Surveying the Community

© H. Scott Heist

Starting today and over the next few weeks Touchstone will be reaching out to the community to answer some questions about the Civil War and Bethlehem.  Today was my first day out in the field, and while I had many people who walked right past or insisted they did not have the time, I found eleven people (in three hours) who took the time to chat with me.  Below you will find the questions being asked and few of the answers I have collected so far.

1.  What does it mean to be an American?

Answers: Freedom of speech, personal freedom, freedom of choice and expression, being blessed and lucky to have those freedoms, not worrying about basic necessities, the ability to steer clear of politics and take care of the people close to you the chance to set goals and work towards that goal but not preventing others from working towards their goals, a chance a person to be who they are, freedom to protest.

 2.  Are you aware that more Americans died in the Civil War than any other American War? What do you think the conflict was about and why would a nation set upon itself with such deadly ferocity?

Answers: The war was about agrarian vs manufacturing cultures, innovation vs. tradition, slavery, North vs. South, states rights, people being able to believe what they want to believe, economics, religion, security, the government trying to control the population.

 3.  What are some issues worth fighting a war for?

Answers: Preservation of our way of life, safety, health care, opportunity, freedom, justice, self defense, equality, freedom of expression, to maintain our rights, if a group of individuals are being systematically wiped out, nothing the older I get, the more stupid war seems.

4.  Do you see connections between the Civil War and the Bethlehem you live in today?  If so, what are they?

© H. Scott Heist

Answers: The sense of entitlement, the division between the haves and the have nots, people here in Bethlehem stick to their own and don’t take kindly to outsiders, there are still class wars happening now, politics is still divisive, there is still economic oppression and there is a big difference between the laborers and the people they work for, everybody still wants what they want and think they are right.

5.  Are there any issues today that you think could rise to the level of another civil war in America?

Answers: The fact that we are in debt to the whole world, maybe gay marriage, religion and how it is used to manipulate, economic issue and the vanishing middle class, there’s always the chance that “the South will rise again,” political dissension between parties, and finally, there were many who did not belief there would ever be a reason for a new Civil War

6.  Do you have any personal connection to the Civil War (stories from family or friends, Civil War era family members buried in our local graveyards, etc.)?

Answers: NO across the board, save one man who said he has ancestors who fought on the confederate side

7.  What things do you like best and what things do you find most challenging about living in Bethlehem?

Answers: Things people like include the history here including the Bethlehem Steel, sense of community and connection to the past, good school district, cheap cost of living, it is my home and there’s no place like it, local culture including coffee shops, theatre, and architecture, less crime, near major cities, feels safe, it’s a good place to raise a family, it’s traditional, not over run by corporations like Starbucks, and you grow up with the same people.

Things people find challenging include Small businesses are closing, drug problems, everyone is in everyone else’s business, not a lot of job opportunities, no supermarkets in walking distance, it’s a take place – people take what they want without regards to others, no good public transportation, the road systems could use work.

Secondary Questions:

© H. Scott Heist

1.    Some people don’t like the name “Civil War.” What might a better name be?

Answers: so far no answers here

2.    Have you ever experienced something that felt like a civil war in your life?

Answers: September 11th and alcoholism were the only answers so far.

3.    Do you visit Bethlehem’s cemeteries? What do you think about when you are there?

Answers: For those who said yes, they think about the history of Bethlehem and the immigrants and diversity of people who have come to this place, the parties I used to have with friends, peace, the trees and rain.

So day one of surveying is complete.  Many of the answers I was given today all had a touch of commonality to them.  I think this is a good set of questions, but I want to continute to think of more questions, and learn how to dig deeper into the answers that the community gives me.

Please feel free to think about these questions yourself and respond to any or all of them in whatever way you see fit.  This is about getting to know the community we belong to, and what unites and divides us.  Come join the conversation and see where the answers take us.

An Interview with Bill George

Our journalist in residence, H. Scott Heist, and Touchstone’s co-founder Bill George have been good friends for several decades.  The following is an interview of Bill written by Scott about Touchstone’s history in creating community based works.

Well, it came out of a winter dinner with old friends. Then a lunch scheduled on one of those near winter days when the clouds caress the tops of the Bucks County corn shocks, each divided by spears of streaking yellow light. Bill George asked after my interest in a Touchstone project? The reply was:” yes but, I really should know what it was about.” And that’s how we got to the lunch in the little café. Like when we were kids.

Touchstone Theatre was 30 years old. Our kids now the age when we began to march.  Bill was back as director at Touchstone, the economy in a created crisis and well, myself just doing a long tour with the realities of an auto accident. So much for retiring to the Mediterranean sun to finish the unfinished Books.

After all the trekking all over the world, we were once again making plans in a small eatery on the Southside, of a former steel town. What remained the same was: the company was good. The change was we had learned a lot. Often the hard way. And it was time to put that together again.

Empirically, it is true to say our friendship was forged in Bethlehem. When the mills lit the sky. With one essential difference. Bill came to Bethlehem to be educated at Lehigh University. I saw those big mills gaining on me and ran as fast as a bus and an “A” train could carry me to NYU the New School.

Bill and Bridget George formed a street theatre company: Bethlehem People’s Theatre. I photographed the theater and streets of New York. Our friendship was began as professionals not students, and since the beginning knew our economic lives depended upon our talents. I was hired to document BPT.

Bare with me, don’t close the curtains. Don’t turn off the lights. We are rolling through an explanation of community based theater. And that is central to all the rest to come. Based means it comes from the community, and it’s stories, life blood, myths, truths, lies and culture. Its weather, dreams. and nightmares, its soot and then lack of soot.

The first commission for Bethlehem People’s Theatre (soon we will simply call it Touchstone)was something called “WORKING”. Commissioned by AFL/CIO and presented at the Steelworker’s hall, if memory serves. Production and development cost pegged at 75 bucks.

In the next 30 years, Touchstone would draw from the well of its community: play after play, becoming in the course of which a community institution itself. In the old southside firehouse.  A connoisseur and repository of historical fictions complete with comedic crisis, often no larfing matters.

From the theft of Bill’s Bicycle to the normal ebb & flow of ensemble existence. All of which is the nature of community, of which is the source material and the basis of what Touchstone Theatre is. And the spool upon which we wrap yet another story.

While back … this stuff percolates, often endlessly … the late writer Joan Campion, South Side Bethlehem’s champion, came to Bill with the concept of cemetaries & the histories and stories that rest within them. Now Bill’s a good guy (and fun to tease) so he took this back to the Touchstone grist mill. (a fair explanation of “ensemble”).

Bill: “The graveyard idea had been around a while & we flirted with it on different projects.”  It never took hold in its entirety. Often these concepts are vector based, waiting for the laws of un-intention to begin occupying space.”

‘Bout the same time, Dave Rabaut, Touchstone Board President, became involved in the sesquicentennial recognition of the Civil War and hoped the theater company would find a vehicle. A lot was mentioned including Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As professionals the ensemble knew there would be “ a bit of a tidal wave, economically and aesthetically, with the 150^th anniversary.”

“We’ve always liked doing an original community based piece every couple of years that taps into collective memory. This became the growth of an idea rather than a piece of one. I had been working with THE WHITMAN PIECE for 6 or 8 years which had similar American History, which fit nicely”

Bill just returned to Touchstone after touring lots of Sacred work realizing that to continue it, he would need to be on the road 30-40 weeks a year. At the same time Touchstone was going through its own changes. “So, this was a good time to return to my tribe”

As the vectors crossed books surfaced concerning the cemeteries, the civil war & remembrances surfaced, the ensemble took on numerous shape shifts until a concept of the community history took shape, grants were written, the tribe called together … sort of fitting for a 30^th year at Touchstone Theatre.

After our first meeting … I began to frequent the three main cemeteries: God’s Acre the early Moravian resting place, Nisky Hill (also Union Cemetery on the northside and St. Mark’s on the Southside with the professional reality that if all this went through we would need more than the same tired stuff to create new visual mental space. More of that work later.

So, a year later, after the grants arrived,  we sat in the same café, dividing the check. Just like we used to when Bill and Bridget were starting Touchstone and I designed the Touchstone Logos. Words became reality.

Something else was was buzzing in Bill:

“I’d like to keep the institutional memory of Community Based Theatre alive at Touchstone. The Steel Piece, the street theatre, Jacques  Lecoq. All the original work and all the influences we presented.”

As J.P. Jordan takes over as Artistic Director and many new and talented people arrive, those of us who have passed through Touchstone want the Institutional memories to remain, of artists interested in the life and community in which we live. To appreciate the language of its stories and rites which occur in Community Based Theatre.

“An ability to move theatre from a piece of fragile art to a living and life giving ceremony.” A Resting Place takes us back to our roots. 

Walking back to Touchstone, the sound of all that water passing under all those bridges, mingles with the sound of our footsteps.