(9th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

Gadfly captured these videos at the Steelbound showing Wednesday, September 25.

Bill George — a driving force in Touchstone Theatre — played Prometheus in Steelbound as he will in Prometheus/Redux.

Hank Barnette was Chairman of the Board at Bethlehem Steel from 1992-2000, the period the Steel was closing and in which Steelbound was developed and performed.

Bill George:

Bill reminded us that the dying of the Steel — “in many ways the poppa of this community for a hundred and some years” — was a traumatic event for all of us and that people needed some way to mark the transition.

He stressed “how unusual it was for the Steel [especially Hank Barnett and Steve Donchez] to have the courage to bring this little theater company into their kitchen at this extremely emotional time when there was a lot of anger and a lot of shame, a sense of failure, a lot of sadness, a lot of fear about the future . . . to bring us into that situation showed so much courage on the part of a business.”

Hank Barnette:

Hank stressed how difficult the decision to close the Steel was, knowing the impact on the community would be severe. He stressed that serving the community/public was a Bethlehem Steel goal and that they didn’t “walk away” as they could have legally. He pointed to the large and lucrative development that has already occurred on the Steel site, with more to come. He pointed to a valuable partnership including Steve Donchez, and Mayor Ken Smith and City Council president Jim DelGrosso.

——–

Jennie Gilrain, Steelbound’s Movement Director, sent Gadfly this informative reminiscence from the Detroit airport:

It was an incredible experience . . . so rich and full of integrity and true storytelling based on community engagement. My husband, Mark McKenna, was Artistic Director of Touchstone at the time and played a key role in making it happen along with Bridget George who was Producing Director. Mark played “Herman the historian,” the guy who climbs the ladle at the end of the play to interview Prometheus. We actually got the inspiration for the production from our teacher, Jacques Lecoq. While visiting Bethlehem from Paris for “The Festival of Creation” at Touchstone, Lecoq took a tour of the functioning Centec branch of the steel mill (a French based company), witnessed a pouring of molten metal, and exclaimed, “Il faut… un choeur qui chante!” The vastness of the space made him imagine a Greek chorus chanting in the mill. It was Gus Ripa at Lehigh who suggested the Aeschylus tragedy, “Prometheus Bound.” Alison Carey of Cornerstone adapted the Greek tragedy to our local situation. Deb Sacarakis at Lehigh was key in commissioning Jay O’Callahan at Zoellner, who created and performed an amazing story about a steelworker family based on hundreds of interviews that he did in Bethlehem. Jay’s story is available on C.D., titled “Pouring the Sun.” The festival was about 5 years in the making!

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(8th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

“You gotta come on out . . . it’s time to go.”
(go to min. 1:20:50)

“So come on . . . let’s go!”

In Steelbound’s riveting conclusion (go to min. 1:20:50), Prometheus is talked — but, more persuasively —  sung, danced, and chanted down from his — we learn — self-shackled post on top that hulking dormant remnant of the once thriving Bethlehem Steel.

Throughout the play he has resisted entreaties:

“Isn’t there someone you could apologize to?”

“It won’t do any good to tear at the wounds.”

“Isn’t there something that can set you free?”

“They [dead steelworkers] never asked you to bury yourself with their bones.”

It is the brotherhood of plant workers that first cracks the sullen spell that Prometheus has cast upon himself.

For the history of Bethlehem Steel is not just the planes, guns, bridges, moon rockets, and skyscrapers it produced.

The history of Bethlehem Steel is a “history of fellowship, of care,” a history of “the people who stood next to you,” who “would watch your back” . . . who “would risk their lives to save yours” — a history of relationship, of community.

It’s the common sense of these people that beckons Prometheus:

“Which story are you going to be telling yourself today . . . the one about the steel mill that accomplished things that no one could ever have imagined possible or the one about the steel mill that closed down and ended a way of life?”

“Some people are afraid that you undercut the achievement if you acknowledge the tragedy. I don’t think so.”

“Just because you have the right to be angry doesn’t mean you have to be angry every day.”

It’s their mill metaphysics that beckons Prometheus:

“This place was the body, but we were the soul. . . . Don’t you tell me that the soul can’t go on after the body is cold and lifeless. Don’t you even think of telling me that.”

It’s their sincerely seductive “Come on, brother” that beckons Prometheus.

But it’s the chorus — rather the assemblage of the three choruses — men, women, children — that provides the finishing touch.

A single mournful, almost dirge-like voice is quickly joined by others gradually swelling upward in ever-pulsing tempo, ending in a rapid-fire burst.

The static, seated, separated companies rise, move rhythmically, change positions, join together in hand-linked-to-hand concentric circles around Prometheus, chanting, among other things, “You gotta come on out . . . it’s time to go.”

Emotional energy impossible to explain in words here finally frees Prometheus from the captivity of his past.

It was beautiful,
It was beautiful,
I was happy when I worked here,
I didn’t think I’d ever leave,
but here I go

And with a “So, come on . . . let’s go,” Steelbound ends with Prometheus, and, in fact, the entire company, frozen in this exiting posture, frozen in the first step of forward motion, as the stage goes dark.

That was the cultural moment twenty years ago.

Bethlehem City facing an uncertain life after Bethlehem Steel.

Now the question is:

Who are we now that the Steel is gone?

Steelbound is the point of reference for the entire Festival UnBound and especially the dramatic “sequel,” if you will, Prometheus/Redux.

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(7th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

“One time there was so many jobs.”
(go to mins. 49:00-56:25)

“And so we’ve come to the end of your world.”

In a remarkable scene (go to mins. 49:00-56:25) in a play filled with remarkable scenes, Steelbound calls the roll of the jobs that have ceased and the buildings that housed them in those “five miles of buildings.”

Like Walt Whitman in those “Song of Myself” catalogues of American diversity, Steelbound names and ennobles each and every aspect of working life in the mill.

This is a cluster of obituaries culminating in a mass burial.

But there is no whining and mewling.

The voices of the steelworkers as they contribute a tool of their trade to a fire-less funeral pyre are still strong, still proud.

They have laid down their tools, but they have not laid down their lives.

The epitaph is simple, without melancholy, and is about birth not death:

“The first iron was made here on this spot in 1863.”

And the sounds of the mill that frame this ritual requiem are literally a deafening reminder of the almost superhuman power that was BETHLEHEM STEEL.

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(6th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

Gadfly has said that Touchstone Theatre is one of the things that makes Bethlehem special, very special.

Some of you went to the Wednesday film showing of Touchstone’s “Steelbound,” the 1999 play about the closing of Bethlehem Steel that provides the point of reference for “Prometheus/Redux,” the central event of this year’s 10-day “Festival Unbound.”

Let’s see, Holly; Geoff; Ron; Sharon; Kathy; CB, yeah, you were there, CB; Gene; neighbor Mrs. Bader; etc., etc. — a nice crowd.

But many of you weren’t there.

Well, now, you missed something!

But all is not lost >>>>>

In an incredible opening scene — which must have been simply fantastic to watch in the actual old deserted Steel building that acted as the stage — a steelmaker — Prometheus — a man locked in the past now that the Steel has closed — is chained to a huge — I mean HUGE — machine — a ladle.

A victim of “History, Progress, the invisible forces of fate, the inevitability of change.”

Prometheus isn’t going quietly into what he sees as the dark night of the future as he was “supposed to.” He’s welded to the ladle because he’s a “whining son of a bitch” and people have “run out of patience with his mewling.” His fate as representative steelman is not pretty for “every once in a while progress needs a little brutality and indifference to close the deal.”

Prometheus is full of anger — outrage, really — and self-pity. He did his job, giving the nation “its planes, its guns, its paperclips” — its bridges, moon rockets, skyscrapers. “Steelmen made our time,” he says, and when people asked “What do you do?” those steelmen replied, “I’m building America.”

Well, that grand role only got Prometheus and his fellows a place in the unemployment line when the Steel closed, “the shame of greed and bad planning.”

In the final analysis, he’s “a sucker who gave his life for a promise unkept, his “reward . . . to be pushed out to make room for the 21st century” — “agony with no end in sight.”

And he doesn’t want to capitulate to the forces of Progress and move on: “Time will come for us again” . . . “Progress is going to need me.”

Surrounding voices of reason argue, beg, cajole him to leave. But “the only way to get out” Prometheus can see “is to promise to shut up and quietly give up my place in the world.” “It’s too late for a new beginning for me,” he laments.

This is the end of Prometheus’s world and, symbolically, the end of Bethlehem’s life as it was known for generations, a life nobody imagined would end.

The potential death of a city, a community?

“Steelbound was not about the future as we had thought it might be,” said actor and Touchstone artistic director Mark McKenna, “It was about closure on the past.”

Are you seeing how important this play is/was to our understanding of the life of our City at the closing of the Steel?

We’ll come back and talk more about that closure on the past and details of the play next time.

But for now Gadfly encourages you to watch “Steelbound.”

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(5th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

For Gadfly, Touchstone Theatre’s “Festival UnBound” actually starts tomorrow with the viewing of “Steelbound,” the play performed twenty years ago that is the point of reference for its sequel “Prometheus/Redux,” which is the centerpiece of the Festival that begins October 4.

The “Steelbound” viewing will take place in the National Museum of Industrial History. Doors open at 6, opening remarks by Hank Barnette at 6:15, and the video at 6:30. Admission free.

 

 

 

Bill George performs as Prometheus in a 1999 production of Touchstone Theatre’s ‘Steelbound,’ a modern-day adaptation of a Greek myth in which a former steel worker laments his fate while chained on top of a steel ladle. (Morning Call text and file photo/TMC)

 

 

 

Craig Larimer, “‘Steelbound’ video viewing party to usher in Touchstone’s Festival UnBound.” Morning Call, September 23, 2019.

“Steelbound,” was an adaptation of Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound,” a Greek tragedy in which Prometheus stands for human progress against the forces of nature. “Steelbound” featured a prematurely retired steelworker chained to a 24-ton ladle. The cast featured more than 50 people, including former steelworkers and their families and neighbors. The sold-out production was presented in the iron foundry of the closed Steel plant in south Bethlehem. It included music by Ysaye Barnwell, founder of the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Some of that music is included in “Prometheus/Redux.”

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(4th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)

Who are we now that the Steel is gone?

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

If this video doesn’t make your hair curl, your nose bleed, your palms sweat, your piggies wiggle, and your loins leap, then you are following the wrong blog!

• VOLUNTEERS – We’’re looking for a monumental volunteer brigade to help us power ten days of community-wide creations! Interested in getting involved? Email mike@touchstone.org or fill out the volunteer form on our website.

• “STEELBOUND” SCREENING – Curious about the production that inspired it all, Touchstone and Cornerstone Theatre’s Steelbound (1999)? Join us for a screening of that unforgettable production, as we prepare to celebrate where we are twenty years later. Steelbound will play at the National Museum of Industrial History on September 25, with opening remarks by Hank Barnette, former CEO of Bethlehem Steel beginning at 6:30p.

• HAPPY HOUR AT APOLLO GRILL – Our friends at Apollo Grill are kindly hosting a happy hour to benefit the festival! Join us Thursday, September 26, 5:00-7:00p, where you can enjoy munchies and drink (and the company of the Touchstone Ensemble). We’ll have a raffle basket, and $1 from every Jack Daniels drink goes toward Festival UnBound. A delicious way to support art! Learn more here.

• JOIN US IN SONG – Like to sing? We are seeking Touchstone friends to be in a Pop-Up Choir, led by the Valley’s Kira Willey, for the Opening and/or Closing ceremonies – since we hope you’re already planning to be with us for performances, why not have a hand in making art as well? Please go to our Google sign-up here to indicate your interest and availability.