Festival UnBound has grown out of ongoing dialogue with the community. Many of Touchstone’s projects develop this way– out of story gathering or interviews related to major questions with which the community is wrestling.
Although most of the “headline” events in the festival are arts events– concerts, plays, theatrical spectacles, participatory experiences– there is also a component of discussion, analysis, and synthesis. There will be a panel discussion following the Saturday matinee performance of “Prometheus/Redux” on 10/05 and a Sustainability Forum on the afternoon of Saturday 10/12. The “Community Conversations” series is part of this effort to help process the arts events in the festival, and to understand their themes in the context of our community.
The festival is not coming from a place of “wouldn’t it be great to make a play about…” Rather, it is coming from the desire to address a need in the community: to be actively engaged in charting the course for our own future. The various shows in the festival explore the ideas that were generated in focus group discussions over the course of more than a year. We have taken those ideas and are using our various tools as artists to explore them. That’s what we do. Then, through mid-festival discussions like the “community conversations,” we will unpack those projects and re-contextualize the themes.
I often travel to theatre festivals as part of my research. It is not uncommon for there to be a discussion component running through the festivals. Sometimes that takes place in a more formal setting like an on-stage interview that an audience can observe, and other times it is more casual–more of a moderated discussion in a relaxed setting. Our approach is more like the latter.
The community is invited to join us for small group discussions over lunch at Cafe the Lodge each weekday from 12-1. Each person will be responsible for purchasing their own lunch. We have a private room set aside for these conversations. I will invite guests– representative artists from the festival events, as well as community leaders who are engaged in the day to day work associated with the themes of the performances– and will moderate the conversation with them and with the attendees at the lunch. For example, if we are discussing healthcare, we might have the writer of a play that explores healthcare, and also a hospital administrator, or someone who works in health policy.
It is our hope that this festival is not just a week of amazing arts experiences, but a useful catalyst for community dialogue and engagement. For generations, we were “bound” to the Steel. As such, we were not truly in control of our own future. For the last 20 years we have become increasingly independent of that. Now that we are “unbound,” what future do we want to create for ourselves?
~ Christopher Shorr
This is, in many ways, the “best” part of the Festival. I hope people will engage, listen–particularly to points of view that are different or new–and respond knowing that the challenges we’re facing require us to “triangulate them” through different perspectives, finding the common ground that can be our way forward together.