Community theater can heal community wounds

PROVO — Usually, when one thinks of community theater, images of long hours, actors who are more enthusiastic than skilled, costumes sewn by mom and audiences full of family and friends come to mind.

It isn't as customary to think of community theater as a healing event — a bridge-builder between cultures and generations.

But that's how Sonja Kuftinec, the author of "Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater," and a professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, sees it.

She spoke and taught recently at Brigham Young University about her passion for community theater, particularly in war-torn and damaged places like her hometown in Bosnia.

The hallmarks of community theater include a sense of fun, stupid puns, dancing, music and a fierce commitment to telling a story, she said. That can bring diverse people, especially teens and young people, together in a nonthreatening environment.

They can play with design, have fun and make friends.

"Could this work to change and soothe more violent relationships?" asked Kuftinec. "It can. It does."

Community theater can animate a community and bring a sense of connection into an otherwise fragmented society, satisfying a need for face-to-face connectiveness, she said. "There's a kind of nostalgia for it."

Kuftinec became involved in Cornerstone Theater in 1986, founded by Bill Rauch. The group would go into a community and cast townspeople in a classic play adapted to the local area.

The townspeople made the sets and the costumes, sometimes staging the production in abandoned buildings such as a church or even in a welding garage. One was set in a local mall with Superman flying down the escalator. Another featured a Romeo and Juliet of different races and colors.

In Mostar, Bosnia, the city had been destroyed by fighting. The only safe place for the youths of mixed faith was at rehearsals and on stage.

"We created a few short pieces with Mostarian youth, Germans and soldiers. They had to rethink the stories of living through the war. At the end of the piece, there was silence, just silence, and after that performance, everything changed," said Kuftinec. "The two sides were able to communicate, revise and reclaim some space."

In another wartorn community, the story addressed what happens for the postman when all the street names change.

"Art can create an important distance from important events," Kuftinec said. "The work can enlarge and contain it."

Kuftinec's visit to BYU was part of a larger fine arts initiative entitled "Theatre and Community Stories."

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