festival overview
Community Conversations – discussion, analysis, synthesis
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 ...
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Closing Ceremony – making our pledges to the future
How do you end ten days of epic art-making and community discussions around where we want to go as a community and how we might get there? Why, with an even more epic Closing Ceremony. Taking over Payrow Plaza, the Closing Ceremony will invite the entire community to come see ...
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Community Supper – breaking bread together
A chance to break bread together while we talk and share our impressions and takeaways from the Festival experience, the Community Supper is a culmination of Festival Unbound. It will give an opportunity for everyone to reflect on the ten days of arts they just experienced and discuss. There will ...
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Finding H.D. – past and future female voices
The premiere of a new play by Mock Turtle Marionette Theater on the Lehigh Valley’s most influential artist, the celebrated feminist writer and LGBTQ icon Hilda Doolittle, featuring narrative, song, and puppetry. This performances is the culmination of a year-long community partnership between Mock Turtle, Lehigh University English Department, Bethlehem ...
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Children’s Art – colorful proclamations from fourth grade
Festival Unbound focuses on envisioning our shared future. Who better to ask than the very youth we are creating the future for? For the past year, fourth graders in Bethlehem have been thinking about what they want in a better community and creating artwork to express that dream. Thanks to the ...
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Poets, Troubadours, and Troublemakers – new songs for our city
Poets, Troubadours, and Troublemakers is a collaboration with Godfrey Daniels to create original music dedicated to Festival UnBound’s mission of envisioning our future home. Godfrey Daniels is hosting a series of workshops for singer-songwriters by notable artists like John Gorka, Anne Hills, Suzzy Roche, and Lucy Wainwright Roche. The workshop ...
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Cabaret – drinks, music, community, and late night chats
Drinks, music, and conversation at Touchstone’s home theatre — a late-night watering hole where Festival attendees can meet and talk about the day’s performances. The Cabaret Stage is loosely based on a concept that our Dictators 4 Dummies touring troupe experienced at the Human Mosaic Festival in Goleniow, Poland. Every ...
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The Youth Project – a vision from the next generation
Youth from Bethlehem’s High Schools assemble to create a new, site-specific work about their dreams and concerns for the future. Over the course of 2019, they’re meeting monthly to write, play, devise, brainstorm, and create this original piece, rooted in tall tales, poetry, monsters, songs, and triumph. I’m so excited ...
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A Joyful Noise – singing en masse!
Touchstone Theatre partners with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem to bring Festival UnBound a one-time only event highlighting the vocal talent of the valley and guest artists. The program will begin with a showcase piece performed by the Bach Choir followed by four select choral groups from throughout the valley ...
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