Interview with Kim Corbin, company member

By Keith Hennessy

Kim Corbin: I’ve been here since the very beginning. One of the few that have been here since the bitter beginning.

Keith Hennessy: As someone who has been here from the beginning, have you done all aspects of the theater production? I know that you did costumes for the last show. Is that what you tend to do more of?

KC: At this point, yes. I was performing more before. I worked in the office for awhile, did that stage-sweeping thing, bathroom cleaning.

KH: What do you think have been the biggest evolutionary steps that the company has taken?

KC: Certainly getting this space. We started with no space, then renting this and that. That has been a giant thing. We can produce guest artists a bit more satisfactorily. I guess we started thinking we just want to do theater, the social impact thing sort of grew.

KH: Say more about that.

KC: Hell, I don’t know, just that we always try in the original work to address an issue or include people that might not otherwise be included. That kind of thing. That is always a big part of the planning.

KH: In terms of the history, what would you say are some of your top favorite projects that have happened.

KC: I do think about "It’s About Going." That was when we had a different place in the complex. Act One was outside and Act Two was back in the theater space. It was very fun. It was collaborative. Lots of people, big old cast, Jump-Start people and also other artists in town. We do that a lot, it is always lots of fun. Lots of time using nonperformers on stage. They usually bring lots to it. It involved my car. We worked with a woman who is deaf and blind. It was just dancing, original funky music, lighting outside, film, all those technical nightmares. It was exciting. There have been lots of one-person shows. Those are neat, to watch people grow and look at new subjects.

KH: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that have faced the whole group?

KC: I think that money is always a worry. I think that production values and time. We all miss being able to work together. So many of us have other jobs. When we have had our artistic retreats it has been such a luxury. I think those are the biggest concerns hanging over our heads.

KH: Talk to me about what you see as Jump-Start’s relationship to community and how the sort of expanding communities that Jump-Start touches might affect the work, or how you think Jump-Start affects the communities. Anything that occurs to you on how Jump-Start is not just a theater company that is concerned about what happens inside the walls here. How they are concerned with their audiences and where that extends.

KC: First of all, I think about working with the schools in our neighborhood. That is basic. Those kiddos are maybe not from the most wealthy families, so the program is dealing with the kids in their own communities, guiding them through the program. I think it is hopefully developing future audience for Jump-Start, but also just helping them think more creatively in looking at their own lives. Like I said about what we choose to do, or what people think about when they are starting to create a piece, partly because our company is so fantastically diverse. It blows my mind every time we are all in a room together. You think what in the world are you doing in the same room with you, it is so great. That automatically, when they are developing their own work then they are going to bring their own background and community, which hopefully will reach another one and bring people in to share the experience. Even Dianne being interested in something — now the audience that was here today, a bunch of Freethinkers. How would those people ever come to this theater?

KH: Even if they weren’t Freethinkers, the group that came basically fit into the category of elderly, white, Texans who don’t live in the big city coming to Jump-Start to see a work of theater. That is mind-blowing alone, let alone whatever the content was. That there was also a socially fairly radical, nonmainstream content almost seems secondary to who one of the primary communities interested in this work is. They are the children and grandchildren of these people. I mean, it was amazing.

KC: Bringing this show "Big, Bad and Beautiful" that is written by a woman, and she is big. She is very big. It is performed by three Latinas that are big girls. It is just incredibly popular and brings people in who perhaps don’t go to theater much. They wouldn’t necessarily come to Jump-Start. Women come and bring their daughters and sisters and granddaughters and have a right good time watching this show. That is one thing that is exciting to me, the divergent types of audiences that come in because of what is on stage.

KH: Is there any kind of nutshell impression that you would like to give, or how Jump-Start might be a model for someone else?

KC: I don’t know what it is in the scope of the grand scheme, but it is amazing to me that we have been around for 15 years. Like I said, we are a strange gathering of people. It feels like family, we all love each other and, of course, hate each other. It is fun to be around together.

Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, interdisciplinary artist choreographer and community arts organizer living in community in San Francisco. Hennessy's solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. Since 1998, he has performed with Cahin-Caha, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Hennessy was a member of the performance collective Core and was a founding member and principle collaborator in Contraband, a San Francisco-based performance company. Hennessy co-directs 848 Community Space. He is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator and agitator.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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