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Touchstone Theatre opens its 2022-23 season with a fourth year of Festival UnBound, a five-day celebration with visual arts, live music, participatory dance, original theatre, and community dialogue shaped by Lehigh Valley community members for a unique, hyper-local festival-going experience.
Festival UnBound takes place September 28-October 2 at venues throughout Bethlehem and Allentown, with a pre-festival weekend featuring original performances by Touchstone/Moravian University MFA students September 16-20. Attendance is free for most events; select events have an admission fee. The festival includes work by Touchstone, local artists and organizers, and acclaimed guest artists from beyond the Lehigh Valley, including folk singer-songwriter John Gorka.
The first year of Festival UnBound took place in October 2019, twenty years after the closing of Bethlehem Steel- a massively disruptive and traumatic event for the community. In the years since the closing of the Steel, Touchstone began to explore questions of community and identity: Who were we, now that the Steel was gone? What were the challenges ahead, and what were the values that hold us together as we shape our future? Out of these questions came the inaugural ten-day Festival UnBound that centered on themes of diversity, sustainability, health, youth leadership, and interconnectedness.
Over the years since, Festival UnBound has evolved into a five-day series focused on engaging the diverse community of the Lehigh Valley- through art and civic dialogue- in the radical act of envisioning our future together. The past two years have included adaptations to the festival for COVID safety, including an extraordinary festival in 2020 spread out over several months, with all events presented outdoors and socially distanced. Some community partners have been with the festival since its inception, and others are coming aboard new this year.
"As we approach our fourth year of Festival UnBound, it's exhilarating to see the way the community embraces a festival rooted in the art of place," says Festival coordinator Mary Wright. "Whether it's singer-songwriter John Gorka returning to his artistic home at Godfrey Daniels, or the powerful Maafa Commemoration Project tackling deeper questions of how we remember, critique, and honor the places we call home, Festival UnBound is a true community festival- art of the people, by the people, and for the people of the Lehigh Valley."
A highlight of the 2022 festival is the Lehigh Valley premiere of the Maafa Commemoration Project, produced in partnership with Rev. Dr. Gregory Edwards and Resurrected Life Community Church and Festival UnBound's long-standing Homecoming Committee led by committee chair Sharon A. Brown. Maafa (pronounced Mah- AH-fah) is a Kiswahili word which refers to the catastrophic events experienced by millions of African people during the middle passage journey from Africa bound for enslavement in the Americas. This local event is part of a national movement, started in 1995 by St. Paul Community Baptist Church (Brooklyn, NY) and led by the vision of Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood, to bring issues of racism and slavery into the light. The premiere of the Maafa Commemoration Project Lehigh Valley seeks to raise up and honor stories of Black African Ancestors, the known and unknown, and recognize strength of spirit, richness of heritage, and the world in which freedom is still out of reach for so many.
This year's Festival UnBound lineup includes:
With events throughout the weekend from the festival's artists in residence:
Fundraising for Festival UnBound is ongoing, but to date, Festival sponsors include Gold Sponsors: Air Products, PNC Foundation, and The Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation; and Silver Sponsors: Amaranth Foundation, Beall Fowler, Just Born, Keystone Savings Foundation, Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, and WDIY. The festival is also gratefully supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, as well as numerous small businesses, local foundations, and individuals.
Touchstone Theatre's Festival UnBound takes place September 28-October 2, 2022 throughout Bethlehem and Allentown, plus a pre-festival weekend featuring original performances by Touchstone/Moravian University MFA students September 16-20. More information at www.touchstone.org/festival-unbound.
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