Interview with Evelyn Knight, coordinator of program development at Appalshop

By Ann Kilkelly

Ann Kilkelly: How long have you been involved with Appalshop?

Evelyn Knight: Just since August.

AK: What are you doing?

EK: I am the coordinator in program development. It is pretty neat. Before that I did work with Roadside on several storytelling projects in the community.

AK: What part of the community?

EK: Actually working with health issues around cancer. We were trying to do really grassroots programs in the community around cancer control. They did some training for us around gathering stories and telling stories. A play came out of it that they still use.

AK: What was the play?

EK: They call it "Life Circles". They are still doing it over in Wise County.

AK: My specific purpose right now is to find people like you who have been working with Appalshop and Roadside and get their sense of what their function is in the community.

EK: You mean our function in the community?

AK: Yes, and also what the theater and the art projects actually do for the community.

EK: We were working with a project called the Appalachian Leadership Initiative on Cancer for the Central Highlands. Gary Burkett and I put together this project where we were going to work more with story. We collaborated with Roadside. Ron did the training for our community facilitators. Then when they went out into the community we learned all kinds of things about what people are able to do easily, what kind of support they need, that kind of thing. One of the things that we were particularly interested in is what would happen afterwards. What would they use? What would come out of it? We piloted it in three counties. Two of those counties have carried it forward. One very actively. That is the play you are thinking of in Wise County.

AK: And that was with Ron? Or did they develop it on their own?

EK: Well, it grew out of two things. During the training we developed little plays based on the stories that we told. The theme was then picked up and used by Wise County to produce their stories in the same way. Essentially the theme is that cancer is an equal-opportunity disease. Sort of the notion that it strikes anyone, we are all at risk, and therefore the lines in the community need to soften up because we are all together in this.

AK: Do you think it made people’s lives easier to do that? Did it affect their jobs? Their home life?

EK: It gave the people who were looking for ways to get a message out in the community, it gave them something engaging that they could take out into the community. They take the play out into the community and present it, get dialogue going around it. It is a vehicle for community organizing and discussion. The other side of that is when we are doing the story circles themselves. They are very powerful. The evaluations that we did around that were kind of like, "Wow. If I had known that this was going to be so good I would have brought more of my friends. I would wish more people came. We need to do this with more people." The notion itself was very daunting. We are going to go and tell cancer stories. That sounds fun. So, we left the door wide open as to what kind of artistic product was going to come out of that. One county did a quilt. They made quilt blocks out of everything. Each quilt box was a story. They sold cards and made each block into a greeting card and sold the cards. We have a lot of big themes for cancer control, especially cancer control around Mother’s Day. So, they were making lots of cards from the quilt blocks. We had a book that described the stories, that type of thing. You think, well, how did it happen that that group decided to do a quilt? Well, it happened because that group of people were involved with quilters.

Michael Fields is a founding member of the Dell'Arte Company where he acts, directs, teaches, creates plays, manages all company business and oversees development. He is the producing director of the Dell’Arte Mad River Festival. He is also the director of the California State Summer School for the Arts Theatre Program and resident director with Het Vervolg Theatre of Holland. Fields has taught at the American Conservatory Theatre, the California Institute for the Arts, the Dutch National Theatre School and the Danish Dramaturgs Institute. He has directed numerous productions nationally and internationally. He received 1984 and 1986 Drama-logue awards and a 1984 S.F. Bay Area Critics Circle award. He holds a BA in Communication Arts from the University of San Francisco and an MFA in Directing from Humboldt State University. Fields is on the board of directors of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) in New York, he is a member of the James Irvine Foundation California Arts Leadership Forum, and has served as a National Endowment for the Arts panelist.

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