Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater, Volume 1: The Appalachian History Plays, 1975-1989

Seminal plays and essays reveal the radical origins and approach of Appalachia’s Roadside Theater

This two-volume anthology tells the story of Roadside Theater’s first 45 years and includes nine award-winning original play scripts; ten essays by authors from different disciplines and generations, which explore the plays’ social, economic, and political circumstances; and a critical recounting of the theater’s history from 1975 through 2020. The plays in Volume 1 offer a people’s history of the Appalachian coalfields, from the European incursion through the American War in Vietnam.

Roadside Theater (Author)
Roadside Theater, founded in 1975, is a wing of the rural arts and humanities institution Appalshop. Roadside Theater has created Appalachia’s largest single body of original plays and collaborated with racially diverse professional theaters and communities across the country to make new plays that address pressing civil rights, economic, and cultural issues of our times. The theater is invested in achieving inclusive community well-being through cultural expression that intentionally breaches lines of race, class, gender, age, disability, and more. Roadside is distinguished by its multi-generational audience of economically poor, working-class, and middle-class rural and urban people.

Dudley Cocke (Editor)
Dudley Cocke is an organizer, playwright, stage-director, and advocate for democratic cultural values. He served as artistic director of Roadside Theater from 1976-2018, and from 2012 to 2014 he simultaneously served as acting director of the Appalachian arts and humanities center Appalshop, of which Roadside is one part.
Under his direction, the ensemble performed and conducted residencies in forty-nine states, with extended runs Off-Broadway, and represented the United States at international festivals across Europe. His essays on arts and culture policy have been published nationally and internationally, he cofounded two national multicultural arts coalitions, he served on the boards of three private philanthropic foundations, and he was regularly tapped to advise the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. He is a co-editor of Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater (New Village Press, 2022), along with Donna Porterfield, Ben Fink, and Ron Short.
Cocke has taught theater at Cornell University, the College of William and Mary, and New York University. He co-founded Alternate ROOTS with Ron Short, Kathie deNobriga, Linda Parris-Bailey, and Donna Porterfield, as well as the American Festival Project with John O’Neal. In 2002, he received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.

Ben Fink (Editor)
Ben Fink is an organizer and writer. He has worked with the Roadside ensemble since 2015, as a member of the Betsy! Scholars’ Circle, as the founding organizer of the Letcher County Culture Hub and the Performing Our Future coalition, and as the cofounder of the cross-partisan dialogue project Hands Across the Hills.
His work in theater, organizing, pedagogy, and economic development has been featured by Salon.com, the Brookings Institution, TDR/The Drama Review, Harvard Law School, Americans for the Arts, PolicyLink, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a co-editor of Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater (New Village Press, 2022), along with Donna Porterfield, Dudley Cocke, and Ron Short.
He has also served as dramaturg on the German premieres of two Broadway musicals, made theater with Turkish and Arab high school students, and chaired a Lutheran faith community in Minnesota. In 2020, Ben was recognized by Time magazine as one of ＂27 People Bridging Divides Across America.＂

Donna Porterfield (Editor)
Donna Porterfield is a playwright, producer, and leader. She served as Managing Director of Roadside Theater from 1978 to 2019.
She was elected to six terms as chair of the Appalshop board of directors, and has served as a consultant for Alternate ROOTS and National Endowment for the Arts. Her playwriting credits include Thousand Kites, Voices from the Battlefront, Junebug/Jack, and Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain: Following the Seasons. Porterfield is a co-editor of Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater (New Village Press, 2022), along with Dudley Cocke, Ben Fink, and Ron Short.
She conducted dozens of cultural development residencies in communities across the country and served as a policy adviser for federal and state arts agencies. Born in Berkeley County, West Virginia on a small family farm, she grew up surrounded by extended family, music, and storytelling, until her family moved to northern Virginia for work. Before joining Roadside, she was a respiratory therapist and a first-grade teacher. Since her retirement, she has remained active in her church and her Norton, Virginia, community.

Ron Short (Editor)
Ron Short is a playwright, composer, musician, and performer. He joined Roadside Theater in 1978 as the ensemble’s leading playwright, and wrote and performed in more than a dozen main-stage Roadside plays, all of which toured nationally.
There have been two major recordings of his music, and his original composition for orchestra premiered at the University of Virginia at Wise, his alma mater. He was the ensemble’s lighting designer and conducted scores of multiyear artistic residencies in communities and universities. He is a co-editor of Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater (New Village Press, 2022), along with Donna Porterfield, Dudley Cocke, and Ben Fink.
He was raised on a hillside farm in Dickenson County, Virginia, and has carried on his family’s gospel singing tradition, which dates back to the 1800s. He lives on the side of a mountain in Duffield, Virginia, with his wife, Joan Boyd Short, and plays in his ＂hobby band,＂ Ron Short and the Possum Playboys.