Who owns the history of New Haven?

Her monumental task is to fashion a drama by next spring that will "touch the soul of what it means to be a New Haven resident." The play will be performed as the final mainstage show of the 1999-2000 Long Wharf Theatre season. This is a tall order, given the variety of souls in our fair city and the rather ambiguous role of a certain University in the play's production.

Fortunately, Carey is not alone. She is one-half of Cornerstone, a Los Angeles theatrical group that has been organizing community-based theater programs since 1986. Her partner is Bill Rauch. She writes, he directs, and together they have been listening for weeks to the comments of New Havenites on what they'd like to see onstage about the Elm City.

The comments of the residents, Carey says, are inspiring. "We've found that people care very deeply about the city of New Haven," she said. "The bad reputation some people give New Haven angers them tremendously. People really value this city." Still, she admitted that New Haven is doubtless going to present a special challenge. "We've never taken this long before, so it'll be an experiment for us, too."

Indeed, the project has spanned three years, sponsored by Long Wharf, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, among others. Carey and Rauch have had difficulty uniting fragmented areas like Wooster Square and Hillhouse High School, or Dixwell and Audubon. The pair will return to Los Angeles to write the play, come back to New Haven in March or April, hire both professional and semi-professional actors and do a workshop run of their work at the Festival of Arts and Ideas next June. After getting feedback, they plan to do a rewrite for the final Long Wharf production.

Dubbed "The New Haven Project," the effort was initiated by Doug Hughes, the artistic director of Long Wharf for two seasons running. "Director Peter Sellers introduced me to Cornerstone at Harvard," Hughes said. "I was fascinated by the gorgeous simplicity of the concept. Bill and Alison have made a commitment to live on the road, to be nomadic, to be theatrical pilgrims." And the current shrine at the end of their pilgrimage is — New Haven?

Hughes insists that the difference Cornerstone brings to the project is that "they really listen. So much work gets done in the name of culturally enriching communities, where others give the word from on high to disenfranchised populations. In a grassroots way, Cornerstone recognizes the cultural life of the community."

Cornerstone presented about 500 New Haven residents with plays to select as templates for the finished product. They asked them which work most felt like New Haven in terms of mirroring daily experience. The choices included Shakespeare's Pericles, Beaumont and Fletcher's bawdy The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a Nigerian drama, and a play by Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega.

And the winner? Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan, which will be adapted into The Good Person of New Haven. Brecht's dramatic parable deals with a prostitute who, in exchange for her kindness, is monetarily blessed by the gods. Her newfound wealth exposes her to greed and corruption and to the impossibility of being simultaneously self-interested and good to other people.

"Good Person was chosen by an overwhelming majority," Hughes said. "It's an inspired choice. Brecht's play zeroes in on the issue of what is a good person, what is a worthy or righteous action in a world that is corrupt, and how is your ability to be a good person compromised by success."

Hughes claims that these questions are matters of concern to New Havenites and Americans at large, and he maintains that tough issues will not be avoided in the production. "Is the most flourishing business in New Haven the drug traffic? That's arguably true. There's a higher incidence of AIDS than in many American cities. I think there are real problems here," Hughes stated.

Some Yalies had other opinions on the choice of play. "You've got to be kidding me," student playwright Shana Katz, PC '00, said. "There's not one redeeming thing in the whole play. Every character is corrupt." Her suggestion? "The Running Man. In light of the recent shooting, New Haven looks like a video game sometimes. The Running Man captures that spirit."

Alright, she's being facetious, but there's a deeper point to be made here: Good Person might have appealed to the New Haven participants in the workshops, but how true is it to Yale experiences and perceptions of the city? Given the diversity of New Haven lifestyles, is it possible to represent a true amalgam in just one work? And does it matter whether Yalies have a say in how the city is represented? Are students a viable part of New Haven life, or just transients?

I asked several Yalies which elements of the city's character they would focus on in the drama. Jason Potter, JE '99, sees the problem as more town versus country than morality versus corruption. "New Haven has an identity crisis," Potter says. "It wants to be both a New England village and a small version of New York City. Burger King at Chapel Square Mall, for instance, has a mural depicting New Haven in the 18th or 19th century, with the Green and dirt trails. Right next to it is usually a homeless guy munching on a Whopper."

Lisa Cohen, BK '99, doesn't think an accurate representation of New Haven can be made at all. "It's really hard to come up with a picture of a typical New Havenite," she said. "New Haven feels kind of like a shell. All the permanent residents live on the fringes, and there's an empty area in the middle with Yalies and temporaries."

Although it's uncertain what role town-gown relations will have in the revised Good Person, Carey defensively insisted that Yale will be part of the play. "Yale is a part of New Haven on all sorts of levels. It's the biggest employer in New Haven, and it's smack dab in the middle of the city," she said. Not necessarily the safest role to have, if the play retains Brecht's Marxist spirit.

Hughes agrees, though rather uncertainly, on the sure presence of the University in Good Person. "I'd be surprised if Yale was not a factor in the final product." And Yale students will certainly have a hand in the drama, if indirectly: Project New Haven coordinator Shana Waterman, LAW '99, is a Law School student.

But, to Hughes, the point of the drama is to "increase this town's sense of itself" and to have this sense resonate on a large scale. "I wanted to use theater as a way to excavate some of the tensions and potentials of the city I moved to recently, to test whether theater can be used as a center for civic life," he said.

Will Yale be admitted into this millennial dialogue? Several Yalies told me that the potential problem may not be that Cornerstone's listening isn't acute enough but rather that it is not listening to all the voices that ought to be represented. According to Waterman, a few undergraduates and Drama School students took part in the Project workshops. But although a number of New Haven civics and arts groups are part of the Project, Yale is rather conspicuously not a sponsor.

Still, perhaps it doesn't need to be in order to have an impact. Kerry Fascher, co-coordinator of the Yale Children's Theater playwriting workshops, says that Yalies have been going into area schools for ten years to help New Haven students express feelings about their lives through art. And while some of the plays received by the yearly contest are adapted fairy tales, Fascher said, others deal with domestic disputes and other topics drawn from everyday life. "I think it's up to the community, schools, and parents to encourage students. But I think we can get them excited about drama for a long time," Fascher said.

To end on a Brechtian note, I turn to you, the audience, and ask: can Project New Haven be done? It will go through in 2000, and will certainly succeed in provoking discussion, whether it changes the function of theater in New Haven or not. Will it manage to integrate Yale into the diverse fabric of the city, in art if not in life? Only time, and the actions of good people, will tell.

Graphic of "The Heart of New Haven" by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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