By making theater with and for people of many ages, cultures and levels of theatrical experience, Cornerstone builds bridges between and within diverse communities in our home city of Los Angeles and nationwide.
For the next five years they traveled to small towns in America, including Port Gibson, Mississippi; Norcatur, Kansas; Dinwiddie, Virginia; and many others, creating theater with the local inhabitants.
While the company normally spends weeks to months preparing for performances, the idea of "rapid response theater" had been suggested since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which occurred shortly after the troupe's relocation to the city.
On June 14 of the same year, Garcés put the "rapid response theater" concept into action with staged readings from John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in protest of the eviction of the South Central Farmers from a privately held plot of land that had been used as a community garden.
2007's Los Illegals concerned the presence of undocumented workers in America, and 2008's Someday focused on reproductive rights in an era when technology makes new interventions and treatments possible.
At the end of the company's initial rural residencies, Cornerstone and its community partners produced The Winter's Tale: An Interstate Adventure.