Justice Cycle

In its Justice Cycle Project, Cornerstone Theater Company created a series of six original community-based productions that examined the complex ways laws shape and disrupt communities in Los Angeles. Immediately following each performance, audience members were invited to join in dialogue with Los Angeles’s civic and cultural leaders to discuss urgent issues of justice in the city and beyond. The four-year project began with Los Illegals, a bilingual play by Michael John Garcés that explored the issue of undocumented immigration. The production, which was staged in a parking lot, featured a cast of actual day laborers and domestic workers. Julie Marie Myatt’s Someday drew on testimonies from women with disabilities, surrogates, sperm and egg donors, IVF users, reproductive rights advocates, and non-traditional families to address the question: “Who can afford to have – or not have – children, and who can’t?” For All Time was created by KJ Sanchez in collaboration with prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, victims, family members, public defenders, prosecutors, and activists as an in-depth look into the social, familial, and economic impacts of criminal actions, the process of judgment, and the system of incarceration. Julie Hébert’s Touch the Water addressed environmental justice through the lens of the people who live, work, and play in the Los Angeles River, and Shishir Kurup’s On Caring for the Beast followed six characters on complicated psychological and spiritual journeys. The Justice Cycle culminated in Naomi Iizuka’s Three Truths, which brought together a sprawling cast of Angelenos from all walks of life to transform downtown L.A.’s California Plaza into a dramatic judicial arena and address the question: What Is The Truth? Justice Cycle playwrights include: Michael John Garcés; Julie Marie Myatt; KJ Sanchez; Julie Hébert; Shishir Kurup; and Naomi Iizuka.