Bridges Don’t Make Themselves: Using Community-Based Theater to Reshape Relationships: Rethinking the Idea of Abundance in ABCD

Abstract

Community-based theater has a variety of manifestations, and the plurality with which these manifestations are occurring is increasing. As such, the diversity and complexity derived from these social sites of public engagement requires further understanding. This article is based upon a multi-case study of two community-based theaters: one in Middle Appalachia, and the other on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Together these sites of performative expression are acting as social interventions for differing reasons within their respective contexts. Through intensive and communicative processes, the theaters provide examples of how co-created performances at the community level simultaneously catalyze relationships and alter how relationships are experienced to engage community members in discussion and performances. As a complex behavioral interaction, the two theaters simultaneously manifest dimensions of ‘abundance’, as well as expand upon normative conceptions of asset-based community development. Through process and contextual modeling, the work provides in-depth exploration to these interpersonal endeavors to assist in how socio-cultural differences as well as narrative reconstruction co-join to enact the individuality of identity across working groups as an overall discursive process.