Our History

In the mid 1980's, a group of theater artists who had worked together while students at Harvard University, shared a common dream. They wished to make theater with and for people of many ages, cultures and levels of theatrical experience. So instead of following the usual path for theater graduates which was to try to break into the theater scene in New York, they chose instead to create theater in rural communities across the country who would otherwise not ever have had the opportunity to experience theater. They traveled to places none of them had ever visited before, like Marmarth, North Dakota, and Norcatur Kansas. In each community they took up residence for several months where they would create a performance company mixing the professional Cornerstone ensemble with local talent.

Together they collaborated in the production of a play that was often an adaptation of a classic, but was always informed by and addressed local concerns. The result was that each community ended up telling their own stories. For example, in Port Gibson, Mississippi, they performed Romeo and Juliet and cast Romeo as an African American, and Juliet as a member of the white community, which gave the famous Shakespearean classic instant immediacy. The resulting conflicts which this created within that community were beautifully resolved through the shared, cathartic experience of the play.

In 1990, Cornerstone brought their thirteenth and final rural residency to Eastport, Maine. Their 13 members immediately spread themselves throughout the community, acquainting themselves with all aspects of life in Eastport and the surrounding community, in an effort to discover the things that mattered most in the lives of people here. The resulting play, that was adapted in collaboration with the residents of Eastport and the nearby Native American community of Pleasant Point, was a large production of Pier Gynt, adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Peer’s name became Pier as he was born on a waterfront pier, his mother was Passamaquoddy, and his father was a longshoreman.

Feeling alienated from his community when his mother died and unable to see a future for himself in Eastport, Pier departed and traveled for many years throughout the country, finally returning home in his later years to find meaning and a measure of peace in his home town.

Hence, Pier Gynt as a theater experience, spoke to a number of the issues that affected our community at that time, particularly the very emotional one of having to move away to make a living. The ties that Eastporters hold to their community are extraordinarily strong, and each summer many people return home during "Old Home Week" during the Fourth of July to visit with family and friends. So, in addition to the beauty of the play, the Eastport and Pleasant Point collaboration with Cornerstone of Pier Gynt, drew audiences from a wide area, many coming again and again to its twelve performances, each time responding emotionally to Pier’s homecoming.

With each of the 13 communities that Cornerstone visited, one of their goals was to leave behind a group of local people, experienced in how to do theater and infused with the love and understanding of "community theater". The community residents involved with Pier Gynt formed Stage East upon Cornerstone’s departure.

Beginning with their first performance of Play Boy of the Western World in the fall of 1990, Stage East has provided a wide range of theater, three and four productions every year, involving audiences and young people and adults both on and back stage, in the creativity and excitement of the theater experience.