CBS SUNDAY MORNING

SEPT. 12, 1999

FORGING AHEAD

Correspondent: Randall Pinkston
Producer: Judith P. Hole

In the play Steelbound, the hero, a modern day Prometheus, is chained to a gigantic 27-ton ladle once used to carry molten steel in the Bethlehem Steel plant. He is bitter because his mill closed down.

Steelbound was inspired by the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound, but the modern-day characters are based on the lives of Bethlehem’s steel workers and their families. It is being staged in the mammoth but empty iron foundry, one of the oldest buildings on the Bethlehem Steel site. The rest of the ghost town of a steel mill serves as the backdrop.

Steelbound is the centerpiece of an 11-day arts festival which begins this week called Steel Festival: The Art of a Industry, produced by Bethelhem’s Touchstone Theatre. Other events include photographic and painting exhibits, story telling, choruses and choirs, all based on the lives of the steel workers.

It is an arts festival full of pride, anger, poignancy and hope, as the community of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania tries to unchain itself from its mighty steel-making past to look toward a future in which the steel mill buildings will be transformed into a tourist and commerce center -- Bethlehem Works -- an array of hotels, shops, restaurants as well as the National Museum of Industrial History.

For nearly 100 years the Bethlehem Steel mills in Bethlehem Pennsylvania created the steel that built America, from the New York skyline to the Golden Gate Bridge to the United States Supreme Court building to the ships and tanks that went into both world wars. The steelworkers were brave and proud.

For information about the festival call: Touchstone Theatre (610) 867-1689

For information about Bethlehem Works call: Bethlehem Steel (610) 694-3711

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