Participation Type
Workshop
Session Title
Session 5.13 Arts
Presentation #1 Title
Three Practices for Creating Community-Based Theater in the Kentucky Coalfields
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Arts and community-based performance practice are helping Central Appalachian communities elevate and access culture as a means to tell important stories and to create safe community spaces where challenging issues including economic, environmental, and community development can be discussed. The Cowan Creek Theater Project, based in Letcher County, Kentucky, is part of a recent groundswell community-based theater creation in the eastern Kentucky coalfields that is bringing neighbors together to tell their individual stories as part of an ongoing process to tell the broader stories of a community and to take action together. With the Cowan Creek Theater Project as a frame and context for this session, the moderators will share three practices which are being used in eastern Kentucky to create new theater that expresses the expertise, history, hope, and concerns of coalfields residents in the present historical moment. Participants in the workshop will be able to participate in these activities as a means of learning community-based performance practices and will gain competency and be given access to curriculum materials which will allow workshop participants to employ these practices in their own work and home communities.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Mark W. Kidd lives at the base of Pine Mountain in Whitesburg, Kentucky and on his family farm at Little Mud, Kentucky. Mark facilitates community workshops and residencies throughout the United States that incorporate theater, low-cost media, and cultural organizing.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Benjamin N. Barron is an M.Phil. candidate in Geography and the Environment at Oxford University (BA in Comparative Literature, Princeton University). His interests include sociocultural perceptions of environmental issues, more-than-human geography, Science and Technology Studies, and participatory community-based art.
Three Practices for Creating Community-Based Theater in the Kentucky Coalfields
Arts and community-based performance practice are helping Central Appalachian communities elevate and access culture as a means to tell important stories and to create safe community spaces where challenging issues including economic, environmental, and community development can be discussed. The Cowan Creek Theater Project, based in Letcher County, Kentucky, is part of a recent groundswell community-based theater creation in the eastern Kentucky coalfields that is bringing neighbors together to tell their individual stories as part of an ongoing process to tell the broader stories of a community and to take action together. With the Cowan Creek Theater Project as a frame and context for this session, the moderators will share three practices which are being used in eastern Kentucky to create new theater that expresses the expertise, history, hope, and concerns of coalfields residents in the present historical moment. Participants in the workshop will be able to participate in these activities as a means of learning community-based performance practices and will gain competency and be given access to curriculum materials which will allow workshop participants to employ these practices in their own work and home communities.
