Bill Rauch, Cornerstone Theater Company

"I am moved to make plays with the majority of our population who claim they have no stories to tell because I have learned that they always do. I am moved to make plays with people who have often never even seen a play because everyone is an artist, even if most of us have not had the opportunities and the privilege to find our artistic voice."
- Bill Rauch

Read Transcript for May 31, 2002 Leadership Talks Archive

Join Leadership Talks on Friday, May 31 at 1 pm EST for a live, online interview with Bill Rauch, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, CA, and a 2001 Leadership for a Changing World award recipient.

Bill Rauch leads through theater. He believes that theater is the most collaborative of art forms, and can be, as he puts it, “a rehearsal for changing the world.” Cornerstone brings live theater to communities across the country, casting local residents alongside a small band of professional actors and adapting classical and original plays to the local setting. Every community in which his company has worked has been divided, often along racial lines. This unique leadership method brings together police and gang members, ranchers and gays, people of all races and economic backgrounds. In the process, whole communities have been changed.

“We make plays that examine multiple perspectives on community issues,” says Rauch. “The majority of performers are first-time community actors of all ages. Most of the plays I direct don't happen in theaters. They happen in malls, in barns, in closed factories, in public and private spaces that are transformed into sacred spaces through the highly political ritual of live performance.”

A few of Cornerstone’s current projects include:

Cornerstone’s Faith-Based Cycle - A three-year series of projects exploring how faith unites or divides us. Crossings, the most recent project, will explore both the physical and spiritual journeys experienced by Catholic immigrants from five different parishes throughout Los Angeles. The parishes will include: the Latino congregation of St. Francis X. Cabrini; the Arab-American congregation of St. Joseph Catholic Church; the Cambodian parish of Our Lady Mt. Carmel; the Aumônerie Catholique Francophone de Los Angeles and the diverse congregation of St. Philomena Church. The play will open at the St. Vibiana Cathedral, Los Angeles' oldest cathedral.

The Black AIDS/Black Faith Project - Cornerstone Theater Company is partnering with fellow Leadership for a Changing World awardee Phill Wilson’s African-American AIDS Policy and Training Institute to produce a play in collaboration with African-American clergy and African-American people who are infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender - In the fall of 2002, Cornerstone Theater Company's ensemble of artists will collaborate with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith citywide. Through this project, Cornerstone will explore the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community's challenging relationship with organized religion.

Public Ghosts – Private Stories - Combining the personal testimonies of present day New Brunswick, NJ-area residents with historical fiction, Public Ghosts - Private Stories is a tale of the struggles and triumphs experienced by immigrants and communities in America. Public Ghosts - Private Stories is part of the New Brunswick Community Bridge Project - a series of multi-cultural workshops that have taken place over the past two years, engaging over 2,000 area residents in a dialogue about their lives, and the history and future of the New Brunswick community.