SEED: A Weird Act of Faith

  Experience the second play in Cornerstone Theater Company’s Hunger Cycle, SEED: A Weird Act of Faith, a fantastical tale that travels between an urban farm, a rural haven, and the contested space of agribusiness. Inspired by the community of South Los Angeles and those fighting for sustainable and healthful food choices, SEED follows a neighborhood struggling to grow greens amid concrete. The only hitch? The gods have deemed humanity bound for destruction, and our survival depends on the success of one urban farm. SEED takes you on a journey where you’ll dig deep into the dirt and ask, “What are we putting in, and what are we getting out?”

CREATIVE SEEDS EVENTS:

Join us throughout the SEED run for Creative Seeds events. You’ll have the chance to meet the artists, learn more about issues of hunger, justice, and food equity, and get a taste of more art being made in the community. Visual Art & Social Action Sunday, October 28, 4:30 p.m. How do the visual arts provoke us to think about and take action on social issues, such as hunger in our communities?  Join us for a conversation featuring renowned muralist Noni Olabisi (who created the SEED image), Yreina Crevantez, and Alma Lopez. Moderated by Raquel Gutiérrez, Cornerstone Manager of Community Partnerships. Yreina Crevantez Yreina D. Cervantes is a second generation Chicana born in Kansas and raised in Southern California. She received her degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and earned a Masters of Fine arts degree from the University of California in Los Angeles. A versatile artist, she works in several media. Her artistic sensibility is drawn heavily from her cultural heritage.She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has received numerous awards for her achievements. She is a veteran artist who has worked at Self Help Graphics and Art, Inc. and is currently a professor at CSUN. Alma Lopez Born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa and raised in East Los Angeles, Alma López got her MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 1995. She has taught as a Visiting Artist in departments of Chicana/o Studies and LGBTQ Studies at UC Riverside, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount University. Her work has been exhibited in museums and community organizations all over California and the Southwest and nationwide, as well as internationally in Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez, Naples, Italy and Cork County, Ireland. Through her work, her activism, and her popular website, López upholds her position as one of the most visible and cutting-edge Chicana feminist activist artists in the country. Noni Olabisi Olabisi is known for her bold and representational mural work, including the seminal and controversial piece “To Protect and To Serve,” an homage to the Black Panther movement. Fueled by community voices, concerns, and spirituality, Olabisi’s work has traditionally examined the conditions and experience of African American people, the effects of slavery and the power of transformation. She has been commissioned by the Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles and has worked with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), among others. The image for SEED:  A Weird Act of Faith was created by Olabisi and exists also as a mural at Cornerstone’s office in the Arts District in downtown LA.

Social Enterprise in South LA - A Community Conversation Thursday, November 1, 7:00 p.m. How does private and philanthropic investment in social enterprise benefit the community? Do social enterprises like the urban farm we see in SEED inspire creative place-making? We'll explore these questions with social enterprises working in and for South LA communities.

Post-show Conversation with Cast Thursday, November 8, 10:30 p.m. Join members of the cast from SEED in a post-show dialogue moderated by Raquel Gutiérrez, Cornerstone Manager of Community Partnerships.

  Healthy Expedition of South LA Friday, November 9, 6:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.  We take you on a tour of our favorite Inglewood eateries, including Mr. Wisdom LA Organic Health Foods & Hare Krishna Restaurant and Stuff I Eat.  This culinary adventure will serve as a launch pad for conversation about the area's historical and cultural geography. *Note: The Healthy Expedition has been postponed to a future date. Also, there is no performance of SEED on this date. Performance by Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras (Day Labor Theater Without Borders)

Sunday, November 11, 1:00 p.m. Experience a performance by Teatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras (TJFS), a Los Angeles-based ensemble theater group of day laborers, before going to see SEED: A Weird Act of Faith. *Note: This event has been cancelled.

Theater in the Streets: A Community Conversation Sunday, November 11, 1:30 p.m. Before the show, join Teatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras (TJFS) and other community-engaged artists and activists (to be announced) as they discuss street art. *Note: This event has been cancelled.   The Garden Gateway Project: Film Screening & Panel Tuesday, November 13, 12:00-2:00 p.m. Get to know our SEED community partner, Community Services Unlimited (CSU), at this screening of the 50-minute documentary, "THE GARDEN GATEWAY PROJECT," about CSU's Mini Urban Farm and its inspirational neighbors and tillers (watch a preview). We'll follow with a panel featuring CSU members, community farmers and scholars discussing the role of community-run and community-based farm programs. *Note: This event will be held at Mercado La Paloma.

Post-show Conversation with Cast Thursday, November 15, 10:30 p.m. Join members of the cast from SEED in a post-show dialogue

    International Food Festival hosted by No More Pain Friday, November 16, 6:00-9:00 p.m.               No More P.A.I.N. will be hosting an event that introduces high-risk/displaced youth to the diversities of cultures in our own city of Los Angeles and surrounding areas through food and the history of the food's origins. Cornerstone will be contributing diverse dishes - we hope to see you there! Youth Justice: A Community Conversation Friday, November 16, 7:00 p.m. SEED explores the notion of "the 'hood" and the various stereotypes associated with urban areas such as South LA.  We'll be talking with youth and with program representatives who are invested in fighting these stereotypes and reframing how their communities are depicted and regarded, particularly in relation to punitive/justice systems. *Note: This event has been cancelled. Check out the community partners for SEED: South Central Farmers Community Market Conversion (CMC) Program Root Down Community Services Unlimited

Lunch Lady Courage

Written by Peter Howard     Directed by Chris Anthony

 

High school is a hustle. At least it is in Lunch Lady Courage, Cornerstone’s third play in The Hunger Cycle.  When Ana, aka Lunch Lady Courage, arrives at an urban campus with her food cart of healthy “Grab n Go” meals, she doesn’t expect to find a shadow economy. Donuts and candy sales raise funds for student clubs, an enterprising student peddles homemade tortas from his backpack, and a teacher sells Hot Cheetos to pay for classroom necessities. California spends nearly seven times more on its prison inmates than its K-12 students, and childhood obesity numbers are skyrocketing – so what’s a lunch lady to do?  Inspired by Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children and the people working and learning in Los Angeles schools, Lunch Lady Courage explores what happens when one cafeteria worker battles for the future and health of her own children, and the hundreds she serves every day. Click here to see a beautiful panorama of the Cocoanut Grove Theatre! Here's what the press is saying about the play: Cornerstone Theater and the Los Angeles High School of the Arts have created something different and thought provoking with “Lunch Lady Courage.” Calling out society’s injustices over plastic lunch trays, these students prove they have a lot to teach. - Backstage

Certainly [Cornerstone] are out to tell a story, but the main goal is to utilize members of the community which is being portrayed and disseminate pertinent information in an imaginative way. And in that they succeed wholeheartedly. - Stage and Cinema [showgallery album="lunch-lady-courage-photos"] [showgallery album="Lunch Lady Courage: Opening Night"]

Love on San Pedro

  "Darkness got a way a makin it feel like time ain't movin." Time moves differently in Skid Row, Los Angeles, where artists rub shoulders with lawyers, pastors, social workers and b-ball players. From the benches of San Julian Park to the walls of an intimate apartment and a raucous karaoke hall, Love On San Pedro, Cornerstone’s fourth play in The Hunger Cycle, weaves an unlikely love story. Shunned by her community, Marjorie’s weariness drags time to a near standstill. But when she’s wooed by a man whose hope and hoop-shots know no bounds, her world speeds up fast. Meet Skid Row’s intricate and vibrant community, a mere one square mile of downtown streets where the moon shines brightest in the darkest corners. This project is commissioned and developed in partnership with Full Stage USA at New Dramatists, a program made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. "You want to hear some of the freshest, funniest dialogue in town? Head over to Cornerstone’s world premiere of Love on San Pedro." - Stage & Cinema “Love On San Pedro is a sobering examination of an-often overlooked part of Los Angeles, and a reminder that love defies even the darkest of circumstance." - Neon Tommy "James McManus, the writer, has given us a marvelous play that touch on emotions deep inside us where we felt our deepest pain of our own lives, when we thought things were hopeless and had given up. But, in the telling of this story (which includes the collaborations of skid row occupants), he provides us with a ray of hope that things are going to get better providing one has to will not to give up." - Joe Straw #9  

Bliss Point

BLISS POINT

Written by Shishir Kurup      Directed by Juliette Carrillo

In Bliss Point, the fifth play in Cornerstone’s Hunger Cycle, a community of Angelenos grapples with a seemingly uncontrollable whirlwind of substance abuse — and an aftermath of loss, hope and reconciliation. Inspired by Cornerstone’s collaboration with addiction & recovery communities in Los Angeles, Bliss Point takes us into the sometimes frightening realm of the hunger of addiction, where the need for emotional fulfillment—love, respect, connection, spirituality – is “fed” through substance abuse. Our culture’s complicated relationship with drugs is unmasked in Bliss Point, an emotionally gripping exploration of how we use substances to either manage or escape our realities. Thank you for joining us at Bliss Point! [showgallery album="Bliss Point"]

California Bridge Tour

CALIFORNIA: THE TEMPEST a Cornerstone Theater Tour bridging 10 California communities

From 2004 through 2013 Cornerstone created plays across California through our Institute Summer Residency program. We spent a month each summer living and working with diverse California communities, and brought along other artists, activists and educators from all over the country to collaborate and make community-engaged theater. Cornerstone is celebrating a decade of Summer Residencies with a new production, California: The Tempest, uniting these 10 California communities onstage and touring to each location. THE PROJECT California: The Tempest, a Shakespeare play adapted by Alison Carey and local students in each town, represents California through the lens of the ten diverse towns and, as a play of Cornerstone’s Hunger Cycle, considers themes connected to food equity, agriculture, and the environment. The production will involve local folks from the shows produced in the past 10 years, as well as new community members who we have met through visits and story circles since March 2013. In our adaptation of The Tempest, Shakespeare’s isolated island becomes the dry, scratchy top of one of California’s famous golden hills. Prospero the magician is now a farmer who gave up farming, the enslaved Caliban is a man who walks around in a prison cell just big enough so he can’t touch anyone or anything else, Miranda is a teenager who has never experienced the internet, and Ariel does all the work because maybe that’s how you make your life better. As the play starts, much of California floods, as it did in 1861. Folks from our communities wash up on the new shores of that golden hill, and things happen. Always, questions flourish through the translated poetry and imagery of Shakespeare’s play. When are we individuals, when are we part of communities, when are we residents of real California, and when are we aspirants to mythic California? What is hunger in this state that feeds so much of a country, and in how many ways are we hungry? TIMELINE Performances begin in August 2014 in Arvin, CA. The tour consists of three outings over the course of 12 months. Leg #1  August – October 2014 Arvin, Lost Hills, and Grayson & Westley Leg #2  January – March 2015 Pacoima, Fowler, and Alisal (East Salinas) Leg #3  April – June 2015 Holtville, Eureka, San Francisco and Downtown Los Angeles ***Check back for updates! GET IN TOUCH To get involved, share information & ask questions, contact Cornerstone: Ashley Sparks or Paula Donnelly — 1-800-578-1335, ASparks@CornerstoneTheater.org FUNDING California: The Tempest is made possible in part by the Ford Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the MAP Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation.