A Question of Values

Experienced community-based artists have come to realize that the best projects are successful because all the participants can articulate the principles by which they operate. A "matrix" of common principles was drawn up at a notable multicultural gathering of grassroots theater artists at Cornell University during the '90s. This "matrix" addresses such issues as voice, a sense of place, tradition, inclusion, collective responsibility and equity. These principles can fairly be said to underlie much of the best grassroots work now being conducted in all disciplines under the rubric "community-based art." *

-Linda Burnham

A Matrix Articulating the Principles of Grassroots Theater

Grassroots theater is given its voice by the community from which it arises. The makers of grassroots theater are part of the culture from which the work is drawn. The people who are the subjects of the work are part of its development from inception through presentation. Their stories and histories inform the work, their feedback during the creation process shapes it. The audience is not consumer of, but participant in the performance.

Grassroots theater grows out of a commitment to place. It is grounded in the local and specific, which, when rendered faithfully and creatively, can affect people anywhere.

The traditional and indigenous are integral to grassroots theater, and valued for their ability to help us maintain continuity with the past, respond to the present, and prepare for the future. Thus, the relationship to the traditional and indigenous is dynamic, not fixed.

Grassroots theater strives to be inclusive in its producing practices. Presentation of the work is made in partnership with community organizations. Performance are held in meeting places where the entire community feels welcome. Ticket prices are kept affordable.

Grassroots theater recognize that management structures and business practices are value-laden; they affect the mission, goals and creative processes of organizations through their structure and practices, self-reliance and collective responsibility.

Grassroots theater is linked to the struggles for cultural, social, economic and political equity for all people. It is fundamentally a theater of hope, and often of joy. It is recognized that to advocate for equity is to meet resistance, and to meet with no resistance indicates a failure to enter the fight.

* This "matrix" was published in From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective by Dudley Cocke, Harry Newman and Janet Salmon-Rue, a report on a two-and-a-half day symposium entitled "Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective," convened in October 1992 at the Center for Theatre Arts at Cornell University. The symposium was attended by 100 practitioners, scholars and interested observers of grassroots theater. It was part of the Community-Based Arts Project, a three-year joint effort of the Cornell Department of Theatre Arts and Roadside Theater, in association with Junebug Productions; the project grew out of a prior three-year residency at Cornell by Junebug's John O'Neal. The purpose of the symposium (as stated in the report) was "to determine what grassroots theaters from various cultures and communities currently have in common, and to begin to prepare a concerted response to the present and a strategy for the future."

From the Ground Up is available through Roadside Theater.

Original CAN/API publication: February 2000