Upcoming District Events:Shotgun Players Artistic Director Patrick Dooley comments on his company’s upcoming production of The Lorin District Project: The Lorin District Project is the play we started a theater company thirteen years ago to make. We survived the early nomadic years of producing theater because of the relationships we developed with our audience. Developing strong relationships with our audience was a natural extension of the relationships we forged with our artists. For years they've been coming to our "home" to hear the stories we have to tell. The Lorin District Project now gives us the opportunity to go to their homes and hear the stories they have to tell. For many years the moniker "community theatre" has come to mean work that was amateurish or unprofessional. The Lorin District Project will help us reclaim that title and give it the value and dignity it deserves. We'll be making community theatre that puts our neighborhood - our community - and its residents on stage to tell their stories. And does our neighborhood have a story to tell! We have mid-nineteenth century farmhouses next to liquor stores, a young Japanese woman who moved back to the street her grandparents lived in before they were uprooted to internment camps, an elderly African American woman whose family left the segregated south to find prosperity here during the boom times of the shipping industry and a nineteen year young man who is struggling to find some sanity in his drug riddled neighborhood. The Lorin is still a community in transition. It has a growing arts community, active neighborhood associations and a growing commercial district that is driving up housing prices and creating a whole new anxiety: gentrification. Preliminary meetings with community leaders and residents have all pointed to the hope that something like The Lorin District Project might bring the community together in a way that allows us to process, explore and celebrate our vast diversities before they create greater divides. A lot has been made of the economic value that art brings to a community. But the greatest contributions we make to a community have nothing to do with money. As the most collaborative art form I have yet to encounter, the performing arts have the potential not just to support - but to build community. It connects us to the present through stories of the past. It reminds us that joy and sorrow are part of being alive. It awakens our imaginations and makes us believers in magic. It heals. Rather than interviewing individuals, we will be following the model of Cornerstone Theater in Los Angeles, by meeting with community leaders to coordinate events in which people are invited to come and share their stories. Timeline of the Lorin District Project: Oct. 2005: Community Partnerships are formed. Production Dates: Previews: Tuesday, September 26th & Wednesday, September 27th Runs: Thursday-Sunday at 8PM. Past District Events:Tue June 7, 2004: City of Berkeley Mayoral Proclamation in honor of La Peña's 30th Anniversary Sat June 11, 2005: La Peña Cultural Center 30th Anniversary Celebration & street festival Sun June 12, 2005: Ashby Arts District-wide Open House & Art Tour Sun June 19, 2005: 14th Annual Berkeley Juneteenth Festival
Ongoing Projects: Artify
Ashby: Mural projects, Senior Center Project,
Artify BART Project. Our
Story: a collection of stories, art, photos & more from the
neighborhood.
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