Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
To open the recent Festival UnBound, Touchstone Theatre staged the play Prometheus/Redux at Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts from Oct. 4-6. Long term residents of Bethlehem will know that this production connects with the play Steelbound produced in 1999. Touchstone Theatre created the 1999 production to give residents the opportunity to process…
“This changed the norm, no one could imagine that there were athletes who were gay.” As a member of a Division 1 track and field program, I personally can attest to the absurdity of the notion that accomplished athletes can’t be gay. My co-captain and best friend is bisexual, and many of our best athletes…
Walking into the auditorium of the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts (Charter Arts) last Wednesday, I was immediately stunned. With the projector set up by the Southside Film Institute, there was little to differentiate the assembly hall in the center of South Bethlehem from an AMC theater. My arrival cut dangerously close…
Give me Back my father, give me back my mother;Give back my elders;Give me my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself,Give back the human race, As long as this life lasts, this life,Give back peaceThat will never end. On April 11th, Keiin Yoshimura visited Touchstone Theater for her performance of Sakura, meaning “cherry…
Missy Hartney Brings Energy and Ideas to the South Side Arts District Colorful murals in South Bethlehem burst from what used to be blank walls. The addition of a mural on E. Third Street has brought vitality to the city’s streetscape. Created by Manhattan street artist Denton Burrows, this piece of artwork combines elements of…
If you’ve attended any productions at Touchstone Theatre in the past few years, chances are, you have seen Alexis Leon’s work. Although Leon’s professional life at Lehigh University, where she works as the Assistant Director of International Internships (through the Office of International Affairs), takes up much of her schedule, she still manages to find…
Behind this façade of musical satire, Christopher Shorr’s “Dictators 4 Dummies” is grounded in some very real horrors of our current global political climate. I walked in Touchstone Theater on 3rd Street, and immediately, unbeknownst to me, I was already on set of this faux-production. The production assistant, played by Emma Ackerman, was smiling by…
As a small child, my biggest fear was darkness. Even in the most heated games of hide-and-go-seek, a small closet with the lights turned off, for me, was always just better off unexplored. Oddly enough, clowns fell in that same category of doubt and mistrust, their true selves always hidden underneath an insidious veneer of…
A towering tree—lush and fruit-bearing—grows out of asphalt. The tree’s fruit is, ostensibly, art in its many forms. This is the image painted on the back of Touchstone Theater. As embodied by the tree mural, Touchstone grew organically out of the Bethlehem arts culture. A co-founder of Touchstone, actor Bill George sat down with me…
Within the walls of a prison, beyond ribbons of barbed wire and under orange jumpsuits, sit poets putting their thoughts into verse. Some sit jotting down notes to loved ones on the back of napkins, or scrap paper to continue letter exchanges. With the United State’s two-million-plus prisoners in mind, these literary exchanges constitute one…