In Conversation with Bill Rauch

Abstract

In Conversation with Bill Rauch Sonja Arsham Kuftinec (bio) Bill Rauch’s inspiring ATHE keynote dwelled with the conference theme of transitions. He spoke on the cusp of a move from Ashland, where he had spent twelve years as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), on his way to helm the new Perelman Performing Arts Center, under construction at the World Trade Center adjacent to where the Twin Towers once stood. Rauch movingly reflected on his time with OSF and on the company he cofounded in the 1980s, Cornerstone, as well looking ahead toward his new position. Invited to respond to this keynote, I in turn looked back on my relationship with Bill Rauch, which has spanned over twenty-five years. I reviewed the book and myriad articles I had written about Rauch’s always collaborative work, as well as our published interviews and conversations. I combed through this archive with a dramaturgical eye, seeking the themes developed and keynotes struck by our relationship as artist and scholar. While I noted shifts over time, a core value of what David Román has termed “critical generosity” sustained the relationship,1 enabling us to stay in conversation around the vexed dynamics of community and inclusion. I initially explored this conundrum of “community” through my first published article—in Theatre Topics—composed with the aid of an ATHE mentorship program. “A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre” (1996) launched an analysis of the company’s work by thinking through the terms of “community” as a realm of exclusion as well as inclusion. The article read Cornerstone through an ethnographic lens, as manifesting community meanings through social and symbolic systems. (As I write this, I imagine Bill’s cautionary note in my ear on the obfuscation of academic language.) I argued that while Cornerstone’s production process animated communal networks and public spaces, staged collectively generated narratives, and often prompted interpersonal and social reconciliations, productions could also elide contradictions and complexities. I still note Bill’s propensity to end shows with hopeful full-ensemble choreography, and he still responds about the necessity of that hope. And both of us have moved the other. Another recurrent theme emerged around doubleness and dialectics—particularly when Cornerstone worked with Brecht or when OSF’s repertory productions conversed with one another across stages. I wrote of “Cornerstone’s Community Chalk Circle” produced in 1995 with the Watts Labor Community Action Council (WLCAC) in Los Angeles, and of “Staging the City with the Good People of New Haven,” an adaptation of Brecht’s Good Person of Szechuan coproduced with the Long Wharf Theatre in 2000—both of which Rauch directed. Lynn Manning’s earthy adaptation in Watts drew attention to ethnic stereotypes as well as the ways that social circumstances defined characters. In Central Ave. Chalk Circle, black janitor Gertha Gibson (Grusha in Brecht’s original) escapes from police officers Superior and ButtKiss by playing into their stereotypes. “I thought I left some grits on the stove. I ran back to check (gesturing to Latina character) Right? Uh, Maria? (to Officer Superior) You know how we love our grits.” I also noted how Cornerstone ensemble member Lynn Jeffries’s design defamiliarized and illuminated. A world marked by paper and cardboard in the first act (narrated by the artist Azdak) shifted to one defined by janitorial iconography in the second act (narrated by Gertha). Both choices drew attention to the symbolic constructions of power: the clothing of the rich was made of tissue; the judge’s robe of garbage bags. And I still viscerally recall [End Page E-11] the moment that background wall units opened to reveal the WLCAC Warehouse setting as a police van drove downstage, its realism heightened by the stylized design worlds. I also recall the intense conversations Bill and I would have about the intersection of Cornerstone’s artistic and social impacts, which seemed moot when Central Ave. Chalk Circle won LA’s Ovation Award for best production. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Bill Rauch delivering the keynote address at the 2019 ATHE conference. Conversations with Bill continued as I immersed myself in archives, interviews, and rehearsals of The...