent.
For more information and performance dates, click on the Grit and
Grace website here.
HILL
FIRE
Montgomery County,
Mississippi
Delta Company was assigned to guard
the bridge leading to the Da Nang airbase...
and Mr. Charlie wanted that base, so
that night he let us have it. Small arms, mortars, RPGs ... All hell
broke loose. Some of my buddies went down. I got blown off a bunker,
and then I started tossing grenades. Cussing and screaming and
hellish noise, went on most of the night and all morning. At some
point an RPG got me, and while ol’ Kid was carrying me back, I
noticed my arm was mostly gone - That’s about it.
So you died at Cam Le
Bridge?
Reckon I must have. And I come back
here sometimes. Because it’s so quiet, especially at night. There’s
the Civil War soldier. He sure is quiet, and there’s the cross on
the Methodist Church and the dome of the Presbyterian Church. Looks
like they tore down the old courthouse. While I’m here I think I’ll
go over to my folks’ house and stand out in front for awhile, maybe
have a look at my old room. They keep it just the same as it was
when I graduated high school in sixty-five. I don’t scare them any
more. They kind of like knowing I’m around. I was their only
son. ~From Standing Like
Angels by Charles Boebel
Hill Fire, Montgomery County, Mississippi's Folk
Life Play, is presented twice each year at the Montgomery Historic
County Fair Barn
in Winona, Mississippi. While steeped in Mississippi tradition, Hill
Fire productions tell stories of universal appeal, stories of life,
death, good times and hard times, family and community. Each
performance is a blend of comedy, drama and music featuring a cast
of more than fifty local resident volunteers who transform
Montgomery County life into unforgettable theater. These
volunteers-- teachers, police officers, entrepreneurs, homemakers,
children, grandparents, and even the Mayor of Winona, break down the
barriers of race, culture, age, and economics when they come
together to tell their shared histories that have shaped this
community. In doing so, they bring the citizens of the county
together as never before.
INSTITUTO
CENTRAL do POVO
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
I come to the
Cemetery Inglais to read the epitaphs. I read them for those
who have died, so close to here, and have no epitaph. It is the most
painful thing I know, to be lost to the world, and unknown, not a
word spoken about your death, or what might have been possible.
Every life has value. Every life is a story, full of
great sorrow, great joy, some boring days, and other days filled
with so much excitement you wish you were two people to live them.
Lives so full of
possibility, perhaps not the possibility of greatness in the way of
politics, but greatness of heart. The possibility to perform acts of
great kindness and small gestures, a smile, a laugh, a touch, which
seem to mean nothing, but like the flap of a butterfly’s wing, is
capable of creating great change to sweep across the world.
I come here to
remember the little butterflies, who never had a chance to flap
their wings. You will not find them here. Their voices do not speak
to us across time like our Angle of Lazarus. I cannot speak for
them, but I can remember them. ~From Um Caminho Sobre O Muro by Jules
Corriere
A group from Instituto from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, saw Swamp
Gravy when they were in America. They were impressed with the
project and its possibilities. They then brought in a Swamp Gravy
Institute contingent, including community builders and organizers,
as well as community actors and storytellers. The Swamp Gravy people
performed, and then, with the help of others from the Instituto in
Brazil, did some story gathering, and created small performances
with the people. It was decided by the leaders at the Instituto that
this would be a great program to begin in Rio, especially to mark
the Instituto Central do Povo 100th anniversary of their
mission work. The mission serves the people in the favela (slum
hill) above them. They then invited Richard Geer for primary
visit in 2003, to get them started. In 2005, Geer and
Corriere went to Rio to collect stories, to create more
interest and participation, and to begin forming the project with
local leaders. In 2006, the first full length production was
performed, with Act I on the grounds of the Institute and the
adjacent Cemetery Inglais, while Act II was performed in the old
Cannon Ball Factory-turned-Theater.
Language is not the biggest barrier standing in the way of the
project's success. Poverty, violence, and the drug trade take
its toll. The favelas in Rio are claimed by one of three main
drug cartels, and this favela is no different. This has happened
because the city of Rio historically has not recognized the favelas
or the people living in them, even though 1/3 of the population of
Rio lives in these ghettos that rise up the hillsides throughout the
city. Municipal water, electricity, and services often do not reach
these places. They are a "no-man's land" (no-person's land) and go
to the group with the biggest arsenal. The drug trade happens within
these favelas. And it is these people the Institute strives to
serve, with school programs, tutoring, computer classes, child care
and other services.
Through this production, working with people from the
Instituto as well as from the favela Morro do Providencia, the
Institute celebrates the fact that through these very difficult 100
years, they have been committed to the work of service, and that as
long as there is need, they will be there to serve the people.
IMAGINE
PECKHAM
London, England
Imagine Southwark is an organization which supports
and enables people in Southwark to create a place to be more the way
they would like it to be, based on the best of what is already
there.
In 2003, Geer, Corriere and a group of actors and
community leaders from Chicago's Scrap Mettle SOUL project toured
their production of The Whole World Gets Well, funded in
part by the UK MInistry of Health. Performing throughout
London, the production served as a springboard to energize and
mobilize Imagine Peckham in creating their own series of productions
and community events based on gathering stories of health and
wellness within their own community.
Please click on their project site Imagine
Southwark and Imagine Peckham to read more about the work
they are doing for and with their community.
LET MY
PEOPLE GO!
Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
Daily life
meant floggings...
Let My People Go! Performed by
the Master Chorale of Washington, D.C.
Twenty-five
lashes for a piece of leaf found in the cotton…fifty for
breaking a cotton branch in the field. Two hundred for fighting with
the overseer! 500 for trying to escape! Daily life meant floggings.
And fear of
floggings.
Daily life
meant constant prayers for the day freedom would come. Daily life
meant speaking their language, learning their customs… Taking their
names, all the while forgetting and losing our own. Daily life meant
toiling for someone else’s gain. Living under some else’s domain.
Daily life meant...
Daily
life meant having children and raising families.
It meant praying together. It meant kicking back the boards and
dancing on our one night off. There wasn’t much time in between the
work, but in that time between, we lived our lives. We did not
simply exist to serve.
I’d look
up that house on the hill. None of them knew what "in between" time
was. I got a lot of feelings about that house, but I also know I
built that house. And the mistress up there, she was my mistress,
but I raised her. She suckled from me. She said I was like
family. She let me wear her wedding dress when I got married. Kept a
roof over my grandmother’s head, even after she couldn’t work
anymore. She’s the person I grew up side by side with, that I loved
like a daughter. Until the day she sold my daughter away.
~From Let My People Go! A Spiritual Journey, By Don
McCullough, Denny Clark and Jules Corriere
Jules Corriere at the Kennedy
Center before the Premiere of Let My People Go!
Collaborating with Washington, D.C. Master Chorale Conductor Don
McCullough and Lyricist Denny Clark, Jules Corriere adapted American
slave narratives for this musical journey along the Underground
Railroad.
Don McCullough's original arrangements of old
traditional spirituals used as code songs along the Underground
Railroad wove an emotional tapestry, sung by the Washington D.C.
Chorale, taking the audience on an imaginative journey from first
flight, to hardships of the journey, sometimes to recapture, and
sometimes, on to freedom. Within this musical fabric, Corriere and
Clark added stories from actual slave narratives and accounts, which
were narrated by actors hired from New York. By the end of the
evening, the sold out crowd at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall were
on their feet.
This was not the first collaboration between McCullough, Clark,
and CPI. The composer and lyricist have worked with CPI on several
projects, including Turn The Washpot Down, which became the
Official Folk Life Play of South Carolina, and StoryLines
in Newport News, Virginia.
Don McCullough's own Holocaust Cantata, featuring arrangements of
haunting music written by prisoners of the Nazi Concentration Camps,
and interwoven with narratives adapted by Denny Clark from actual
stories, diaries and documents of prisoners, was performed at the
Kennedy Center in May of 2005.
Click here for more information about Don
McCullough, Denny Clark, and the Master
Choral of Washington, D.C.
PEAKS
AND PASSAGES
South Routt County, Colorado
Everyone who lives here is cursed.
You see folks, heading off, getting on that
train. Thinking they're going to escape the memories. Funny thing
about memories. They have a habit of haunting your mind no matter
where you go. Funny thing about this valley, too. Has a way of
haunting your soul.
Oh, you can go away. Lots of folks go away.
All the time, one reason or disaster or another. Failed crop,
economic cut backs. Whatever. You can go away. But you can’t stay
away. It’s the curse. It brings you back home, to the Valley. And it
works its magic on you where ever you call home, whether it’s Oak
Creek
Steamboat
Yampa
Toponas
Hayden
Craig
It draws us all back together, like all the little
creeks that find their way into the Yampa River , we find our way,
too. There’s a song here, in this valley. And once you’ve heard the
valley speak to you, you just can’t be at peace again until you get
back here, home. We are all blessed with this
curse. ~From Guns, Knives, Wives and Miscellaneous,
by Jules Corriere
Peaks and Passages mission is to preserve the
heritage and history of South Routt County, Colorado through the
development of performances based on local life stories that will
educate, enrich, and entertain the community and foster community
relationships.
This project grew out of the Yampa Valley Legacy
Education Initiative in 1998 when Richard Geer, Jo Carson and Jules
Corriere were invited to Colorado to do county wide productions in
Routt and South Routt counties, creating an original play in each of
four towns: Steamboat Springs, Oak Creek, Hayden and Craig. All of
this was to be in coordination with the local schools.
After the initial performance, teachers and
community leaders Brenda Little and Valerie Broadbent decided to
make the project an ongoing event in their town of Oak Creek, and
South Routt County.
PIECED
TOGETHER
Newport News, Virginia
Have you ever burned a
book?
There is
something that happens – the pages will turn, lifted by the heat of
the fire, some quality in the ink is engraved in light on the page.
Like illuminated manuscripts. Just for an instant.
~From Pieced
Together, by Jo Carson
In September of 1997, the Yoder Barn held it's first
performance, Pieced Together.
The play began as a celebration by the local Mennonite
Community of its One Hundred Years in Newport News. Drawing from
nearly one hundred oral histories, the play told stories of the
birth, growth and changes of this unique community on Virginia's
historic peninsula. Adding to Jo Carson's script were the songs of
Folk singer and composer Sally Rogers, as well as traditional
Mennonite Hymns, sung in four part, acapella harmony.
Like the community itself, the Play and Project of Pieced
Together has grown, drawn from the strengths of its community
participants and leaders. Since this first play, The Yoder Barn has
produced plays annually, and with each new play comes new stories of
heritage, tradition, and change.
Visit The Yoder Barn Website for information on
Dates and Times of Coming Performances.
THE YODER BARN itself is
a site not to be missed.
This 1934 Dairy Barn was picked up, put on rollers and
moved a quarter of a mile to save it from destruction as businesses
began springing up around it. The same company that moved the Cape
Hatteras Light House was called in for this job.
John David and Esther Mable Yoder began working with Richard Geer
in the early nineties preparing for the Centennial Celebration. One
afternoon, they took Richard out to the Barn before it had been
moved. He said to them at that moment, "This needs to be the
performance space". At the time, it was filled with farm equipment,
debris and general stuff that had been gathering for thirty years.
No one knew how it would happen that this space would become the
theater.
A couple of years later, after the Barn was moved, the Yoder
Preservation Trust put Walter Wildman on task as the architect.
Working also with Richard, Brackley and Joe, the Barn was designed
for a Community Performance.
Audience Members now walk into the cathedral like space, with a
thirty five foot ceiling. Its balloon frame, bow truss structure
makes it a wide open area, with no central support beams. The
multiple stages are located throughout the structure, which is one
hundred and forty feet long. The old hayloft has been turned into a
balcony and stage, a hundred year old hay wagon is used as another
stage, and the old barn door serves as a stage door on the main
stage.
Walter Wildman's vision for the space earned a national award for
architectural rehabilitation. The Barn was not only saved, but given
a new life. Where before the barn delivered milk to the community,
it now nourishes the community in other ways-- offering a place for
neighbors to come together and listen to and share their stories.
The Yoder Barn is truly a gift to the people of Newport News.
Thank You, John David, Esther Mable, and the Yoder Preservation
Trust.
POT LUCK IN THE
MUCK
Belle Glade, Florida
I wanted to earn some money one summer during high
school, and I signed up to pick peppers, some friends and I. They
put us in the same group with these four older women, and we looked
at that and thought they’ve dumped these poor workers on young,
strong men. Right. Well, we started faster than the women did, the
women didn’t start slowly exactly, they just started at a pace they
could maintain. And a hundred bushel baskets of peppers later we
were way out in front of them; two hundred we weren’t as far out in
front; three hundred, the women are even with us; and four hundred,
they are so far past us, we can hardly see the dust they were
raising. And they were still working at the same speed they started
that morning. They were the strength out there, not us. They were
the knowledge, we certainly didn’t have it. It is another world,
picking. They taught us to pick peppers. Next day, we didn’t try to
get out in front of them, we just tried all day to keep up. Tried
for the rest of the season to keep up with those four old women.
They were amazing. Thing I remember best from that summer was how
easy the first hundred baskets a day were to pick, and how hard it
was when you get to about five hundred. Those women spent the day
talking, laughing, picking peppers. We spent it picking, didn’t find
much to laugh about, and didn’t have the energy for much
talk. ~From Pot Luck in
the Muck by Jo Carson
Working with the Glades County Development Corporation in1998,
CPI and the GCDC created Pot Luck In The Muck, the first Folk Life
Play in West Palm Beach, Florida, which would also serve as a spring
board for a sister project in Northern Florida, Walton County's,
Grit and Grace.
 
Rehearsals begin immediately after casting.
Teens rehearsing with chairs instead of
stages.
This project, funded in part by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, sought to bring together disparate parts of
this geographically large and culturally diverse community, with the
hopes of a continuing annual project.
Pot Luck in the Muck began in a very
different manner than other CPI projects. Because so much of the
community is involved in the agricultural industry and could afford
little time off for rehearsals, CPI, working within the time
constraints of the community, created a fast-paced, intensive
production in a manner of thirteen days. Within this time period,
the play was cast and rehearsed, the set was designed and
constructed, some scenes were re-written on the spot, the lighting
was installed and designed, tickets were sold, and the production
performed on day thirteen. In a manner, it was much like the
"Sketches" performance of Swamp Gravy, only done in a far shorter
time period.
SCRAP
METTLE SOUL
Chicago, Illinois
"THIS IS THE MOST
IMPORTANT WORK BEING DONE IN THEATER
TODAY."
~ STUDS TERKEL
Studs Terkel at the
premier of Scrap Mettle SOUL's The Whole World Gets Well,
by Jules Corriere with music by Lloyd Broadnax King
Scrap Mettle SOUL is Uptown Chicago's
Community Performance Project, Founded by director Richard Owen
Geer, bringing together the voices of the most diverse zip code in
the country.
When we run away, the Arab came and start to
cry down our houses...
They came in
our village, shot people, burned houses. I ran distance with
dad, I got tired, my dad hid me. He try to help himself. He
used bow and arrow to protect. They catch my dad and kill him
in front of me while I'm hiding. I want to run to him, but
another person grabbed me and stopped me, so I, too, would not be
killed. I sleep in the yard and hide. At night I wake up and heard
sound of boys crying in forest. I followed sound of this and found
my colleagues. We don't know where we going, but run a long distance
and met group of older people. Older boys were 9 and 11.
I was 6.
There were
thousands of us, all from the Sudan , ages six to fourteen. Running
away. We had no choice. If we did not, we were hunted down and
killed or sold into slavery. We walk to Ethiopia . There was a
little desert between countries. It was in summer. We ran
out of water and try to sleep under shrubs. Our body began to
crack and bleed and no shoes to wear, some of us feel tired, with
blistered feet from sand. One of they guys, the hyenas came.
We pull him away from the hyenas. He die anyway. A lot of the guys
were eaten by lions or crocodiles. I was so tired. My older brother
encourage me not to give up.
It teach us
how you take care of your brother. When there was no
food, and I find some, I say hey, guys, I got some food, you want to
share it? Because some other time, somebody might have food and they
will share with me. We all learn from each other. And now I am in
America , have place to share, I help to bring others here, to be
safe. To share with them. ~From The Other Way, by Jules
Corriere
Scrap Mettle SOUL (SMS) was founded in 1994 by director and
teacher, Dr. Richard Owen Geer. SMS is committed to creating
professionally produced plays annually, based on locally gathered
stories about the experiences of the people of our community.
Uptown, Chicago is statistically the most diverse zip code in the
United States . Over 100 languages are spoken at the local high
school, and almost every economic range is seen in this Uptown and
Edgewater neighborhood. In fact, SMS is one of the few projects in
this community where members from all sides of the issues dividing
it—such as affordable housing-- can work together in harmony as they
sing, dance and act together the stories of their place. Politics
may divide neighbors outside of the theater, but inside the theater,
story takes over. After all, how can anyone argue with another’s
lived experience? SMS is the place in Uptown where story steps in
where politics fail.
All roles are performed by community members, which include
homemakers, business makers, homeowners, homeless and formerly
homeless, students, teachers, electricians, charitable volunteers
and business executives. SMS encourages inclusive participation
through holding interviews, classes, workshops, meetings, and
performances. This process empowers individuals and develops
understanding and friendship between diverse people.
For More Information about Scrap Mettle SOUL, click
here to visit their website.
STEPPIN' UP
Chicago, Illinois
"The Best Community Theater
Performance I have ever seen."
~Cheryl Corley, National Public Radio
I’m the first
bullet Linda touched...
shoved in the
gun she got when she was fifteen. Shoved in the eyes of the man she
called father. Held there for an instant, in the chamber, ready to
cut through sky and bone, waiting for the pull. But the pull came
when she pulled the gun away, leaving him there thinking about
it.
I was ready to
leave the chamber and find the old man, nothing personal to me, just
what I do. To Linda, it was personal. ~From Steppin' Up: Deep Enough To Swallow
Me Whole by Jules Corriere
Steppin' Up: Deep Enough to
Swallow Me Whole is a foot stomping, hand clapping,
theatrical performance based on The Bethel Cultural Arts exhibition,
Steppin' Up: Journeys From The Soul. This production, written by Jules Corriere and
directed by Richard Owen Geer and Jules Corriere, with Choreography
by Kevin Iega Jeff, tells the stories of Westside heroes and every
day activists, from the Civil Rights Era to the present, who have
overcome tremendous obstacles in order to succeed in life. The
result is a cast of sixty-five community residents, professional
actors, musicians and singers to present this Chicago premiere
performance.
Bethel New Life, a nationally known
community development corporation (CDC) celebrating its 25th
anniversary this year, commissioned the piece and helped cast
community residents to play some of the 62 different characters in
the two-act play.
To learn more about the outstanding and important work Bethel New
Life is doing in this Chicago Community, click here
to visit their website.
SWAMP GRAVY
Colquitt, Georgia
THE OFFICIAL FOLK LIFE PLAY OF
GEORGIA
SWAMP GRAVY is the original Community
Performance founded by Richard Geer and Joy Jinks along with the
Miller County Arts Council in 1992. Since the initial production,
Sketches, written by Jo Carson, and performed in the Elementary
School Auditorium, this project has created enormous, wide spread
change in the community.
After a departure of five years, Founding Director Richard Geer,
along with Jules Corriere, returned to Swamp Gravy as Co-Artistic
Directors. In addition to the two seasons of Community
Performance productions, Geer and Corriere are working with the
Colquitt Miller Arts Council in developing their summer and winter
Professional Seasons.
WIDESPREAD COMMUNITY
CHANGE
COTTON HALL, now the home of Swamp Gravy, was once the cotton
warehouse, which had not been used in many years. With the vision of
CPI artists, Richard Geer, Joe Varga and Brackley Frayer, working
with the community, this abandoned building became the premiere
performance house for all of the Swamp Gravy shows following
Sketches, and hosts other programs, as well. Within the complex is a
refreshment area, gift shop, and museum.
The birth of Swamp Gravy also gave
rise to a tremendous number of businesses, as well as community and
social programs:
The Tarrer Inn Bed and
Breakfast
After School Program:
Project Bounce
New Life Learning
Center
Story Telling
Festival
Market on the
Square
Swamp Gravy
Institute
Gift Shop
Museum
Children's
Museum
For More about Swamp
Gravy, click here to visit their website.
THE
BAUEN CAMP
Parkman, Wyoming
The Bauen Camp provides a beautiful
and safe place for young people from around the world to grow their
art and life skills for the purpose of building stronger communities
and a better world.
Richard Geer and Jules Corriere
served as Session Directors of The Bauen Camp in 2003, 2005 and
2006. Richard serves on the Board of Directors for the Camp.
For more information on the
important work done at Bauen Camp, please visit click here
to visit their website.
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