This episode is Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater. Our conversation with editor Ben Fink and contributor Arnaldo J. Lopez. explores Roadside's 50-year history of creative collaboration percolating at the crossroads of art, community, and America's struggle to craft an authentic living democracy.

BIO’s

Ben Fink: Ben Fink worked with the Roadside ensemble from 2015 through 2020, as a member of the Betsy! Scholars’ Circle, as the founding organizer of the Letcher County Culture Hub and the Performing Our Future coalition, and as the cofounder of the cross-partisan dialogue project Hands Across the Hills. He has also served as dramaturg on the German premieres of  two Broadway musicals, made theater with Turkish and Arab high school students, and chaired a Lutheran faith community in Minnesota. His work in theater, organizing, pedagogy, and economic development has been featured by Salon.com, the Brookings Institution, TDR/The Drama Review, Harvard Law School, Americans for the Arts, PolicyLink, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2020, Ben was recognized by Time magazine as one of “27 People Bridging Divides Across America.” He is the general editor of Art in a Democracy. 

Arnaldo J Lopez: is a cultural worker with a Ph.D. in Latin/o American Literatures and Cultures from New York University. He first joined Pregones Theater when the company set out to transform a South Bronx warehouse into a vibrant performing arts center, and later helped engineer a merger with the historic Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in Manhattan. Versed in a broad set of creative, community, and nonprofit topics, he works with artists in mapping paths toward joyful and sustainable practice. His background also includes ten years in letterpress and graphic design.

Notable Mentions

Art in a Democracy, the selected plays of Roadside Theater, volumes 1 and 2: This two-volume anthology tells the story of Roadside Theater’s first 45 years and includes nine award-winning original play scripts; ten essays by authors from different disciplines and generations, which explore the plays’ social, economic, and political circumstances; and a critical recounting of the theater’s history from 1975 through 2020. 

ArtinAdemocracy.org: The official Art in a Democracy website.

New Village Press is Art in a Democracy's publisher. The mission of New Village Press is to promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of issues vital to the development of healthy, creative, and socially just communities. To that end, New Village publishes transdisciplinary books that animate emerging movements in societal transformation. In conjunction, the Press also sponsors lectures, forums, and exhibitions for the public, especially for those communities that are underserved.

Junebug Productions emerged from the Free Southern Theater in 1980 with a mission to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community. "Through interrogation, we challenge ourselves and those aligned with the organization to make greater and deeper contributions towards a just society."

John O’Neal was a co-founder of the Free Southern Theater, Field Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Founder of Junebug Productions. This list contains content that pays tribute to his incredible work for our field, and for freedom and justice in America. This HowlAround resource contains essays, video’s and a podcast featuring John O’Neal and his work.

Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater: Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (aka Pregones/PRTT) is a multigenerational performing ensemble, multidiscipline arts presenter, and owner/steward of bilingual arts facilities in The Bronx and Manhattan. Our mission is to champion a Puerto Rican/Latinx cultural legacy of universal value through creation and performance of original plays and musicals, exchange and partnership with other artists of merit, and engagement of diverse audiences.

Appalshop was founded in 1969 as a project of the US government's “war on poverty.” Over its five decades of lively existence, it's grown to become an important amplifier of the voices of the Appalachian region. Its mission is pretty simple, namely, “to develop effective ways of using media and cultural expression to address the complex issues facing the region.”

“We've been making art and media in the mountains since 1969. Now we're powered by the largest net-metered renewable energy system in Eastern Kentucky, and home to the largest single body of creative work on Appalachia in the world.” 

Promise of a Love Song: Promise of a Love Song interweaves three love stories, each from the particular culture of the play’s creators: Pregones Theater, a Puerto Rican company based in the Bronx; Junebug Productions, an African American theater based in New Orleans; and Roadside Theater 

Thousand Kites: Thousand Kites is the title of both a play script by Roadside Theater and an interdisciplinary project by Appalshop, Inc. addressing prison justice. 

Puerto Rican, Appalachian Musical, Betsy: Created and produced by Pregones Theater and Roadside Theater, BETSY! tells the story of a Bronx jazz singer forced to confront her twin Spanish Caribbean and Scotch-Irish roots. Her dilemma stirs up the ghosts of six generations of American women, and musical currents spanning four continents. 

The music for the audiogram trailer for this episode came from the score for the production of Betsy. Here are the liner notes:

The first phase of script and music development for Betsy (www.roadside.org/program/betsy-co…pregones-theater) took place at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. The following songs were recorded live during a workshop rehearsal at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. Musicians and vocalists include: Beegie Adair, piano & vocals; Ron Short, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, flute & vocals; Connye Florance, vocals; Caroline Peyton, vocals; Roger Spencer, string bass; Jim White, percussion; and Andre Reiss, guitar. All music is copyright Beegie Adair or Ron Short.

Art in a Democracy

HOMEWARD NOW SHALL I JOURNEY”

Homeward now shall I journey

Homeward upon the rainbow.

Homeward now shall I journey

Homeward upon the rainbow.

To life unending and beyond it

Yea homeward now shall I journey.

To joy unchanging and beyond it

Yea homeward now shall I journey.

These books represent Roadside’s, significant, but often overlooked contributions to the evolution of American theater. It's a complex story, born of songs I like the one we just heard from the Roadside-Junebug production of Junebug/Jack in 1990. Yep, old songs, new songs, and tall tales rising from the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky and spreading to other communities as far afield as the Bronx, New Orleans, the Zuni Pueblo, and America's prison industrial complex.

At their heart, these plays and their creation, stories provide a vivid portrait of a 50-year history of creative collaboration percolating at the crossroads of art, community, and the ongoing American struggle to craft an authentic living democracy. Our guests for this show are the book’s editor, Ben Fink, and Arnaldo Lopez, the Managing Director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, one of the collaborating theater companies profiled in the book.

This is Change the Story, Change the World, my name is Bill Cleveland.

Part One South of the Mountain.

Before we start our conversation, a little history seems appropriate. Roadside Theater is one of a number of programs and projects operating under the auspices of a media, arts and cultural organization located at the heart of Central Appalachia and Whitesburg Kentucky called Appalshop.

Roadside Theater was born in 1975. Here's how it describes itself. “We are a professional ensemble of storytellers and theater makers, hailing from the mountains of Central Appalachia. We draw inspiration from our area's rich history, as well as the histories of cultures and communities we've come to love since starting this journey.”

Art in a Democracy, the book shares nine original road company scripts and the stories and historical context of their making, written by some of the Roadside saga's key players,

Arnaldo and Ben, welcome to the show. So, Ben, could you begin by describing the context and format of the two volumes you're here to talk about?

And the first is about a people's history of the Appalachian coal fields, primarily Kentucky and Virginia. But if you live in West Virginia, if you live in that are not in any way linear narratives, right?

These are family stories. This is investigative journalism. These are tall tales. These are songs, both traditional and original, but taken together in a kind of stark relief. They tell a story of the people living in the coal fields from the first time that the Cherokee and the Scotch Irish met up until the American War in Vietnam, including histories of people from this area who went there, cuz Central Appalachia, along with African American inner cities, biggest suppliers, to the US military.

And it's through looking deeply at that story that you understand the histories of a lot of other places like it. But it's a hyper-focus on this particular area and the people that are there and in different ways. The struggles with becoming modern, including industrialization, including the move from farms to coal camps, the introduction of technology into life, introduction of different cultural norms into that life.

[00:06:25] BF: You know, I was just talking with Ron Short, who wrote or co-wrote the majority of the plays in both of these volumes, and he said, “You know, when Roadside got started in the seventies, it was a lot simpler than all the theory that's come up since then.” He said, “You know, I just didn't wanna go into the coal mines and my daddy showed me”…and that's story, story of Ron's dad is south of the mountain, one of the plays in volume one. He says, “My daddy took me into the coal mine, and he said, “Son, you don't wanna be here.” And I said, “You're right. I don't wanna be here.”

So, he figured out another way to live and he figured out a way. To live telling stories and singing songs and performing. And specifically telling stories and singing songs, and performing in ways that reflected back to his neighbors, a sense of their own history, their own stories, their own legacy that they didn't have, and they didn't have it because it had gotten taken away from them by the coal companies and the industrialists who'd come in and said, “You're, you cannot do anything other than go under that ground and get paid nothing and take out a whole lot of value for me, and we'll take care of the rest of it.” And went around with some of his buddies to say, “Actually, we've got this incredibly rich legacy of beauty and a history connected to that beauty of making a life for ourselves on our own terms, and with tremendous wisdom embodied in these really simple stories.”

[00:08:54] Thad: Wasn't it a nice day? Yeah, it was. I, I didn't get to spend much time and I just wanted to know if y'all had a good time, if I was going to be miserable, I don't want the rest of the world here to. But it, his kind of day I, I just got thinking about that is a kind day where you're just real glad that you ain't the only person.

This is the kind of day you need people to share things, but you, you feel good that you know that's somebody else out there seeing the same thing that you are and somehow other makes both of you feel bigger at the same time. You kind of feel 'em smaller, but I got nowhere to go with that.

So, we come down here to share something else with you though. It's just a little story here. We kind of talk about a place called home, and you know where that is. See, we don't have to tell you that, but we'll sing you a song about our home sortie, sortie, and you probably will even know where that is too. But we'll, we'll sing.

Sometimes it goes like this.

“CITIES OF GOLD”

Tell me where do you come from

Tell me where will you go

To the mountains around you

Or the Cities of Gold.

CHORUS

Cities of Gold Cities of Gold

Oh so lonely and so cold

You can lose your very soul

Living in the Cities of Gold.

And the land of a million secrets

And the land that gave us life

Gives up all its treasures

Sadly hides its face and dies.

CHORUS

Won’t you listen to the music

Flowing sweetly through the air

They’re the songs of our fathers and mothers

Aren’t you glad they’re still here.

And then volume two is the way that gets applied in work, across cultures and across places, and on immediate social issues. touring alongside other companies, black theater companies, from grassroots areas, Puerto Rican theater companies with Arnaldo’s here, with an indigenous theater company, Jewish theater companies, all sorts, and recognizing that they had been doing that same work in their communities and their parts of the country.

And so that's really the story of these volumes.

So, I know that volume two is a different period historically, but does the format and structure of that volume change in any way?

Asking, how do we meet these challenges together in ways that we never could alone. And four plays in that volume: two that we made with Pregones, two that we made with Junebug, including Promise of a Love Song, which is with both Junebug and Pregones, and a fourth that is made in collaboration with those that are imprisoned, those that were guarding them, and those families of people in prisons on both sides as prisons got built in the coal fields as a supposed answer to economic development. Thus, again, setting black folks primarily from urban areas, and white folks, primarily from rural areas against each other. So, all of these four plays in different ways, talking about the way that we work interculturally, and we resist the ways in which we are set against each other. And again, with essayists from different perspectives, shedding light on those stories

BC: I just wanna reinforce that point because I think at first blush, many people would say, oh, well, here's two books with scripts representing work done over the last 50 years. And unless you're in the theater, most folks just aren't used to reading scripts. Just wanna say that having just dipped my toe in both of these volumes, that the essays, the writing, the history, the stitching together, the story, of these different communities creating theater and finding each other and understanding that the same impulse was resonating across all these communities. Well, it's extraordinary.

So, this is more than just a couple of books with scripts. I think the scripts are kind of the icing on the cake. And I think these are stories of discovery. And peeking in on the history is absolutely thrilling.

[00:17:33] AL: Certainly, I, I think that the stitching and the finding each other, that is part of the sort of common experience and the willingness to, to get together for these companies. I, I love the anecdote about Ron coming into this work. And I think it, it really resonates when I think of Rosalba when I think of Alan and Jorge, some of our colleagues who are in the first generation for Pregones Theater. And the fact that, you know, from a relatively early age mobilized by political experiences of the sixties and the seventies, they were looking out to generate cultural work in a way that was a, a binding, you know, as a means to bring people together as a means to affirm in a very public way that, you know, we are a nation of many differences and that the question of identity and the question of, of vocation and place that, that they're cut through.

And luckily there are many contexts in which we do connect with like-minded folk and we're always, the feeling of being part of a movement is part of what energizes us. So, so that's exciting.

Promise of a Love Song is, is very special work. I am very fond of its title. The title comes from John O'Neal at the time, leading Junebug Productions and Pregones Theater in the Bronx, Junebug in New Orleans, and, and Roadside in Kentucky. You know, what are the odds? Can we talk about the things that make all of us folks who are seeking to claim space and identity and place and community and you know, do we have enough space to talk about how we relate to things outside of the places where we are at home and comfortable. And can we do that with a whole lot of food and a whole lot of music? Because that's really what helps us keep going. And, and I think that that, that's the, that's the genesis of it. And I should say that the differences are embedded throughout and music playing such a big role.

And I think opening the doors for each creator community to generate, its, its language, bring up, its, its stories, its poetry, the things that they cherish, and the pride that came in that exchange these are all the things that were fundamental to make it something lasting as it was.

AL: The script ended up interweaving three love stories. In Roadside's, Charming, Billy, an elderly mother, cares for a son living with developmental disability, both shaped by the hardships and blessings of rural life in Appalachia. Pregones’ Silent Dancing adapted from a story by Judith Ortiz Cofer Juxtaposes, a young woman's memories of growing up in Puerto Rico and her father's plight as an immigrant in New York. Junebug’s Starry Lovers tells of two black activists building a family in the bosom of the civil rights movement.

Together the three stories grapple with intersecting and distinctly American embodiments of race, culture, language, geography, and oppression. Each has its own accent, color, and historical context. Each also triggers certain narrative expectations in the audience. To watch the show is to have those expectations constantly readjusted.

In this scene, a small piece of that revealed history is shared in dialogue and duet sung by Elise Santora and Caridad De La Luz playing two parts of Betsy's divided and confusing past.

Caridad de la Luz: Was Eli's father, unknown?

Elise Santora: No, his father was Eli Phipps. He stayed around just long enough for me to bear another boy. Shortly after that, boy's, he sold me a parcel of land for the sum of $18. Mm-hmm. Nine acres on the waters of Elk Creek. Yes, indeed.

I tell myself

No one but me

Will pay the price

For how I’ve lived.

But when I look in the eyes of my children

I see My whole life staring back at me.

CHORUS (spirit and betsy sing)

Today I start my life over

I hold my dreams in my hand I own my own name now

I own my own land.

[00:24:45] AL: There was a lot of talk about what this project could be even before it crystallized into something concrete. There were many avenues that could have been pursued and the three companies were already committed to learning about each other; visiting their home, staying there, like having residencies that were substantial, opening it up to live audiences, having conversations.

At one point there was the, the possibility of writing a single more traditional looking play, right? Collaborating in. But the idea of this kaleidoscopic approach where each company would be given their own space and there will be a weaving in and out of those stories, that really crystallized and I think was truer, truer to, any other attempt. When I think of the differences, you know, , it was part of the experience like being there with folks who have different claim on American history and a real desire to push it forward without omissions. Very exciting. This for me, it coincides with the top of my tenure at Pregones and it was a real privilege to be able to travel to New Orleans and meet all these incredible artists and have the opportunity to sort of gauge it in place.

So Ben, from its early beginnings with the cycle of plays that came out of coal country, I know that Roadside was very sensitive to theater's potential to separate the stories from the people and the communities where they were born. . I'm thinking that the fact that many of those community members were embedded in the making process probably helped keep the work accountable. But for the work represented in volume two at any given moment in the process, most of the partners were guests from other places and cultures. And I'm wondering how you work together to both keep that accountability to the home stories and allow for surprising hybrids to emerge. It seems like you had a gigantic learning laboratory for creative give and take for art in a democracy. Even art as democracy. Could you talk about this and the relationship between this work and our current struggle in terms of this thing we call democracy?

It's like, no, there has always been these incredible obstacles and yet, What Roadside working with Pregones, working with Junebug Productions in the Deep South and a whole bunch of other companies said is, “We can recognize that. We can recognize the depth of the problems.” and we can, as Arnaldo said, “start from the stories we share, the food we share, the relationships we share.”

It's not either or. Same way. It's not either or do we dig deep into our own community, or do we go wide, building relationships with other communities, the deeper you go, the wider you can go. Folks at Roadside talk about a bridge, right? The span of a bridge can only be as strong as the posts on either side of that bridge are deep. And so, we build deep posts within our communities, within Puerto Ricans and the Bronx within white folks in Appalachia, within black folks in the deep south. And then from those deep posts, we're able to build that bridge. and we're able to build that bridge in a way that is really specific root in our communities so that when, for instance, folks from the Prairie in Nebraska come to see promise of a Love song that are not from any of these cultures, they immediately see themselves in it.

Just the way people in our communities do. and I mean, this is me, right? I'm a Jew from Connecticut with New York Roots. And I see myself in this so clearly. And we know that people see themselves in it so clearly because after the shows we're doing story circles, we're having people coming up to the stage and sharing stories with the performers that the play is a working out of this problem is a dialogue in the same way that the backstage work is. And in the same way that the essays in this anthology are, like you said, a, you said a bit ago, people aren't used to reading scripts. And I get that. And what I'll say to people is these are not scripts like you are used to.

These are collections of stories and collections of memories and people looking to make sense of their own experience and how they can make it possible for them and their families to survive and for their lives to mean something in the world. And so the line between the plays and the essays is actually a little bit blurry.

All these different voices, some on stage, some off the stage. Exploring the same questions variously in dialogue with each other and with any luck in dialogue with the reader.

[00:31:13] BF: And it mirrors, I mean, physically, right? We keep the lights on during the show so the audience can see each other. There's no curtain that goes down there. You bridge the orchestra pit, sometimes even bring the audience up onto the stage. It's exactly that because that audience intervention is every bit as much of the show as the scripted parts that the actors.

Do. And in fact, if you look at the videos of the shows, you see, they don't always line up with the scripts that are in this book. The scripts are the best guesses, but these are always built as we go along in dialogue with the other actors and with the audiences. Yeah.

Are so few and far between, and I think what these books testify to is another narrative, one of creative abundance. No, we're not hurting for stories out there. We have thousands of years of stories here. And you know, in addition to the abundance of stories contained in art in a democracy, these are really beautiful books and I have to say very jargon free.

[00:35:15] AL: The one thing that struck me most immediately was how accessible the two volumes are. , I was so happy to, to, to see is something that is an invitation and an opening.

I, I feel that right now we are at a moment where there. A lot of recognition of the lineage of this work, right? It's not out of the blue. These are, this is one example, 50 years. And talk about looking for the strong posts. I think, my company was founded as a touring company and they were, they were looking to represent, but they were also looking to, to learn and acknowledge.

So finding other communities and other artists that were also. Looking deeply at their position, how do we not just lift our communities, right? But understand how we are shaping a nation, you know? And, and, and hopefully for the better. There's a great deal. The alignment of this work, like you said earlier, is abundance.

And I think that in as much as there are multiple histories of oppression cutting through, . There is also a keen sense that hey, a truly popular theater, is one that reflects the riches of the people, so there's also a great pride again in, bringing onto this stage elements of Puerto Rican culture in our case, that have continuously provided nourishment for people to keep.

[00:38:10] BF: In addition to what Arnoldo is saying about abundance, a parallel theme going right along with it is affirmation that some years ago, American Theater Magazine interviewed one of the founding members of Roadside and said, “What's Roadside's place in the history of American protest theater?” and the response was, “Roadside is not a theater of protest, it's a theater of affirmation.”

It's a through line about that affirmation about everyone has value and it sounds like the silliest most milk toast, vanilla thing in the world. Who's gonna disagree that everybody has value? No, no, no. Everybody has value. Yes. The person behind bars has as much value as the person at the head of the corporation.

And that's not just a nice idea to say, but we're gonna make it true. And that ends up being a revolutionary thing in many ways. But the way that populism is misunderstood is from the very beginning, from the late 19th century, you have these demagogues, or you have these opportunists who've said, “Yes, I am your voice power to the people through me.”

And Donald Trump is only one of so many that that history's gone all the way back because that rhetoric is so powerful and so appealing that actually everybody gets to have worth and that nobody's worth more than anybody else. And so, the difference between actual populism embodied in these volumes and the fake populism of a demagogue is the fake populism says, “I speak for you.” and the real populism says, “We speak for ourselves.” And that's what these volumes are about, is people and communities coming together who are supposed to hate each other, who are supposed to fear each other, who are supposed to have a deep distrust of each other, saying “We all matter. We all have value, and we are gonna insist upon that and the world together, speaking for ourselves and with each other.”

This is just one person's opinion, but I, I think you've succeeded mightily here now. It's pretty hot off the presses, right? When did it come out?

[00:41:53] BC: great. And the publisher is New Village Press. Okay. And so there's numerous places you'll be able to find information about this book , that will all be in our show notes. And I'm assuming you're gonna be doing some public events.

[00:42:23] BC: All right and thank you both for a great conversation.

[00:42:29] BC: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for doing this.

And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. If you want to hear more from Mr. Ben Fink and his adventures with Roadside and Appalshop checkout, change the story. Episodes 17 and 18. As, you know, Change the Story / Change the World is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. Our incredible soundscape and theme come from the talented musical pen of Judy Munsen. Our text editing is by Andre Nnebe. Our effects are from freesound.org, and our inspiration, as always, comes from the inimitable presence of UKE235. Until next time stay well, do good, nd spread the good word.