Jul 5, 2018
Presently, I am leading a Touchstone Theatre initiative called
Festival UnBound, Celebrating out 21st. Century Village, planned
for October of 2019. This is the most difficult thing with which
I've ever ever been involved. Once we were two
Bethlehems, and it was 100 years ago North and South realized the
importance of working together and became “one” (and, we’re still
working on it). Here’s an image of the two Bethlehems, in “the
good ol’ days”, when “working together” may seem to us a
remarkably less complex challenge, but back then it was as “crazy
hard” as anything one could imagine. To create a Festival of
original art envisioning the future of our community, we’ve got to
get EVERYBODY working together, collaborating to imagine what
kind of future we want for this city called “Bethlehem”--through
dialogue and the creation of original art. 
The problem is, more and more, as
we sit down and talk with folks, it becomes apparent that
everything affects everything else. Let’s say you’re
homeless. One might be homeless because one is dysfunctionally
dyslexic. One might be dysfunctionally dyslexic because the
educational system didn’t recognize it and teach good coping
mechanisms. The educational system may have failed you because you
were living in a poor community and there weren’t funds for such
things. There weren’t funds for such things because the political
system was too combative to achieve anything
but band-aid solutions. Combativeness got out of hand
because of entrenched, old power structures and a media that feeds
on sensationalism in order to sell information to the general
public. And… I could go on FOREVER! Everything’s connected.
Still, there you are, homeless! Now, how does one make
a work of art, many works of art, out of that that will help
transform the community? It’s tempting to despair at our
social dysfunctionality, but if we look at the bigger picture, it’s
clear we’re making great progress! Here’s a fascinating
article called: A
History of Global Living Conditions in 5 Charts. The
conclusion of this article states succinctly: “The
successful transformation of our living conditions (is) possible
only because of collaboration. Such a transformation would be
impossible for a single person to accomplish. It is our collective
brains and our collaborative effort that are needed for such an
improvement.” An NGO for the United Nations recently
wrote: “If community is to further the progress of society in its
own right – complementing the roles played by individuals and
social institutions–a much more expansive conception of
community life must be actively embraced. New patterns of action
and interaction will have to be built, and new forms of
relationship and association constructed. Experimentation, trial
and error, and a robust process of learning about the nature of
lasting cultural change will be vital – all of which require effort
and no small amount of sacrifice… Movement in this
direction will require qualitatively different
approaches to decision-making than those adopted in the
past.” Festival (un)Bound is one of those “qualitatively
different approaches”, and that's the task I find myself facing
here in the middle of 2018. BIO: Bill received his B.A. in English
Literature from Lehigh University and his M.F.A. in
Acting/Directing from the Dallas Theatre Centre of Trinity
University. He studied mime with Paul Curtis of The American Mime
Theatre, co-founded the People’s Theatre Company in 1977 and later
co-founded Touchstone Theatre in 1981 where he was Producing
Director until 1990.