NEWS ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
ABOUT
THE STEEL FESTIVAL
Articles are reprinted from the MORNING CALL NEWSPAPER, allentown, pa.
Date: Sunday, March 7, 1999
Page: E01
Edition: SECOND
Section: ACCENT (SUNDAY MAGAZINE)
VOICES OF STEEL
FORMER BETHLEHEM PLANT WORKERS HELP TO FORGE FESTIVAL FROM MEMORIES
by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call
Last month, during the first rehearsal of a play, more than 70 performers were asked to remember Bethlehem Steel Corp. in a single
sentence. Some remembered the blast-furnace flame, the other Star of Bethlehem. Some remembered the strangely comforting noise of
forging, an industrial lullaby. Some remembered the stillness of a closed plant that makes sleep harder.
Peter De Pietro put his 33-plus years at the Steel into a slogan. Whether operating a crane, driving a truck or handling grievances, he
witnessed courage and creativity under harsh conditions. His pride led him to lobby for stronger federal restrictions on imported steel. His
pride led him to write down the phrase, printed on T-shirts and mugs: "Steelworkers: Strong as Steel."
All these memories are linked in "Steel Bound," the play rehearsed by De Pietro and 15 former Bethlehem Steel employees. The
protagonist is Prometheus, the mythic Greek hero turned unemployed steelworker. Instead of being chained to a rock for giving fire to
humanity, he's yoked to an outdated submarine car at a dead plant. His solitary prison is visited by four choruses, a steelworker's child, a
scout for an on-site museum of industrial history. With statistics and free verse, anger and black humor, Prometheus insists he built
America so well, he made himself obsolete.
"Steel Bound" is a cornerstone of the Steel Festival, this September's creative forum on life after Bethlehem Steel. A choir and 11
songwriters, a professional storyteller and a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock are preparing a spectacle near and at a plant where
spectacle was routine, before it becomes a museum, a recreational/industrial complex, a relic.
"We're trying to stop time and really look at the experience of Bethlehem Steel," says Mark McKenna, artistic director of Touchstone
Theatre, a producer of "Steel Bound" and the festival. "Not to throw blame, or to answer any questions, but to recognize what has past.
We're going to remind people what a vital community this was -- this is -- this will be. We're asking: What's your part in all this, now that
the parts are missing?"
"I'm in this play not only to make sure it's realistic, but to be part of it," says De Pietro, whose only other theatrical character was the High Priest in the Bethlehem Live Christmas Pageant. "That's where I grew up, at the Steel. Gee, I think I was there more than I was at home at times. With this play, it's just like coming back home again."
The festival was conceived during another homecoming. In 1994 Touchstone and Lehigh University sponsored a festival starring former students of Jacques Lecoq, legendary for teaching the body to morph. While touring the Bethlehem Steel plant, Lecoq envisioned a Greek chorus merging with massive, other-worldly spaces. It was a logical proposal, for Lecoq, who died in January, instructed students to wear neutral masks, play animalistic choruses, become entire cities -- anything to master their inner clown.
Jennie Gilrain, a graduate of Lecoq's Paris academy and then a Touchstone ensemble member, raised the bar, proposing a play with community involvement. She got an early start by teaching a course at Lehigh University in which plays were based on interviews with steelworkers. Augustine Ripa, a Lehigh theater professor who has directed at Touchstone, suggested Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" as a foundation script.
It was at a 1997 reading that Touchstone leaders realized the foundation was shaky. According to McKenna, the first version of the modern "Prometheus Bound" was too metaphorical, too remote. "It didn't touch people. It was foreign," recalls McKenna, who graduated from Lecoq's school with Gilrain, his wife. "It was another time, another place. A man is chained to a rock. Who cares?"
To help make a myth real, Touchstone consulted an ensemble that specializes in localizing classics. For 13 years members of the Cornerstone Theater Company have roamed the country, settling in towns for months, adapting and performing with residents. In racially divided Mississippi they staged "Romeo and Juliet" with an integrated cast. In West Virginia they tailored Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" for a town in economic transition, where coal was shipped to Bethlehem Steel.
Cornerstone accepted Touchstone's challenge. According to founding artistic director Bill Rauch, the California company has long longed to produce in an industrial place, having workshopped in an Ohio town where locomotives are manufactured. Touchstone accepted that "Steel Bound" would be directed by Rauch; written by Alison Carey, a Cornerstone founding ensemble member, and designed by Cornerstone's Lynn Jeffries. The Bethlehem group also accepted Cornerstone's method of spreading major roles among professionals and non-professionals.
Carey researched "Steel Bound" by interviewing members of Bethlehem Steel's three tiers: laborers, middle managers, executives. Her script describes a golden history turned to rust. The corporation that framed the Hoover Dam, and armed two world wars, was undermined by everything from excessive salaries to substandard equipment to expensive fines for pollution. A plant that employed generations, that set clocks, that essentially ran the city, now hosts three graveyard shifts.
Carey's Prometheus is a switchboard for history and perspective. He describes the recipe for making steel, the 2,547 chemical reactions, "all of them more or less out of control, all of them necessary." He insists that if the Liberty Bell had been made of steel instead of iron, it wouldn't have cracked. He's asked, by a chorus, whether he has taken his anger to outplacement counselors. He jokes about saving his energy by handing out photocopied declarations to an endless parade of visitors.
And he refuses to be a freak show for tourists. "Think for one minute," Prometheus tells Hermes, a naive historian-in-training, "what it feels like to be turned into history while you're still alive."
Last October "Steel Bound" was read for spectators who lived Prometheus' dilemma. In the audience at United Steelworkers of America headquarters in Bethlehem were a dozen or so former employees of Bethlehem Steel. Most were above the age of 60; some started at the plant in the 1930s, working for 38 cents an hour, before unionization. Two veterans were represented by daughters. The father of Magdalena Szabo, a member of Bethlehem City Council, began at the Steel at age 14. Wandalyn Enix, whose father toiled 43 years, some as a union organizer, was on hand to take notes for her book, "Is There Any Room in the Inn?," a three-century history of African Americans in Bethlehem.
The reading branched into a kind of town meeting. Steelworkers praised Carey for tangible details, like epoxies that caused three-day headaches. They made minor corrections: parking lots, for example, didn't always exist. One veteran requested less material about the plant and more about the plant's impact. Szabo recommended more information about the wives and daughters who cooked, washed and generally kept a messy life orderly.
Some responses exposed the delicate task of performing an industrial galaxy. A retired switchboard operator wondered why the Irish were excluded from a litany of 14 ethnic groups. Carey said she simply forgot. To compensate, she requested more stories of ancestors coming to America to the Steel.
The same spectator complained about Prometheus calling his colleagues "the hardest bunch of lazy bums I ever saw." Carey explained the comment was a compliment, not a slur. In fact, it came from a steelworker. The same interviewee added, more favorably: "There's no one worked at the Steel who went home with clean hands every night."
Details sparked details. Two retired steelworkers recalled the days of toilets, or "hoppers," without privacy. A master welder remembered he wore boots soled with truck tires, to protect his feet from metal fired to 3,200 degrees. No matter how hard Szabo's father scrubbed, he still dirtied bedsheets.
For McKenna, the session confirmed at least two facts. One, Touchstone and Cornerstone are on the right track. "It's been validating to hear, `Wow, you've got a tough job,' as opposed to: `What the hell are you people trying to do?' " And, two, with a little prompting, most steelworkers enjoy straightening the record.
"There's a humility among steelworkers that is really present, almost across the board," claims McKenna. "They are men of steel, in a way, because they put themselves on the line. They were told, `This is the job, and this is how you do it,' yet they taught themselves to survive. They handed down the tricks of the trade."
Other secrets have passed to the festival's songwriters. The 11 composers are directed by Bob Franke, a full-time musician who supervised a musical history of communal agriculture in Marblehead, Mass. They're coordinated by Bonnie O'Donnell, a part-time musician and full-time therapist for a children's psychiatric hospital. The group includes two former steelworkers, an ex-carpenter and a professional musician. All have scored stories of steel.
Roland Kushner, a business professor and management consultant, interviewed his late father-in-law, who worked at Bethlehem Steel for 41 years. He's writing a song concerning "Little Mexico," one of many ethnic neighborhoods for steelworkers, and a song describing the Bach Choir of Bethlehem as a kind of demilitarized zone for a bickering worker and his foreman. For the first time Kushner is fully exploiting his musical pedigree: managing musician Stan Rogers; serving as Musikfest's first program director; advising Godfrey Daniels, the Bethlehem listening club.
Leonard H. Christman is writing from his experience as chief clerk of Bethlehem Steel's drop forge department. In one song he profiles Jim Robertson, who directed the corporation's media section. In another number he describes the Steel as a true melting pot, where differences of race and status were blurred to build a restless nation. It's called "Dedicated Men One and All."
"R.O.I." is Christman's account of the battle that helped close the drop forge department in 1989. He writes of executives demanding greater "return on investment" and middle managers like himself demanding better equipment and more time to increase R.O.I. The calypso tune ends with: "My story is done now, and orders are few,/ No new equipment, what else is new/My shop is gone now, this is goodbye/We could not find more R.O.I."
"The rank-and-file got along fairly well with middle managers," says Christman, an Allentonian who has authored published Christmas songs. "It was the executives they were battling against. They were getting the big bucks and, in the rank-and-file's mind, doing nothing, while they were out in all kinds of weather, and busting their butt. Middle management got the yelling and the screaming from both ends."
From Robertson, Christman discovered the Steel's paternal past, when the corporation sponsored a band and soccer teams. From a pioneer female worker, Bonnie O'Donnell discovered the constantly shifting schedules that forced employees to miss their children's soccer games. The Bethlehemite could see the toll on her interviewee: the arthritis; the slipped disk.
McKenna calls the Steel Festival a grass-roots examination of a "simple and faithful" life. "It's not all about tourism. It's not all about fancy shops. It's about neighborhoods, it's about communities. The people in this city had their hands on the Golden Gate Bridge and the U.S. Supreme Court (building). We know this is an important story; all we have to do is hear it."
McKenna believes that a greater number of voices will better capture the Steel's diversity. In addition to "Steel Bound" and the songwriting project, the festival will include a visual-arts exhibition, a choir, and the tentatively titled "Stirring the Pot," Jay O'Callahan's program of solo storytelling. In October, at Touchstone, O'Callahan previewed a tale centered on the family of steelworker John Waldony. Composing the play's music and arranging the choir's numbers is Ysaye Barnwell, a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the collective of lyrical activists. Barnwell's song "More Than a Paycheck" features the words of coal miners, who earned diseases with their salaries.
The preferred location for "Steel Bound" is Bethlehem Steel's Iron Foundry. The gargantuan building, closed since 1995, has an inspiring view of the Lehigh River and the blast furnaces. According to Bette Kovach, Bethlehem Steel's director of media relations, the site needs tracks for the submarine car that will bind Bill George, the Touchstone co-founder who's playing Prometheus.
After a recent rehearsal of "Steel Bound," De Pietro and other steelworkers suggested another site: a Bethlehem Steel welfare room. "That's where we met before shifts and after shifts," says De Pietro, a three-term president of Local 2600 who edits the newsletter of the Steelworkers Press Association. "By the time you showered, you knew everyone's business. It was a hub of brotherhood, so to speak."
"Now, some of the (clothing) baskets are down, some are up," adds De Pietro. "There's dust and cobwebs. Dirty clothes. Helmets. Boots and what-not. It's very eerie; it's like walking into a ghost town."
De Pietro is looking forward to "singing and jumping around -- they call it dancing, you know." He's looking forward to leading the "Steel Bound" chorus as he led Local 2600. For him, it's a chance to strike a blow for steelworkers, to remind the Smithsonian Institution to make the National Museum of Industrial History more than a repository for quarantined machines. Like Prometheus, he wants to hear loud, lively voices; like Prometheus, he refuses to be a specimen.
"I can relate to that, being laid off," says De Pietro, who is studying to drive a forklift, something he did at the Steel, illegally. "Being with one company for 33-1/2 years, it's almost like family. We thought we were a family, even though, at times, we didn't see eye to eye. I can relate to feeling like you've lost your family."
2 PHOTOS by MICHAEL KUBEL, Special to The Morning Call
CAPTION: Mark McKenna (left), artistic director of Touchstone Theatre, directs a rehearsal of `Steel Bound,' which is produced by
Touchstone and the Cornerstone Theater Company.
CAPTION: Peter De Pietro, whose 33-plus years at Bethlehem Steel Corp. included three terms as president of Local 2600, rehearses
as the leader of the Steelworkers Chorus in `Steel Bound,' a cornerstone of the Steel Festival planned for September.
2 PHOTOS by DOUGLAS BENEDICT, The Morning Call
CAPTION: Linda Baas, a theater director and teacher, leads the Festival Chorus, one of four choruses in `Steel Bound.'
CAPTION: Jennie Gilrain directs a `Steel Bound' audition. The former Touchstone Theatre ensemble member taught a Lehigh University
course in which student based plays on interviews with steelworkers.
-----------------------------------
Date: Sunday, September 5, 1999
Page: F01
Edition: SECOND
Section: ARTS & TRAVEL
FESTIVAL ARRANGER BUILDS VOCAL COMMUNITY
STEEL'S LAST CAST
by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call
The Steelworkers' Chorus is rehearsing a number for the play "Steelbound," and Ysaye Barnwell is urging the men to be less like a chorus
and more like steel workers. "Making Steel" has enough passion, suggests the arranger, but not enough precision. To make them a truer
ensemble, she paints words, many a choir director's favorite tool.
"You are the machinery in this mill," Barnwell tells the males sitting in the Touchstone Theatre Cafe, two blocks from Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s closed plant. "You are a well-oiled machine: all the parts are talking to one another. You're working together: you don't need a foreperson."
Analogy over, Barnwell goes for the vernacular. "OK, guys," says the singer named after the violinist Eugene Ysaye (pronounced EE-say), "make me some steel."
What follows is a work song with a militial march. Led by a veteran of the Army Reserves, the men shout out steps of steel making. After about 20 minutes of baking and pouring, punctuating ("Hey whoa now!") and hyphenating ("ox-y-gen"), they're closer to being a lean, mean regiment. The improvement pleases Barnwell, who began the rehearsal with no idea how "Making Steel" would sound.
Barnwell is building a vocal community, doing for the Steel Festival what she does for the a cappella quintet Sweet Honey in the Rock, what she does for her community workshops in African-American singing techniques. Whether scoring words by "Steelbound" playwright Alison Carey, or arranging five songs by the festival's dozen singer/songwriters, or adapting originals and traditionals for the festival choir, she's spreading the notion that good work and good health are keyed by great listening.
Barnwell admits she had to learn she's ideal for the job. Yes, she is a violinist with graduate degrees in speech pathology and public health. Yes, she's collaborated with dance companies and on a dramatic musical about Martin Luther King Jr. Yes, she promotes human rights. But before being hired by Touchstone, she had never created songs from scratch with strangers. Before coming to Bethlehem, the closest she came to steel production was in Pittsburgh, where she received a doctorate in cranio-facial studies. Every day, she'd cross the street to class; every day her lab coat would be coated with U.S. Steel fallout.
After two months of arranging and four visits to Bethlehem, Barnwell understands the festival expands all her passions. It enables the resident of Washington, D.C., to work on work songs, which she's adored ever since she heard Tennessee Ernie Ford's recording of "Sixteen Tons." During an interview in a Bethlehem hotel room, she acts a few lines. She puffs her cheeks, lowers her lyrical contralto to basso profundo, marches into an invisible mine to the troubling confession, "I owe my soul to the company store."
In her own material Barnwell sings of work's value. For a post-doctoral thesis in public health, she studied songs of textile workers and coal miners. She found not only accurate descriptions of 48 occupations, but vivid diagnoses of labor-related ailments. She filtered these discoveries into "More than a Paycheck," which appears on Sweet Honey's 25th-anniversary recording and in Barnwell's arrangement for the Steel Festival Choir. For their pay, she writes, workers get disease (silicosis, brown lung) and "dis-ease" (alcoholism, heart attacks caused by high blood pressure). Their families are also infected.
"No one talks about the boredom in a hazardous work environment," claims Barnwell. "Lose your attention and see what happens to your balance, see what happens to your hand. No one talks about the stress. You work in any office, and everything goes wonderfully, but the stress makes you drink every night and you abuse your wife and kids."
Barnwell gravitates to the occupational-health issues in "Steelbound." Chained to a 24-1/2-ton ladle in Bethlehem Steel's skeletal Iron Foundry, Prometheus (portrayed by Touchstone founder Bill George), a prematurely retired steelworker, rails about unsafe conditions, white-collar lies, the devastation of losing a job performed too well. His voice echoed last month as Barnwell led rehearsals of her music with the play's three choruses.
The day begins with the Young People's Chorus. A half-dozen youngsters practice three numbers for Barnwell and Beverly Morgan, the festival's music director. Two tunes -- a syncopated, racing vow of defiance and a rap about Bethlehem Steel as an ethnic melting pot --are what Barnwell calls "attitude stuff." They allow kids to overcome wobbly pitch with funky phrasing, shyness with the power of being in a gang.
Barnwell's personality is commanding. Her regal jewelry includes a battalion of bangles and a waterfall of African earrings. Staring over trapezoidal glasses, she could drill steel. Every part she sings, she looms. Her hands weave, too. No wonder she helped deaf patients understand chicken pox, X-rays and other medical concepts. No wonder she introduced sign language to Sweet Honey concerts.
Friendly advice reminds that Barnwell has served a children's medical center and "Sesame Street." When pitches scatter, she says, playfully, "Y'all lost your melody." When two boys improvise moves for the rap, she applauds. When Prometheus finally loses his chains, she insists, everyone will want to get jiggy.
In the next session the youngsters join the Steelworkers' and Women's choruses in the play's finale, a call-and-response urging a newly free Prometheus to join the celebration. Barnwell explains why she made "Calling Prometheus" a kind of ring shout. The one-word call and single-phrase response are easy to perform. Simplicity is essential for 50-plus amateurs singing, without a conductor, in the Iron Foundry, a massive, open-arched space with mauling acoustics. Tidal rhythms and a slow-motion crescendo invite spectators to join in. Hopefully, everyone will link heaven to earth, everyone will "bring down the spirit."
Tonight, the spirit is slightly shackled. Barnwell instructs the singers to close their eyes. The less sight, she knows, the better the hearing. Later, she tells them to form a standing ring. The more sight, she knows, the better the communication.
The tips work. The sopranos, altos and tenors answer the baritones' lead more energetically. Previously stiff singers swivel, lean, prod. Before, they were frozen to their part, what Barnwell calls sharp focus. Now, they're warming to the overall sound, the temperamental soft focus.
"I'm saying the joy here is being able to listen to the soft focus," Barnwell explains later. "When everyone is doing it properly, that's nirvana."
Two choirs leave the room, leaving the Steelworkers' Chorus to practice "Making Steel" for the first time. Barnwell has been so busy touring with Sweet Honey, so busy working on a new CD-ROM and a new songbook, that she hasn't figured out a score. She decides to riff.
"How many of you were in the Army?" she asks. About eight hands shoot up. "What did you sing?" Hank Vereen, who has spent 22 years in the Army Reserves, answers by shouting, "Count off!" Immediately, his colleagues join ranks in a marching cadence.
"It was a brilliant moment, if I must say so myself," Barnwell says the next day. "I believe in intuition. Things will work if you give them space to work."
Indeed, Barnwell accepts two suggestions. A former steelworker corrects the heat of making steel. Chanting "2,000" rather than "2,400" is easier on the tongue. A military veteran says "Whoa now!" would sound better with an extra word. "Hey whoa now!" swings harder.
The changes fit Vereen like custom fatigues. Leading a work gang suits an actor who performs karaoke, a staff sergeant who directs his Reserve unit on five-mile hikes. "That's when the fun comes in," explains Vereen, a customer-service representative for the Fogelsville branch of the American Association of Retired Persons. "When you're marching five miles, you can think of all kinds of things to say."
For the evening's final group, Barnwell shoots Zen-arrow advice. The Women's Chorus is working overtime on a nine-line song stating that the solidarity of steelworkers is more precious than jewels. If they can't break Prometheus' chains, these sirens vow to share his prison of "steely gray.'`
The prettiness is there, but not the resolve. The chord supporting the chain-breaking sentence, says Barnwell, "should have the potential to break the chains."
The next day Barnwell discusses the need for the festival to break chains. With the Bethlehem plant destined to become Beth Works, an industrial museum and entertainment complex, it's important to remember the importance of human software.
"The bridges have been built. The buildings have been built," Barnwell points out. "And now we're living in these buildings with all this new technology. And that technology doesn't include the hard labor stuff anymore. We've moved beyond that. I mean, who's going to say, `I built the Internet?' The structures that will be built from now on will have no concrete structure. They're not firm, solid."
Shortly after, Barnwell shows how technology can benefit humanity, and vice versa. On her laptop she pulls up her software-scored choral arrangement of a composition from the singer/songwriter project. She's especially keen on Bonnie O'Donnell's mournful, poignant "Something Happened at the Mill," which the author laughingly calls "the razor song of the bunch." Soon, Barnwell is humming and tapping, cording to the chords, demonstrating that music concerning health can be healthy.
Barnwell can testify to music building communities. In a supermarket parking lot she was stopped by a man running toward her, yelling: "Hey wait a minute, hey wait a minute!" I know you: didn't you write that song?" He was speaking of "Would You Harbor Me?," Barnwell's call for tolerance for Czech and Haitian, spy and heretic. The stranger wanted to thank her for writing about him, a victim of Agent Orange.
2 PHOTOS by DOUGLAS BENEDICT, The Morning Call
CAPTION: Arranging for the Steel Festival was a labor of love for Ysaye Barnwell.
--------------------------------------------------
Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999
Page: F01
Edition: SECOND
Section: ARTS & TRAVEL
STORIES IN SONG
BALLADS OF FACTORY LIFE ARE FAR FROM RUN-OF-THE-MILL
STEEL'S LAST CAST
by PAUL WILLISTEIN, The Morning Call
The days of steelmaking may be gone in Bethlehem, but "Days of Steel" will live on.
The lyrics were cast from the stories of steel workers, heated by music and vocals, poured into songs shaped by the creative process.
Fifteen songs, inspired by the Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Bethlehem plant workers, are the culmination of the singer-songwriter project, part
of the Steel Festival which began last week and continues through next Sunday.
A concert to celebrate "Days of Steel" will be held Thursday night at Touchstone Theatre, Bethlehem.
Artistic director for the project is Bob Franke, nationally-known folksinger who gathered songwriters from the Lehigh Valley region.
The project began two years ago with auditions and continued with workshops led by Franke. Project coordinator is Bonnie O'Donnell,
Bethlehem singer-songwriter.
On the CD are songs by, in addition to Franke and O'Donnell: Tom Watson, Patti Foley Edgar, Bob Hrichak, Barbara Paradowski,
Christian Bauman, Len Christman, Bill Hall, Caren Leonard, Roland Kushner, and Roger Latzgo.
Mike Krisukas produced the disc, released on Allentown's Bummer Tent Records. Executive producer is Miriam Huertas, Krisukas'
partner.
Here are some of the stories behind the stories told by "Days of Steel":
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BONNIE O'DONNELL
"The songwriters project was sort of the last component of the (Steel) festival," says O'Donnell.
`There were a number of people involved with the idea at Touchstone Theatre. Mark McKenna (Touchstone artistic director) had asked
me who might be a good person to be the (singer-songwriters project) artistic director because he knew I was involved in the folk
community.
"I had mentioned Bob Franke, who had done a similar historical project, a gathering of songs based on an eco farming community in
Marblehead, Mass."
O'Donnell had taken songwriting courses from Franke at The Swannanoa Gathering near Ashville, N.C., an annual songwriters' camp,
and they became friends.
About 25 songwriters auditioned at Godfrey Daniels two years ago. Thirteen were chosen. Two dropped out. "I think they realized the
scope of the project. It's basically been a two-year commitment," says O'Donnell. Franke held five workshops, and songwriters met on
their own.
Early on, Franke asked each songwriter to interview another and return the next day with a song about that person. "It was really a
process of learning how to interview and then to take apart the pieces and write a song about it," says O'Donnell.
Steel workers were interviewed from a Touchstone list. Two songwriters, Len Christman and Bob Hrichak, are former steel workers.
"There are a number of us, as well, who have retired steel workers in our families," says O'Donnell. Her father, Charles Holsinger, and
uncle, Chester Ellenberger, worked at Bethlehem Steel's Johnstown plant.
O'Donnell interviewed Bernadette Crockett, who was at Bethlehem's Coke Works for more than a decade. "She talked about the effects
of working in the mill and about being one of the first women to work there."
O'Donnell also interviewed Paul Yerger, who worked various jobs at the Steel for more than 22 years.
"A lot of people talked about the kinds of injuries steel workers were susceptible to, particularly before a lot of safety measures were put
in place," says O'Donnell, who took notes but did not tape the interviews.
"It was factory-line work with dangerous kinds of materials. It was easy to get distracted, lose your place and slip. And those kinds of
things happened all the time.
"It just wasn't a real safe place to work. I live not far from the monument (by Ben Marcune) that was put up in the Rose Garden (on
Bethlehem's West Side), in part, for injured workers. So I have a lot of interest in the topic."
O'Donnell's song on "Days of Steel" is "Something Happened in the Mill." In an even tone, she sings carefully chosen lyrics:
"No one knows just what went on that afternoon
but my Joe he won't be going back real soon."
O'Donnell says her song is fictitious and there's nobody named Joe. "But there are a lot of people with a lot of different names who got
injured. Those stories are all over the place if you start listening to people.
"It didn't come easy. It's a tough song. I really wanted to do justice to a lot of families whose pain I listened to. I spent some time making
sure the words were exactly what I wanted to say.
"It's interesting writing songs like this from assignment. It's kind of nerve-wracking. There are certain things laid out," says O'Donnell, a
child therapist in an area psychiatric hospital.
"Some of us don't work too well with that kind of pressure and timeline. We don't have the freedom to make things up as we please. That
was part of the comical struggle for us as well, trying to balance that out."
O'Donnell has one song on the disc (most have one; three songwriters each have two songs). She and the others wrote several, critiqued
over the course of a year.
Not only were songs created. Says O'Donnell:
"The other part that was created in the meetings was building a sense of community. We've been through a lot based on what we heard,
and we formed bonds between us.
"The CD really represents us well. And it really shows a variety of steel workers' family stories," says O'Donnell, a Bethlehem resident
who in July '98 released her debut CD of originals, "You Come Walking In," produced by Anne Hill.
Not all on the CD perform regularly. Says O'Donnell, "That's been a plus as well. They've brought a really nice flavor. There are several
who perform regularly. Some who perform infrequently. And some who don't perform at all and don't intend to. They got interested
because of the topic."
O'Donnell hasn't played her song for the former steel workers she interviewed. Patty Foley Edgar played her song, "!No Te Vayas Ya!,"
for her source, Delia Rivera Diaz, last Monday night at WDIY-FM for a live broadcast. "It was an emotional experience," says
O'Donnell.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BOB FRANKE
Bob Franke's friend Bonnie O'Donnell brought him to perform at Touchstone Theatre, Bethlehem, two years ago. The Boston-based
folksinger, who has taught for six years at The Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina where he met O'Connell, has performed for many
years at Godfrey Daniels, Bethlehem.
"I had heard about it (the songwriters project) from Bonnie. It was terribly exciting for me. I had done various pieces, but I hadn't
combined all of it," says Franke.
Among the six CDs by Franke, who has performed for 34 years at coffeehouses, colleges and festivals, is his most recent, '97's "Long
Roads, Short Visits" (Daring Records) and two that foreshadowed the Bethlehem project.
"Brief Histories" (Flying Fish) in '89 was an arts-grant funded collection of his songs based on research about Salem, Mass.
"Marblehead Grows" was commissioned by Marblehead Eco Farm, Marblehead, Mass., to tell the story of community supported
agriculture, where people buy shares in a harvest to minimize the farmer's risk. Franke interviewed farmers and those whose ancestors had
farmed.
Detroit native Franke worked for a college summer in the Jones & Laughlin Steel plant in Warren, Mich.
"When we actually set out to do the auditions, I had the sense that there were a lot of great songwriters there (in the Lehigh Valley) and
there are.
"I was weighting heavily the folks who had had actual experience in the Steel. I was looking for steel worker songwriters and I got a few
great ones.
"And then I was looking for people who I thought would work well together who would be able to commit to a certain amount of group
process."
Franke's quarterly songwriting workshops began in June '98.
"The second workshop was the real breakthrough. That was the one in which people interviewed one another, and had the experience of
not only interviewing but being interviewed and had the sense of their story being told by someone else.
"I think, more than anything else, that trained people in respect and compassion for the stories of the folks they were going to be telling.
Also, sort of incidentally, it was a great way of forming a fine group spirit."
Franke's "Days of Steel" song, "Little White Envelopes," is based on a passage in former Bethlehem Globe-Times editor and Pulitzer Prize
winner John Strohmeyer's book, "Crisis in Bethlehem," which was on the songwriters' reading list, along with "Memoirs of a Steelworker"
by David Kuchta:
"Little white envelopes, row on row,
Under portraits of Grace and Schwab
The envelopes are "layoff envelopes."
"They (the workers) were given the envelopes and told not to open them when they got them, but to open them when they got back to
their offices or work areas. They didn't want a mob scene," says Franke.
Franke's impressed with the "Days of Steel" songwriters' work:
"On one level, I was amazed. But then on another level, I had every confidence that they would be as good as they are.
"I'm honored to be a part of it. And I'm honored to gain a number of new friends in Bethlehem. I'm terribly proud of what these
songwriters have accomplished."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MIKE KRISUKAS, MIRIAM HUERTAS
"They (the CDs songwriters) cover so many different perspectives. You kind of think that it would be a singular topic, but it is not," says
Mike Krisukas, "Days of Steel" producer.
"We got together one night and everybody just passed the guitar around at Bonnie's (O'Donnell) house and played their songs.
"The songs just knocked me out. Pure songwriting. Just gut-wrenching, touching songs. Just really capturing the essence of it -- all of
them. We were just sitting there crying.
"Tom Watson -- he just came out of nowhere. This guy is this Woody Guthrie type character --the old Dustbowl songwriting. He's kind
of uncomfortable on stage, but he has this great whiny Dylanesque voice.
"Everybody knew that his song (`Days of Steel') really captured what this project was. Everybody just nodded their heads and said, `He
got it. It's the opening track.'
"With (`Days of Steel'), it might not be world-class performers, but the songs are great songs. And that's what the singer-songwriter
project is all about."
Krisukas, well-known Valley musician-composer-producer who founded the cabaret rock band Zen for Primates, and who founded
Bummer Tent Records with Miriam Huertas, wasn't familiar with many performers on "Days of Steel." Explains Huertas:
"We got a chance to interact with a whole circle of people that Mike (Krisukas) was not involved with, the folk circle."
Says Krisukas, "`It was just a scene that I wasn't a part of. The excitement is always dealing with some people we haven't dealt with, like
the (annual Bummer Tent) Christmas CD."
"Some (of the songwriters) will be featured on this year's Christmas CD," adds Huertas.
The fourth annual "Lehigh Valley Christmas" CD is expected to be released in December. The CD release concert returns to Civic
Theatre, Allentown, for a first-time live broadcast on WDIY-FM.
Bummer Tent plans to release its 11th CD, by area Celtic band, Blackwater, led by brother and sister, Sean and Fiona Hennessy.
Krisukas is working on material for Zen for Primates' third disc, set for release next spring, following its '98 release, "Blessed are the
Sheepherders."
"Days of Steel" was recorded at Bummer Tent Studios, Allentown. It was mastered at Red Rock Recording, Saylorsburg. There have
been 2,000 copies pressed.
It will be available at Steel Festival events. Following the festival, it will be sold at area stores and via the Internet (amazon.com and
bummertent.com).
The disc was recorded over four months, beginning in March. Songwriters accompanied themselves on guitar or piano. Krisukas added
bass parts and additional guitar. On several tracks, Jodi Beder, a member of Zen for Primates, added cello and Virginia Melin added
violin.
Krisukas, originally from Easton, didn't have family members who worked at the Bethlehem plant, but says, "Just knowing people as we
all have, I was well aware of its influence on the community."
Says Huertas, who had several family members who worked in the plant:
"Four of my five brothers-in-law worked at the Steel, some as recently as the final shutdown at the Coke Works. One is quite ill, which
we attribute to his work at the Coke Works. He got disability from Steel.
"That's why I love what Patty Foley Edgar did (`!No Te Vayas Ya!'), because it's about this Puerto Rican family coming here and leaving
the family behind, which, for me, obviously, is important.
"It didn't happen to my immediate family because my dad didn't work at the Steel, but it happened to so many Latino families."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BARBARA PARADOWSKI
"I'm sort of getting back into it. This is sort of my mid-life coming out party. I hadn't played in about 15 years," says Barbara Paradowski
of East Stroudsburg.
She met Bob Franke in the late '70s on the upstate New York college coffeehouse circuit. Fast forward two decades to Touchstone
Theatre, where Franke performed. He introduced her to Bonnie O'Donnell.
"I said `yes' without knowing what it really entailed," Paradowski recalls. "But I thought it would get me back into writing.
"I had never been involved in a songwriting workshop," she notes. "For me, it opened up a whole new, wonderful group of people who
I've gotten to know. A door opened to a new adventure." She read books and excerpts from Franke's recommended list.
She contacted Ishmael Garcia, who worked in the Coke Works. Accompanied by Patty Foley Edgar, she met with him and six other
former steel workers at the Puerto Rican Beneficial Society in Bethlehem.
"He was so nice," remembers Paradowski. Garcia's niece Delia Rivera Diaz was there. Edgar based her song, "!No Te Vayas Ya!," on
Diaz's story.
"Bob had given us some notes on what to listen to. I really didn't know much about the steel industry," says Paradowski, who took notes
but didn't tape the interview. Franke had urged them to listen for "something to stick out.
"When you're listening to things that are foreign to you, not a lot sticks out," Paradowski laughs. "They were talking about the pollution
controls, protective equipment for the workers and technical things.
"But I got a sense of their camaraderie. They moved their culture from Puerto Rico and they had all these little communities in Bethlehem.
At first they didn't have any Spanish grocery stores and restaurants, and gradually they had more of that after more of them had came
over."
Paradowski was given a tour of the social club. She noticed a picture on the wall of San Juan, with turquoise-colored water.
"Part of that is in the song," she says, referring to "Island in the River" "The opening line refers to the picture on the wall (at the Beneficial
Society)," she says:
"A crunch of seashells on an aqua coastline."
A tour of the plant by Bette Kovach, Bethlehem Steel director of media relations, elicited this lyric:
"the star, our guardian angel."
It refers, not to the Star of Bethlehem atop South Mountain, but a Christmas decoration star on one of the buildings at the plant. The
"guardian angel" is the steel industry, the Bethlehem plant, itself, she explains. "I tried to fit things in the song that they said."
"The edges of the streets hang thick
with language
with brotherhood that bulges at the seams
a bit uneasy they grow
the trust we brought with us from Puerto Rico."
The word "uneasy" is how others look at the Latino tradition of street corners socializing -- loitering to some, says Paradowski. "I guess
they were getting arrested every weekend. Then later, the police got to know they weren't dangerous" The chorus invokes the line:
"Protect us with your love"
"It's a prayer," she notes. "I take it they came here with nothing and they would do anything to get a job."
About the song's title, "Island in the River," Paradowski says, "They had come from the island of Puerto Rico, and it's sort of like they had
made their own little cultural island up here in Bethlehem."
"Bless our island in this iron river"
The "iron river" is the Lehigh River, on whose banks the sprawling Bethlehem plant was built. "This was a big risk for them," says
Paradowski about those emigrating from Puerto Rico to work at the Steel. "Some of them didn't have their families over right away."
Paradowski has another song, "Live On," on "Days of Steel." The song was inspired by the plant tour. "Everything just seemed big. Where
the blast furnaces are, it seemed like something out of `Star Wars,' " she says.
"Live On" tells the story of Eric, Bethlehem plant graffiti artist extraordinaire:
"hovered on high planks, this dangerous pose
it's like kilroy was here"
"Eric was the most prolific of the graffiti artists. They didn't know who he was, but figured he must have been on the night shift and had
access to a rig.
"At first I wasn't going to write a song about Eric because I thought someone else was going to. But then I got kind of desperate," she
laughs. "Of course, it isn't all true, because it's from Eric's point of view, of what he might have been thinking."
On the plant tour, says Paradowski, "The welfare room really stuck out, the colors, the whole setup. When we went in there, nothing was
cleaned up. There were old shoes. It seemed like people were there yesterday.
"I have relatives who worked in Bethlehem Steel's Lackawanna plant in Buffalo. My great uncle Paul was a crane operator. Uncle Sam
was in the open hearth. I called him up. Uncle Sam sent me some of his remembrances.
"One of the things he said was about the narrow gauge railroad track. `Mention this in your song.' I wasn't sure how I was going to do
that.
"For the chorus, I called up Len (Christman) to see if he remembered any of the other names. He said he didn't, but he did remember
Eric's name. And then while I was on the phone with Len, he was telling me what he remembered -- and then I just sort of put it all
together."
"The smells, the noise, the heat and cold
the rails and the dirt and the fire
the narrow gauge track.
and the welfare baskets
and eric live on."
" `Live On` is largely made up but I wanted to stay true to the impressions. That's one of the things Bob (Franke) told us to do, to be
truthful. I really felt a sense of responsibility. I thought about that with the steel songs. People in the community are going to hear them."
Paradowski moved from upstate New York in '81 to East Stroudsburg, where she teaches aneighth grade class. She moved there to be
closer to New York City where she's performed at Gerdes' Folk City. Paradowski says the singer-songwriter project has encouraged her
to get back into singing and songwriting.
"That's where I'm headed," she says enthusiastically. "I can't let it go. It's part of me. I don't even care if anybody hears it. I just gotta do it
for myself. I think I was doing it for the wrong reasons before."
Of the singer-songwriter project she says wistfully, "It's been two years in the making. In some ways, it will be sad when it's over."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LEN CHRISTMAN
Len Christman, who worked at the Bethlehem plant for 39 years, says of his songwriting, "I was sort of a late-bloomer. Most of my
growing up I was playing a lot of baseball in the Allentown City A League and squadron baseball and football in the Air Force."
Christman, Allentown Central Catholic Class of '54, was the last chief clerk of the Drop Forge when it closed in '89. He spent his last six
years at the Steel as a clerk in the Basic Oxygen Furnace before it closed in December '95. He retired in February '96.
An article in The Morning Call and encouragement from his wife, Karen, got Christman involved with the singer-songwriter project.
Christman already had a published song, "Holiday Time Is Near." Written in '89, it's included in a Warner Brothers song compilation
book.
Christman wrote six songs as part of the workshop. "Names," included on "Days of Steel," was one of these.
"My wife just said, `Why don't you just do it on the nicknames?'
" `Names' came from my own experiences as a retiree, plus talking with Jim Robertson, who worked 10 years in the plant and then
worked in the media section, and Bill Gaughan, a retired general foreman at the ingot mold foundry":
"There's Whiskey Bill, and Irish Stu
Holy Joe, Goosey John, and Shorty Lou"
"They knew each other very well. Everybody watched each other's back. It's just that people clown around a little bit, and they got
nicknames. And they called each other by their nicknames when they greeted each other.
"I bet if you ask them today, `Do you remember a certain fellow who worked beside you, they'd say, `Oh, yeah, Shorty.'
Christman estimates he worked on "Names" for about two weeks.
"That song was the easiest and quickest to put together. As happens when you write, some songs just go together quickly. Others that you
work on long and hard, you're not ever satisfied with it. It's just the way it is."
Through the project, Touchstone asked Christman to be in last year's "Christmas City Follies," where he sang his "My Christmas Wish."
From that, he learned about tryouts for "Steelbound." He's in the steel workers chorus. He's also in the Steel Choir.
"It's been a constant talking about keeping the singer-songwriter group together, to write other songs, and to keep the choir together.
"I'm not a seasoned performer like many members of the group. They do it as a norm. It's a little tougher for us to perform 'cause we don't
have it perfected enough. But I wouldn't shy away from it.
"It was a lot of fun," Christman says. "It was a bit exasperating at times. I think the group worked well together. It's going to be a blast
getting together for these concerts."
Christman is philosophical about his days at the Steel:
"I can't say anything negative. It supplied me with a place to work and a living for practically my whole life.
"When you're working for a large corporation, you've got to take the bad with the good. I enjoyed my career there. We had a good crew,
especially at the Drop Forge. It was just great.
"You go from the Brass Age to the Iron Age and the Steel Age. Who knows what's next? I think they'll come up with something to
replace steel.
"The thing that I like with the (Steel) festival is that for future generations it's going to be part of the history of the country and the world. At
least by making an industrial museum, that will let the legacy live on.
"And that's what I take out of the festival and what they're doing. That's why I'm so involved in it. There's nothing I can do about what
happened. I least I can be part of it. It's sad, but ... " his voice trails off.
"Actually, sometimes it's a little hard going back to the play (`Steelbound') practice and seeing what it is. Both my last departments are
flat."
"Days of Steel," 2, 7 p.m. today, Godfrey Daniels, 7 E. 4th St., Bethlehem; 8 p.m. Wednesday, Ice House, Sand Island, Bethlehem; 8
p.m. Thursday, Touchstone Theatre, 321 E. 4th St., Bethlehem. Most of the songwriters are expected at each two-hour (with
intermission) concert. Tickets: $8, advance; $10, door. 1-877-STEELFEST.
The disc, $15, is available at Steel Festival events.
PHOTO by DOUGLAS BENEDICT, The Morning Call
CAPTION: Barbara Paradowski, in Welfare Room at Bethlehem Steel, wrote `Live On' from the inspiration of hundreds of steel workers
who once showered and changed after their shifts in the mill.
PHOTO by MICHAEL KUBEL, Special to The Morning Call
CAPTION: Former steel worker Len Christman finds art imitates his life as he acts in `Steelbound,' Touchstone Theatre's drama based
on the end of an industry giant.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999
Page: A14
Edition: SECOND
Section: COMMENT
MANY TRUTHS ABOUT STEEL UNTOLD
The Morning Call
To the Editor:
I was outraged by Paul Carpenters column of Sept. 5, `Lessons of Steel.` Some of it may be valid, especially the derogatory comments
that were passed on to him by his uncle, a former Bethlehem Steel foreman, blasting union membership for the demise of Bethlehem Steel.
Although I agree that there are whores in every profession, there's the other side of the story that Mr. Carpenter failed to divulge.
He fails to reveal there was a time when there were so many unnecessary, big-salary, white-collar personnel that they were practically
tripping over each other.
He fails to reveal that every time the company experienced a down-turn in business it came to the union to give it relief.
He fails to reveal all the broken promises Bethlehem Steel made to the union to modernize, knowing that it meant a loss of union jobs.
He fails to reveal that the union had spent hard-earned blue collar dollars developing committees to brainstorm ways in an attempt to
achieve cost-cutting savings to save the business and make it more profitable.
He fails to reveal how here in Bethlehem, the coke division was the only one in the country that met federal emission standards and that
the union was willing to discuss even more ways to reduce labor costs, which would have meant long-term viability.
I happen to be a former business owner myself, and I truly believe that the right direction of any business has to be set forth and
maintained from the top.
I happened to volunteer for the Steel Festival and was picked to be part of the Steelworker Chorus. But I have to wonder why some of
the top executives didn't volunteer.
After all, they are the real actors. Look at their broken promises, along with the dog and pony show they displayed to the union and our
community before they closed the Bethlehem plant.
Jerry Green
Bethlehem
------------------------------------------------------
Date: Saturday, September 11, 1999
Page: A47
Edition: SECOND
Section: ENTERTAINMENT
STRIKING `STEELBOUND' MELDS SUFFERING, PRIDE AND FAITH
by PAUL WILLISTEIN, The Morning Call
"Steelbound," an interpretation of the Greek tragedy, "Prometheus Unbound," based on research and interviews with former Bethlehem
Steel Corp. plant workers, is a hybrid: one-part pageant, opera, drama, comedy and performance art.
It's all parts great.
"Steelbound" packs a cumulative emotional wallop. It did for me opening night, Thursday, and it wasn't only because of the thunder that
applauded the birth of this modern classic.
Presented as the key component of the Steel Festival, the audacious, risk-taking 90-minute work, staged without intermission in the
closed South Side plant's former Iron Foundry, is like no theater presentation ever mounted in the Lehigh Valley -- or perhaps anywhere
in the United States.
While not overtly Christian, "Steelbound" initially gives the impression of an Easter passion play or Christmas story tableau. It is spiritual,
soul-searching and politically-charged. The play says there's enough blame to go around for the demise of steelmaking at the hometown
plant, and, maybe, no one's to blame. What we do know is, as Prometheus, reconfigured as a steel worker, is told: "We've come to the
end of your world."
The musical-drama, skillfully and insightfully written by Allison Carey, is daringly directed by Bill Rauch (both are with the Los
Angeles-based Cornerstone Theater Company), and has gospel, hip-hop and rap-inspired original music by Ysaye Barnwell of the
cappella quintet Sweet Honey in the Rock, as well as inventive movement direction by Jennie Gilrain of Bethlehem's Touchstone Theatre.
This is theater on a monumental, if obvious, scale from the moment characters named Brutality (effectively ominous David James),
Indifference (diva-like Devon Allen) and Chauffeur (fierce-looking James Jackson) ride up in a Cadillac Fleetwood. (There aren't too
many stages where you can do that.)
They're joined by steel worker riggers Heffy (Terry Galle), Festa (Guillermo Lopez Jr.) and Uz (John Reiman), arriving in a ramshackle
Ford pickup. Prometheus (Bill George in his most brilliant performance ever) is yanked from the car's trunk and tossed like a sack of
potatoes on the dusty ground (yes, that's the "stage").
Brutality orders Prometheus welded atop of a 27-1/2-ton ladle. The riggers grumblingly obey --using a real welding torch! (Caution:
theater-goers may not want to look directly into the flame.)
From then on it's Prometheus' show. George is up to the arduous acting challenge, not the least of which is balancing on the ladle, arms
outstretched for at least an hour. In several moving monologues, George moves from anger to sorrow, wheedling to resignation -- while
virtually standing still. He bares his self; all masks are off. With Christ-like agony, he endures the verbal stripes: "Be proud now,
Superman: man of steel."
Introduced, in sweeping movements brilliantly choreographed by Gilrain, are the choruses. Cora Hook, in excellent voice, bravely leads
the Women's Chorus. Hook is attired by costume designer April Bevens not unlike Dorothy in Munchkinland. The space's acoustics
echoes voices, enhancing the Munchkin-like sense, as does the size of the ladle, 11-ton steel H-beam, foundry ceiling and incredibly
dramatic lighting (designer Ken Rothchild), sending towering shadows cavorting across stone walls.
Scurrying in the background is the searchlighted Young Person Chorus, popping over the walls Dickens-like, led by the memorable Ivan
Alicea in strong voice and form. They're joined by Penny (excitable Sara Brady), a former steel worker's daughter, materializing from the
ladle's bowl (hellishly lit at one point like a boiling cauldron).
Finally up step the steel workers, their litany of loss -- the plant that "rattled the windows at Liberty High School," the company that "gave
history to the 20th century," the "steel men (who) made our time" -- building like an emotional superstructure of pain.
Mark McKenna, as Herman, provides needed comic relief as a nerdy historian, immediately establishing his excellent clowning ability by
literally going over the beam with a fearless pratfall. McKenna's and George's scenes together are seamless; they're the movement
theater's Crosby and Hope.
Barnwell's evocative vocal score sans instruments, with music direction by Beverly Morgan, is thrilling. The words "Bethlehem" and "steel"
become incantations of suffering, pride and, yes, faith. "Steelbound," a testament to trust in ourselves, our talents and each other, is a
life-affirming act of creativity.
The history-telling and history-making "Steelbound" will be talked about for years to come. You'll have to see it to believe it. Do see it.
"Steelbound," 7 p.m. today, Sunday, Thursday, Friday, next Saturday, Sept. 19, Iron Foundry, former Bethlehem Steel Corp. plant, Third
and Fillmore streets, Bethlehem (vicinity of the Discovery Center; plant entrance is across from the Pizza House, 418 E. 3rd St.). Free
post-play reception, with complimentary refreshments, hosted by different community group after each performance, Touchstone Theatre
Cafe, 321 E. 4th St., Bethlehem. $10, $20, $30. 1-867-1689, 1-877-STEELFEST.
---------------------------------------------------
Date: Friday, September 10, 1999
Page: B01
Edition: EIGHTH
Section: LOCAL/REGION
STEEL PLAY OPENS
* SPELLBOUND AUDIENCE BRAVES TOUGH WEATHER FOR MOVING `STEELBOUND.'
by PAUL WILLSTEIN, The Morning Call
If you raise up Prometheus, you're bound to call down Zeus -- and Thor, too; maybe even the whole Mount Olympus.
At least that's what seemed to be going on when the sky opened up on opening night and the world premiere of "Steelbound," the
Greek-based original work about steelmaking in Bethlehem that debuted Thursday night at the closed Bethlehem Steel Corp. South Side
plant.
The storm broke soon after the play began at 7:15 p.m., with Prometheus (Touchstone Ensemble actor Bill George) chained to the top of
a 27-1/2-ton ladle at the former Iron Foundry.
While the lightning, thunder and downpour relented, they seemed to come back stronger each time, increasing with the intensity of the play
and at times punctuating dramatic moments in the 90-minute musical-drama written by Los Angeles-based Cornerstone Theater's Allison
Carey.
Ironically, the play begins with the recorded sounds of the wind and has sound effects, including thunder. Sometimes you couldn't tell the
dramatic thunder from the real thunder.
Even more amazing, the sold-out crowd of 300 stayed to the end, sitting under an open-sided stone, steel-beamed and leaky-roofed
structure in the middle of an abandoned steel mill.
While some people on the west side of the tiered seating area were rained on, only a few drops came through the roof over the majority
of the audience. Puddles formed on the gravel and macadamed staging area.
They like their theater tough in Bethlehem -- as tough as the steel that they poured and rolled there. Mother Nature threw heavy artillery at
"Steelbound," directed by Cornerstone's Bill Rauch, but nothing could rain on this parade of fascinating history, tortured emotions and
brave hopes for a community and its future.
Just as they made iron -- beginning in 1863 on the very spot where the cast symbolically laid the tools of the trade during a roll call of
Steel plant divisions -- the 60 Touchstone and Lehigh Valley theater community actors, former steel workers, children and teens forged
on.
It was an auspicious beginning for the Steel Festival, which has brought the national and international media spotlight to Bethlehem. On
Thursday night, a crew from WNET-TV shot footage for its "Arts Life" series. "CBS Sunday Morning" will air a segment about the
festival.
Earlier Thursday evening, an estimated 100 attended the opening of a visual arts exhibit at Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center gallery,
one of 19 across the Valley that are part of Steel Fest. Joe Elliott's huge black and white photographs capture the "End of an Era" at the
Bethlehem plant.
Touchstone artistic director Mark McKenna, who plays a historian in "Steelbound," was pleased with the performance. "It was wonderful
to hear the audience reaction," he said.
In addition to the giant ladle, the play includes a working welder, 11-ton steel H beam, mobile cherry picker crane, Cadillac Fleetwood
and Ford pickup truck, the latter two driven onto the set.
"It was different," said Mrs. Roger Fluck of Bethlehem, adding, "I thought it was marvelous. And the music was beautiful. My husband
and father and my son all worked for Steel. We're Steel people."
Said her daughter, Sandy Fluck, also of Bethlehem, "I loved it. This is the first time I was in the foundry. Women weren't allowed in here
when I was growing up."
Not only the heavens were raining during the play. Many in the audience sobbed and dabbed at their eyes. Applause and laughter
punctuated several points. The play got a standing ovation.
Afterward, cast and audience members hugged and greeted one another. Many headed for the post-play discussion at nearby Touchstone
Theatre. "Steelbound" will continue tonight, Saturday and Sunday night, and Thursday through Sept. 19.
"It represented a lot of feelings people in the community had," said Clair DiLorenzo of Allentown.
"My father worked at Steel, in management, for 17 years. It was an interesting commentary for me," said Kris Seissmayer, marketing
manager in the book division at Rodale and vice president of Touchstone's board. "There was a serious and effective effort to reach out
and be inclusive, to the community, to steel workers to management," said Bob Thompson, chair of the Bethlehem Mayor's South Side
Task Force.
Added Thompson, "This was hard work. The whole thing was hard work. No reason we should be sitting in upholstered chairs and a
climate-controlled environment."
"Next time, we'll try to get rid of the rain," joked Bill George.
Spoken like a true god.
PHOTO by DOUGLAS BENEDICT, The Morning Call
CAPTION: Bill George performs as Prometheus on opening night of `Steelbound' in South Bethlehem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thursday, September 9, 1999
Page: B01
Edition: FIFTH
Section: LOCAL/REGION
STEEL FESTIVAL CAPTURES VITALITY OF AN INDUSTRY; INTRODUCES FUTURE
* ART, ARTIFACTS, THEATER AND ARCHITECTURE COMBINE TO HONOR ACHIEVEMENT.
by PAUL WILLISTEIN, The Morning Call
"Let the festival begin," exclaimed Bethlehem Steel Chairman Curtis H. "Hank" Barnette, thrusting his right fist into the air.
With that he kicked off the Steel Festival, forged from a theater festival even before iron and steel making ended in 1995 at the Bethlehem
plant.
Leaders from Bethlehem Steel, the South Side and the Lehigh Valley arts community filled the lobby of Bethlehem Steel's old
headquarters to toast the opening of the 11-day, multi-arts celebration with an exhibit of Steel-themed photography, paintings and
drawings.
Tonight, the festival begins in earnest at the plant's former Iron Foundry with the world premiere of "Steelbound," coproduced by
Touchstone Theatre, which spearheaded the festival, and Los Angeles' Cornerstone Theater.
The musical drama, for which a 27-1/2-ton ladle and 11-ton steel H-beam were moved into place as props, has a cast of 60, including
area actors and former steel workers.
On Wednesday night at 701 E. Third St., Bethlehem, in the huge lobby of brown marble, terrazzo, light hardwood paneling, stainless steel
and a staircase Fred Astaire would've loved to tap dance on, the Steel Choir sang Len Christman's "Names" and Tom Watson's "Days of
Steel" from the festival songwriters project.
"Claypipe, Irish Stu, Mr. Clean and Shorty Lou," sang choir members led by Bev Morgan. "Confidentially, what did they call you?"
The other song, arranged by Ysaye Barnwell, who looked on happily, and the title cut for the "Days of Steel" CD to be released today,
urged, "take a look around ... it was Steel that built this town."
In the exhibit, continuing through Sept. 19, are: "Industry's Echo," color photography of the closed Bethlehem plant by Morning Call
photographer Chuck Zovko; "Steel Reflections," digital photos of the operating plant by Steel corporate photographer Peter Treiber;
"Silencing the Steel," large, brown-toned photographs taken with a 1950s Brownie Instamatic by Ellen Foscue Johnson; and
"Steelscapes," paintings and drawings of the working mill by Michael Shemeley.
"This is an extraordinary festival," said Barnette to an estimated 200. "We're here with a sense of sadness, but with a great sense of
appreciation and a sense of pride."
Pointing to Bethlehem Works, which would transform the plant into a cultural, recreation and entertainment complex, Barnette said,
"Much, much more needs to be done." He called the 1,800acres the "most significant brownfield" site in America which will become a
model in "readaptive use."
Planned is the National Museum of Industrial History, an affiliate of The Smithsonian Institution. The former 13-story headquarters (Steel
offices are in Martin Tower) is to be a hotel and conference center.
"It's one of the best art deco lobbies in the country," said Lance Metz, historian for the National Canal Museum, Easton.
"No other steel company in the nation has tried to do what Bethlehem is doing to bring about economic revitalization through preservation
and adaptive reuse of its property," Metz said. The plant completely shut down with the closing of the Coke Works in 1998.
"People don't realize that this will be one of the largest industrial museums in the world," said Metz, who for 20 years has saved Steel
historical materials and documents and is chairman of the Roebling Chapter of the Society for Industrial Architecture.
"It's not only the museum. It's the synergy of the old and the new that's going to make this work," he said.
That synergy was in evidence Wednesday night.
Hal Black, outgoing Touchstone board president who works at Air Products and Chemicals Inc., said the Steel Festival "was exciting"
from the start. "You're always at the edge of your seat to see if the community will pick up on it -- and they have."
Said John Sarceno, incoming Touchstone board president who heads Sarceno Design in Bethlehem, "Every once in a while in the life
cycle of a community you get a chance to redefine yourself. And we're at that point now. We're ending one chapter now and beginning
another."
Bethlehem City Councilwoman Maggie Szabo said, "I don't want the memory of the contribution of my father, my grandfather, my uncles
and my cousin to die." They all worked at Steel.
"I think everyone from Bethlehem and the area should come (to the Steel Festival) because they're going to find themselves in the story."
PHOTO by DOUGLAS BENEDICT, The Morning Call
CAPTION: Bethlehem Steel photographs by Peter Treiber hang at the `Steel Reflections' exhibit at former Steel headquarters
Wednesday.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sunday, September 5, 1999
Page: F01
Edition: SECOND
Section: ARTS & TRAVEL
Memo:This week, one of the most ambitious arts festivals in the Lehigh Valley begins in Bethlehem. "Steel Festival: The Art of an
Industry" debuts the play "Steelbound" Thursday night and continues with concerts, exhibits and discussions.
STEEL'S LAST CAST
BETHLEHEM'S FESTIVAL LOOKS TO PLANT'S PAST AND CITY'S FUTURE
TOUCHSTONE'S `STEELBOUND' FIRES UP CELEBRATION OF A WAY OF LIFE
by PAUL WILLISTEIN, The Morning Call
"What is that guy doing up on that ladle there?" asks Charles Lee.
Lee squints toward the Romanesque stone arches of the cruciform-shaped Iron Foundry, one of the few remaining structures at the
western end of Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Bethlehem plant which sprawled for five miles along the Lehigh River.
For Lee, a security guard at the former Bethlehem Plant entrance at Third and Fillmore streets, wondering why somebody would be
standing, arms outstretched, atop a huge ladle is a reasonable question.
The image of "ladle guy" is a metaphor red alert. Backlit by the sun on a recent picture perfect late-summer Saturday afternoon and
framed by one of the foundry's archways, the actor's silhouette looked like Leonardo Da Vinci's "Canon of Proportion" drawing of man,
or the crucified Christ.
On Thursday, Touchstone Theatre presents the world premiere of "Steelbound," kickoff for "Steel Festival: The Art of an Industry,"
Bethlehem's 11-day hallelujah, rumination and leave-taking of a way of life.
The 90-minute drama is based on the legend of Prometheus, the Greek god who gave fire to man and was banished. "Steelbound," with
book by Alison Carey and music by Ysaye Barnwell, is directed by Bill Rauch of Los Angeles-based Cornerstone Theatre Company.
The one-act work will be performed by a cast of 60 professional actors, community residents and former steelworkers assembled by
Bethlehem's Touchstone Theatre, coproducing with Cornerstone.
"It is a Greek tragedy, a celebration of loss. I think people will appreciate the Steel even more," says Bill George, Touchstone founder
who plays "that guy on that ladle," Prometheus.
The 27-1/2-ton, 12-foot-high, 10-foot diameter ladle and a 30-foot, 11-ton steel H beam were moved to the roofed, open-sided,
cathedral-like foundry, where the play will be presented over two weekends. Brandenburg Industrial Services Co., which Bethlehem Steel
hired to dismantle its South Side facility, handled the move. The ladle and beam are arguably contenders for the Guinness Book of
Records, category: heaviest props used in a stage production.
The ladle was used in the plant's Electric Furnace Melt Shop. Molten steel was tapped from the electric arc furnace. The ladle transported
the molten steel to cast-iron molds where the steel was teamed into the mold. After the mold was removed, the ingots were forged into
finished products.
"It's such an incredible project," says Jerry Stropnicky, a founding member of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, recently observing
"Steelbound" rehearsals.
"It's such a combination of site, community and artists. There are these rare times that it all comes together in a big way and has the
possibility of having meaning for a lot of people," says Stropnicky.
This is one of those times.
"Steelbound" is the culmination of nearly a half decade of research, interviews with former steelworkers, negotiations with Bethlehem
Steel, several transcontinental airplane trips and lots of paperwork, phone calls and meetings. The Steel Festival has attracted major media
attention, including WNET-TV, national PBS, and CBS-TV "This Morning" (scheduled to air its piece next Sunday).
With a $300,000 budget, the Steel Festival is the biggest project Touchstone has undertaken, according to Deni Thurman-Eyer,
Touchstone managing director. It's one of the most ambitious locally generated original theater and arts endeavors ever attempted in the
Lehigh Valley.
Steel Fest funding includes $81,000 from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program, administered by the Association of
Performing Arts Presenters; $25,000 from the Bethlehem Steel Foundation, and $18,800 from the National Endowment for the Arts. Of
in-kind services, there's $35,000 from Saraceno Design Inc., $16,000 from James D. Morrissey Co. (for Iron Foundry site preparation),
and $15,000 from Bethlehem Steel Corp.
Says Thurman-Eyer, "It's bringing together a community-wide representation of corporate, philanthropic, private and artistic groups in the
Lehigh Valley.
"That combination is creating a remarkable unity. It's a reflection of a community-wide expression."
And now it all comes down to this: four weeks of six-day, 10-hour, rehearsals to shape "Steelbound." It's an intense, repetitive, tedious
process -- not unlike the way steel was once made on the property the play memorializes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Gite Christian stands at the Fillmore Street gate, his crisp white shirt with lieutenant badge glistening in the sun. The Burns Security plant
patrolman making the rounds has just pulled up in a plain white Ford Crown Victoria to check in with Charles Lee, also a Burns
employee, who's manning the gate.
"People constantly in and out of here. Cars and people. Whistle blows at 3 o'clock. One thousand guys in one shift," recounts Christian,
who's been on plant security for 33 years, first with Steel's plant patrol and, since 1985, with Burns.
"And to see all this now brings tears to your eyes," says Christian, his tinted aviator sunglasses masking any misting.
"I never would've believed it: Bethlehem Steel shut down? You're kidding me?" Christian emphasizes, his voice rising. "A museum? You're
kiddin' me."
The National Museum of Industrial History, an affiliate of The Smithsonian Institution, is key to the Bethlehem Works project, a
partnership between Bethlehem Steel, the City of Bethlehem, the state, nonprofits and entrepreneurs to transform the Steel plant site into a
mixed use cultural, recreation and entertainment complex. The Carpenter Shop, just inside the gate and north of the Bethlehem Plant's
six-story office building (now the Discovery Center) is to be part of The Fundry, a family fun center. To the east, Steel's 13-story former
corporate headquarters is to become a hotel and conference center.
Once, youths came to The Steel, as it was known, for a life of work not a day of play.
Christian remembers it well, and allows, "Some day it will be nice again. And I'll probably still be here."
Now, it isn't so nice. All around the rust-red colored Fillmore gate is neglect and decay. Just inside the gate, a sign states: Plant Patrol
Headquarters' Pass Desk. Lee checks the visitors' list. They're bound for "Steelbound," not a plant tour.
The Bethlehem plant was shut down successively: iron and steel-making, Fall '95; structural steel, Spring '97; Coke Works, Spring '98.
During World War II, Bethlehem plant employment zoomed to 30,000. In peacetime, it was averaging 12,000-14,000 and began
declining in the 1960s.
It's silent and empty at the western end of the former plant, save for late summer's insistent cicada song, activity at Pennsylvania
Metallurgical Inc. near the Fillmore gate, and the "whoo-whoo" horn of an eastbound CSX lashed up to a Conrail diesel pulling
over-the-road trailers on flatcars, adding yet another piece of the puzzle to Bethlehem's future at Bethlehem Steel's subsidiary, the
BethIntermodal Inc. yard.
There's a weedy neglect to the plant site which has been cleaned out like a cavity-infected tooth. Big purple butterfly bushes have nearly
taken over a sidewalk, and the monarchs have followed. "Please keep our plant clean. Use the waste can provided for garbage.
Thank-you" reads a sign, with the "our" underlined.
Another sign, affixed to the south wall of a graphite-covered fieldstone wall of the Iron Foundry indicates it's Building No. 84. So few are
now standing, it might as well be No. 1.
There's also a Bethlehem Steel Partners for Progress sign on the foundry's outside wall. Steel is indeed partnered, but not to make steel
anymore here; rather it's collaborating with a theater troupe on the Steel Festival and the community on Beth Works. The Bethlehem
Works site has been called a national model for brown fields development by the Environmental Protection Agency and the state's
Department of Environmental Protection.
Originally built in 1873 as a Bessemer steelmaking and rail production facility, the Iron Foundry design is echoed in the gracefully arched
red-beamed superstructure of two buildings being erected for Bethlehem Technology Center No. 2, adjacent to the existing Bethlehem
Technology Center near the Fahy Bridge. Companies listed on a sign -- Bio Med Sciences Inc., Quantum Epitaxial Designs, Dataworks
International and Particle Sciences Inc. -- give a clue to the new direction.
With Labor Day marked on Monday, the thousands of workers who streamed through the Fillmore gate -- the plant's main gate which
had been emblazoned with big silver letters proclaiming Bethlehem Plant -- have slowed to a trickle -- just actors now, who pretend to be
steelworkers. Now they are the evening cast, since steel is no longer manufactured. The clock on the Fillmore gate is stopped at a quarter
to 12.
On a lunch break, "Steelbound" 's Bill George, Mark McKenna, Bill Rauch, Ben Wagman, and Christine Perillo walk on the temporary
strip of blacktop laid down for the play production, past the portable Wacker light trailer, under the Fillmore gate and across Third Street
to the Pizza House. The restaurant has managed to stay open. "How many are they expecting for the play?" asks owner Aris Grondidis,
serving a Greek salad.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Big yellow drop-off boxes with large Brandenburg letters on the side dot the former Steel plant landscape. The Steel Festival is the
concerti written and staged for the mill and the millworkers. It arose out of a need to reconcile past, present and a hopeful, if uncertain,
future.
Maybe Billy Joel was right. Prescient back in '82 with "Allentown" (Cut one, side one, "The Nylon Curtain"), he looked to Bethlehem,
too:
"Down in Bethlehem,
They're killing time,
Filling out forms,
Standing in line"
The city's namesake, legend has it, was taken from a Moravian hymn on Christmas eve 1741 by missionary Count Nicholas Ludwig von
Zinzendorf: "Not from Jerusalem but Bethlehem came the Christ who saved us."
Yeats, writing of another Bethlehem in another time, has a fitting metaphor for the challenges facing a city and its citizens:
"The center cannot hold,
Slouching toward Bethlehem
To be born again."
Bethlehem has always observed its joys and sorrows with music and song, going back to trombone-toting Moravians tending their fields,
to scaring away a Lenni-Lenape attack with a blast from their horns, to founding the Bach Choir, to Musikfest. So, it's more than
appropriate that the Steel Festival should call up codas and choruses to mark a passing.
Pendants along Third Street proclaim: Forging a Bright Future. The banners state it a bit differently, but are essentially trumpeting the same
cause: Bethlehem -- its leaders, its citizens, its artists -- is not taking the closing of the Steel lying down. They have sprung into action and
made the best of a bad situation. They've been handed a lot of lemons --truckloads, trainloads. They'll be making a lot of lemonade.
To show that kind of strength and determination, Steel Festival banners, six-foot-tall have been hung around the South Side. The image is
taken from the festival brochure. That image is of an 1800s era steelworker -- a puddler who, with a long pole, pushed the flow of molten
steel as it traveled through the runners of the blast furnace. Saraceno Design, which did the graphic design work for the festival, took the
image from a statue commissioned by Charles Schwab, which had been at the former Bethlehem Steel president's New York mansion
and now stands outside the Frank Lloyd Wright room at the Allentown Art Museum.
The small American flag that fell to the ground at the War Memorial at the Fillmore gate parking lot is placed back in its holder. As the
war dead are honored by building a monument to steelworkers who fought and gave their lives, so too, the Steel Festival honors the death
of an industry and a way of life, by erecting a play.
"Steelbound" is one step, but a big step, toward rebuilding the spirit of Bethlehem after its soul was partly demolished along with the plant.
The mill and its rhythmic slamming and banging, whooshing and screeching, became the heartbeat of Bethlehem. It wasn't just a factory
that was torn down. The fire-breathing, glowing heart of Bethlehem was ripped out. The plant site, the workers, the city -- all are looking
for rebirth.
For many, "Steelbound" has already done that.
"I was never in anything like this before," says John Reiman, who portrays Uz in the play. "The experience has been really good."
Reiman urges the community to come out to see the play. "It will be entertaining for people who were steelworkers and for those who
weren't," says Reiman, who had a "pulpit job" in Steel's 48-inch rolling mill where he worked for 30 years until '95.
Says Peter DePietro, steelworkers chorus leader and a former president of USW Local 260. "I got involved because I wanted to make
sure the story was told right. And it was."
Of "Steelbound," DePietro says, "I think its like a closure for a lot of the steelworkers who are in the play."
It is for Guillermo Lopez Jr., who worked in the Coke Works for 25 years. He's now a community organizer for Alliance for Building
Communities, Allentown. Lopez plays Festa in the play. He got involved for his family:
"My father worked here for 36 years. My wife's father. My uncle. My cousin. They all worked at the Steel.
"We have a deep vested interest in it as a family, and as a people. Puerto Ricans played an important role at Bethlehem Steel."
Says Stacey Breidenstein, area actor/musician who has appeared in shows at Theatre Outlet, Allentown, and is Worker No. 20 in
"Steelbound":
"It's a dream to do a show like this. Generally, you never get to do site-specific works. An actor can work their whole professional life
and never have an experience like this. I feel really lucky."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"You're going to be lighting candles when you end the song," Jennie Gilrain, "Steelbound" movement director, tells the cast.
She sings the line, "Hear me out," and turns, demonstrating for the actors.
"It's like an industrial cathedral," observes Stropnicky of the Iron Foundry "The play is unabashedly spiritual," he adds.
In the background, youths on bicycles and inline skates scoot along the newly laid macadam. Are they playing or practicing for the play?
So seamless is "Steelbound," you can't tell the reality from the drama. Director Bill Rauch heads over to the youths to work with them. It
turns out they are not just playing, but are rehearsing their entrances.
"This is as good a team of theater actors as you'll find anywhere," notes Stropnicky. "The town should be jumping up and down."
Stropnicky should know. In 1996, his Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble's "Letters to the Editor" was presented in the same community spirit.
The play, based on 200 years of letters to Bloomsburg newspapers, was presented at Touchstone. Stropnicky edited a book based on
the project, "Letters to the Editor: 200 Years in the Life of an American Town," published last year by Simon and Schuster.
Right now, Gilrain is trying to get the chorus to conclude its final note at the moment when Prometheus (Bill George) leaps from the ladle.
While not exactly bungee-jumping, the ladle-jumping requires a 6-foot leap, formidable even for the limber, gangly George.
"I've known Bill since he was a white-faced street mime," says Stropnicky. The role resonates with George, who worked for 18 months in
the Steel's Combination Mill while at Lehigh University.
"It's one of the most physically-demanding parts I've ever done. I didn't know if I could hold my arms up that long," George says later.
Now, the chorus splits, wheels and turns. George jumps down. It's still not right.
The actors go through the scene again. With an anvil-like sound, Worker No. 4 (James Jackson) and Worker No. 20 (Breidenstein)
rhythmically bang bolts on C-shaped hooks of metal found on the site.
"Come on, brother," says Heffy (Terry Galle), calling to Prometheus, who begins unshackling himself.
"This place was the body, but we're the soul," Heffy continues. There's a hush.
"Don't tell me the soul can't live on after the body is gone," says Heffy.
"Pro-me-thee-us" the chorus intones. "Pro-me-thee-us." Just then, a monarch butterfly flits through the open-air set. "Pro-me-thee-us!"
The chorus grows louder and more insistent, conducted by music director Beverly Morgan, Moravian College adjunct professor.
"Now move," urges Gilrain. The actors wheel and run. "Stop. Stop. Stop," she says.
Gilrain isn't satisfied. "It's like Pro-me," she leans forward, gesturing her readiness to move. "You got to go on the `me.' "
Bill George, "that guy on the ladle," climbs back up.
On the sixth run-through, they get it.
"It was beautiful," says Rauch.
And so they move on to the next scene -- former steelworkers and housewives, daughters and sons, actors and activists -- all working
together to create "Steelbound."
It is a beautiful thing.
PHOTO by MICHAEL KUBEL, Special to The Morning Call
CAPTION: Prometheus, played by William George of Bethlehem, frees himself from chains of time and change in `Steelbound.'
-------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sunday, September 5, 1999
Page: F10
Edition: SECOND
Section: ARTS & TRAVEL
LABOR MOVEMENT
PLAY'S INSPIRATION CAME FROM FRENCH THEATER EXPERT
STEEL'S LAST CAST
by PAUL WILLISTEIN, The Morning Call
The genesis of "Steelbound" and the Steel Festival began with an enthusiastic, childlike Frenchman who had nothing to do with
steelmaking, but everything to do with theater-making.
In 1994, Touchstone Theatre's and Lehigh University's Theater of Creation Festival brought Jacques Lecoq to Bethlehem.
"A comment by Lecoq became the inspiration for the Steel Festival," says Mark McKenna, Touchstone artistic director and a member of
the "Steelbound" cast.
Previously, in Paris, Lecoq mentored Touchstone's McKenna, Jennie Gilrain and Cora Hook.
Touchstone Theatre, founded in 1981 (formerly People's Theatre Company, and the Lehigh University Improvisational Street Theatre,
founded in '72 by the late LU professor John Pearson) has been housed since '87 in the former 1875 Protection Firehouse, Fourth and
Polk streets, Bethlehem -- just two blocks from the Bethlehem Plant gate.
Lecoq, who died in January in his 80s, was one of the fathers of movement theater, the stagework Touchstone espouses.
Lecoq, Marcel Marceau and Ettienne Decroux were disciples of Jacques Coupaux, who took a holistic approach to stagecraft and
revitalized theater in France from the 1920s-'40s.
"They thought that most stage acting was false," says McKenna. "There was no art to it. Coupaux's theater company was only actor and
audience. It was all about movement. There was no scenery and no costumes."
Lecoq's work with Touchstone and at the Creation Festival "absolutely informed the way we looked at the Steel Festival," says
McKenna. At Creation, Lecoq taught master classes to 40 theater teachers from the United States and Canada. Seven troupes each
presented a work over two weeks. Touchstone staged "Don't Drop Grandma."
Lecoq was given a tour of the Steel plant. Afterward, he met with Touchstone folks at the Bridgeworks restaurant at Fourth and New
streets.
"He was talking about how incredible it (the plant) was," recalls McKenna, who toured the plant's Basic Oxygen Furnace 10 years ago to
research his role as a disgruntled steelworker in Touchstone cofounder and playwright Bridget George's "How Far to Bethlehem," which
was about three South Side women and their search for the true meaning of Christmas.
Continues McKenna, "We started to tell Lecoq that the steel mill was closing down and it looked bleak for steelmaking in Bethlehem, and
that the face of the city was going to be different. This was before any of us had heard about Beth Works or the Smithsonian museum
(plan).
"We got into this conversation about how striking it would be to walk down the streets of Bethlehem 10 years from now and not have any
awareness of what had transpired there, when people from from all over the world had come to work at Steel.
"And then Lecoq just said, `It's necessary to do a Greek play in there (the Steel plant) with a chorus that chants.' That just hit something.
"Since I had been at Touchstone (McKenna joined in '86), whenever you pass that mill, it's almost organic. It's metal, but (songwriter)
John Gorka talks about it being like a dinosaur. People who would come through Touchstone would say, `You have to do something with
that.' It's very inspiring artistically and architecturally.
"But the leap that happened with Lecoq's comment was that a way of life and craftsmanship was totally ending, and that people have to be
recognized in almost a ritual way and that in theater only the scale of Greek drama is the match for that type of (steel) work. The hero in a
Greek drama is a match for the steelworker."
Lecoq's movement-based theater utilized Greek drama, clowning, and commedia dell'arte. "He's the person responsible for revitalizing
Greek drama, which happened back in the '50s and '60s, in terms of how he taught people," says McKenna.
"In most plays, a chorus is a guy or three guys. At his school, you're working with 30 people, speaking and moving as one.
"All these different styles Lecoq investigated are about the gesture. With his observation, it really clicked for us that we had a style in
Greek drama and working with a chorus that might be able to address both ritualistically and dramatically the story that is happening here
(in Bethlehem)," says McKenna.
One week after Lecoq's Bridgeworks exhortation, Gilrain submitted a 1-1/2-page description of a festival with a Greek play to be
presented at the Steel plant site in collaboration with steelworkers.
Renowned storyteller Jay O'Callahan, whose work Touchstone presented, would tell the story of Bethlehem Steel and the people who
worked there. Bethlehem native Deborah Sacarakis, Lehigh University director of outreach who helped produce the Creation Festival and
whose father was a steelworker, joined the project.
Notes Sacarakis, "One of the best times I had was driving Jay O'Callahan around the South Side and then listening to him talk to my
father, John, about Steel."
Area songwriter Bonnie O'Donnell brought in Boston's Bob Franke to lead a songwriters' workshop of original tunes based on
steelworkers' reminiscences.
Also coming on board: Ken Smith, then Bethlehem's mayor; Stephen G. Donches, Bethlehem Steel vice president, public affairs, and Jim
Kostecky, Bethlehem Steel director of community relations.
Donches is on the board of the National Museum of Industrial History, an affiliate of The Smithsonian Institution, and is the museum's
president and chief executive officer.
Then Touchstone board member Ed Riccio showed members of the troupe the Iron Foundry, which at the time was a working operation.
"That was the space we dreamed of," says McKenna.
Throughout '94 and into '95, the Steel Fest group began talking with steelworkers, including Bruce Hagenbach, Larry Brandon, Guillermo
Lopez Jr. and Bruce Ward (his film, "The Inside View," a 45-minute documentary of conversations with fellow riggers, premiered at the
South Side's monthly First Friday this past Friday.
Recalls McKenna, "Some of the first guys we talked to about this idea (proved to be) a real test. Is there a need for it? Would it be
meaningful for people to celebrate the story of Steel? At first it was `Ah, there's not much to talk about.'
"But then when we pushed a little bit and stayed to listen, there were these incredible stories of camaraderie, of danger, of amazing
improvisation and ingenuity.
"It was almost an oral history. These (Steel plant) jobs were handed down through generations by showing. It's not all in the employee
manual.
"We knew that we were on the right track and not just inspired artists with an idea that doesn't have any relevance."
Bette Kovach, Bethlehem Steel director of media relations, joined the Touchstone board and talked with hundreds of people and got
them in touch with the thespians. Augustine Ripa, Lehigh University professor of theater, suggested staging Aeschylus' Greek tragedy,
"Prometheus Bound."
In 1996, the Steel Festival nearly came to a grinding halt. Explains McKenna, "One of the most fascinating parts for us was when we
invited steelworkers to come down to Touchstone for a reading of `Prometheus Bound.' We wanted them to get all excited about the
metaphor we saw between a steelworker and Prometheus."
About 40 to 50 steelworkers attended the sitdown reading, a typical process for most theaters but not Touchstone, which creates plays
from movement.
"The reaction was very cool," McKenna admits. "The connection wasn't there. My initial reaction was, `OK, don't get concerned.' They
got the connection, but it was `This is a Greek play and so what?'
"I thought, `Well, they're just seeing a reading. They're not seeing the visual drama. We're a movement company. Our main expression is
not through words. And then we thought twice about it."
Attending the reading was Ysaye Barnwell, from Sweet Honey in the Rock who had joined the project as a composer, and Hook, who
lived in Bethlehem and grew up by the sounds of the mill. "We talked some more about it," says McKenna. "We said, `This is really a
sign. Either we have to find another play or we have to find another approach.' "
That's when Touchstone thought of Cornerstone Theater, one of a network of about a dozen small, community-based professional
ensembles.
McKenna called Bill Rauch, Cornerstone artistic director. The idea was to adapt "Prometheus Bound," based on steelworkers'
experiences in the Bethlehem plant.
"In 10 minutes, he was behind the project," says McKenna, recalling that Barnwell made a similar quick commitment to another cold call
of his.
"And that's how we knew we really had something. All we had to do was talk about it and the light and the excitement would go up in
everybody's eyes," says McKenna.
It was decided Cornerstone playwright Alison Carey would script the "Prometheus Bound" adaptation. Rauch would direct.
Cornerstone's designer Lynn Jefferies would design the set. The Touchstone ensemble would act alongside a community cast. Gilrain
would be movement director.
Before beginning to write the script, Carey visited Bethlehem and stayed with residents for several weeks, interviewing steelworkers.
Back in Los Angeles, she wrote the first draft (there'd be three more). Play readings were held in '97 and '98 before steelworkers, Steel
management and members of the community. "There was this constant writing and revising with the people whose story we're telling," says
McKenna.
Auditions for "Steelbound" were held over five days in January at eight sites in Bethlehem, Easton and Allentown. Callbacks were next.
Says McKenna, "What happened, which was an unprecedented thing for Cornerstone, is that 90 percent of those who auditioned came
back." Cast members range in age from 8 to 80.
In "Prometheus Bound," seven principal characters visit Prometheus, who is chained to a rock by Zeus as punishment because he gave fire
to man. The daughters of Oceanus, God of the oceans, visit Prometheus.
In Carey's "Steelbound," instead of one Greek chorus, there are four: steelworkers, wives and daughters, youths, and festival-goers.
Oceanus has become Turner, a Steel plant supervisor. Hephestas, god of iron, has been trinitized into Heffy, Festa and Uz, nicknames for
three steelworkers. Io, daughter of Oceaus, has become Penny.
"Originally, in the play she (Penny) was called Lehigh, for the river. But everybody thought she was a Lehigh student," laughs McKenna.
In "Steelbound," Penny is a daughter of a steelworker. A computer expert, she's in an accident and suffers brain damage. To restore her
memory, she returns to her hometown.
Hermes, messenger to Zeus, has become Herman the historian, played by McKenna.
Involvement in "Steelbound" spread across the Lehigh Valley. The cast includes Equity Artist Devon Allen, head of the acting program at
Muhlenberg College and its experimental troupe in residence, Our Shoes Are Red, who portrays a character named Indifference. Music
director is Beverly Morgan, Moravian College adjunct professor.
The collaboration extended to Charlie Martin, Bethlehem Steel facilities engineer; Bob Brown, Bethlehem Steel director of plant security;
Charlie Brown, Bethlehem director of parks and recreation, and Brandenburg employees, who placed the ladle and H-beam.
The ground at the foundry had to be prepared, which meant moving rubble and filling pits. "We had to negotiate with Bethlehem Steel to
find a happy medium, as compared to a total, paved-over place and the way the Iron Foundry actually was," offers McKenna. "We
wanted to preserve the sense of an abandoned space, but yet were able to make it safe for the public."
Adds McKenna, "It was great when Bill (Rauch) said that in the Samuel French (play publishers') version (of "Steelbound"), the props list
will include one 27-1/2-ton steel ladle."
The authenticity also includes using a steel H-beam as a prop.
Points out McKenna, "So many of the ideas of how we do things in this play came from the steelworkers. We had this idea of making an
I-beam out of wood. As artists, we said we