Cornerstone Theater Company collaborates with communities. Our work reflects complexity, disrupts assumptions, welcomes difference, and amplifies joy. By combining the artistry of people with many levels of theatrical experience, we act upon the conviction that artistic expression is civic engagement and that access to a creative forum is essential to the wellness and health of every individual and community.

Cornerstone is a community-based theater company led by a Board of Directors and artistic Ensemble, and is supported by a professional staff. The Ensemble began in 1986 as a group of theater makers traveling nationwide, primarily in rural communities, performing in different cities and states with each production. Since 1992, we have been based in Los Angeles, focusing largely on urban collaborations, while traveling to many different regions throughout California. Cornerstone has commissioned more than 100 playwrights, produced over 150 new works, trained thousands of students in our methodology, and worked with tens of thousands of community members across the country.

Cornerstone’s work is to engage diverse, historically marginalized communities in theater making that is educational, leads to civic engagement, and puts their stories center stage. With educational, social welfare, and economic systems failing our most vulnerable communities, Cornerstone offers unique opportunities to connect, learn, create and organize in the face of silence, ignorance, complacency and injustice. It provides people of all ages and backgrounds with artistic opportunities that engage their entire self, and that connects them to places, people, and ideas that help to transcend limitations of circumstance. We change the terms by which historically marginalized communities assert their own narratives within society and take ownership of civic issues – creating the groundwork for positive change.