ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on how his white community was reacting to the black freedom struggle, and shortly found himself protesting his community's lack of a principled stand. Roadside Theater was founded in the coalfields of central Appalachia in 1975 as part of Appalshop, which had begun six years earlier as a War on Poverty/Office of Economic Opportunity job training program in film for poor youth. The community ownership of Roadside's work surprises people in the theater profession. As Roadside entered the world of professional theater, most of its artistic impulses seemed to fly in the face of established norms: all our performers learned their craft from their community of storytellers, singers, and preachers, not in arts school. Every community wishing to present Junebug/Jack would have to agree to form an ecumenical community choir to perform in the show. In Junebug/Jack the biggest catharsis didn't occur during the play but in the community's telling of its own stories.
