About Double Edge Theatre

Double Edge Theatre’s mission is to create a ‘living culture’ by developing the highest quality of original theatre performance, based on the long-term imaginative work of the actor and his/her interaction with the communities in which the work takes place, and by cultivating at its home in Ashfield, MA – the Farm – a permanent center of performance, training, research, and cultural exchange. The goal is to elevate the creation and understanding of artistic expression and cultural mutuality between artists and their communities.

Performance and Theatrical Research Projects

Since the founding of the theatre in 1982 by Artistic Director Stacy Klein, Double Edge has undergone many transformations. At present, the theatre is engaged in its fourth cycle of work, the five-year, five-country Chagall Cycle, based on the work of artist Marc Chagall. The Garden of Intimacy and Desire, the company's third cycle of work, is an ongoing exploration of the complex dichotomies of dream and reality, freedom and responsibility, indifference and fanaticism. The inaugural performance, relentless, premiered in 2001 at the Flynn Center in Burlington, VT, and toured domestically and internationally until 2003, with showings at battered women’s shelters and prisons. The next three performances in the cycle are all still in the company’s repertory, beginning with the UnPOSSESSED, which premiered at La MaMa ETC in 2004 and has toured extensively in Spain, Poland, to the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, and to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Based on Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and incorporating elements of street theatre, large-scale puppetry, and aerial arts, the piece was reviewed in the New York Times as “a fervid, otherworldly production … that brings the life of the imagination to the stage.” Republic of Dreams, inspired by the writings, artwork, and life of Polish-Jewish visionary Bruno Schulz, premiered at La MaMa ETC in March 2007, and was hailed by Back Stage as “a whirling, highly theatrical fantasia that emphasizes [Schulz’s] affinity for dada and surrealism.” It has since toured around New England, and was the centerpiece of the Art as Healer and Provocateur symposia series. The fourth part of the cycle, the Disappearance, created in collaboration with Mexican author Ilan Stavans, premiered at Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center in October 2008. Adapted from Stavans’ short story of the same name, it addresses contemporary questions of identity, assimilation, and tolerance. Prior to the Garden cycle, the Song Trilogy (1987-1999) explored the experience of the Jewish diaspora and the communities in which they have achieved or resisted assimilation. This trilogy – Song of Absence, Song of Songs, and Keter, the Crowning Song – marked the beginning of Double Edge’s completely original performance process, based on the principle of the autonomy of the actor as a creating artist. The pieces were developed in the US, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, and performed internationally. The theatre’s first stage of work, while based in Boston, was called the Women’s Cycle (1982-86), a series of performances that confronted the systems of questioning, liberation, and violence to which women must constantly respond.

In addition to its company and touring performances, Double Edge has created five indoor/outdoor Summer Spectacle performances, based on classic works of literature, which have drawn thousands of visitors to the Farm from around the country. These spectacles take place throughout the grounds of the Farm Center, bringing audiences of all ages on a journey filled with stunning natural beauty, large puppets, and lively street theatre. Past Spectacles include The Saragossa Manuscripts (2002), Don Quixote (2003), Master and Margarita (2004), The Three Musketeers (2006), The Magician of Avalon (2007), The Illustrious Return of Don Quixote (2008), and The Arabian Nights (2009) . Double Edge’s extra-theatrical projects have included the Central European / Jewish-American Hidden Territories Expeditions (1992-8) to Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary, and the Spiral Mirror project (1996-2001), an exchange program for artists from Argentina, Chile, and the US.

Collaboration, Training and Exchange

Long-term collaboration is at the heart of Double Edge’s work: the ensemble for the Song Trilogy worked together for fifteen years, relentless was created with fifteen-year collaborators from the Charlestown Working Theater, and with twenty-year collaborators Gardzienice Theatre from Poland the theatre co-founded the US / Central European Consortium for Theatre Practice. Likewise, Double Edge has trained emerging theatre companies and artists to develop their individual visions and create a long-term future for imaginative theatre in the US. These groups and artists include q-staff theatre, Albuquerque; Theater Stricht, Bulgaria; the Przestrzen Collective in Wroclaw, Poland; Theatre of the Invisible, Portland, OR; the Clowns, Buenos Aires; and Seth Bockley of Redmoon Theater and the Walkabout Theater in Chicago; among many others. Two training/performance residencies have been held with Brandeis University’s MFA students in acting and design, culminating in performances of the don Quixote project (2003) and The Three Musketeers (2007). Other university programs include a six-week seminar with MFA Directing candidates at the Yale School of Drama, and trainings at UMass/Amherst, Boston University, Emerson, Columbia, the University of Georgia, the University of New Hampshire, Georgetown, Colgate University, and the University of New Mexico, among many others.

The Farm Center

In the face of the growing costs of producing theatre in an urban setting, and to meet the need for long-term commitment and sustainability, in 1994 Double Edge acquired a 100-acre former dairy farm in rural Ashfield, MA, and within three years had relocated the theatre from its previous performance space in Allston, MA. In the years since, the Farm Center has nurtured the theatre’s experiment in ‘living culture.’ The center’s facilities include permanent housing for company members, two performance spaces, archives, gallery space for local artists, and a newly-purchased 19th-century house for student and guest accommodation. Since the opening of the Farm Center in 1997, Double Edge has presented its own performances, hosted international artists and groups, held discussions and symposia, and initiated in 1999 the first Artists' Think Tank in the U.S. devoted to theatre research, culture and creation. Participants over the years have included Wlodzimierz Staniewski of Gardzienice, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, Ruth Maleczech and Sharon Fogarty of Mabou Mines, Roberto Uriona and Miriam Gonzalez of Diablomundo, Tage Larsen of Odin Teatret, Ludger Schnieder of Theater im Pumpenhaus, among many local and regional artists and theatre visionaries, such as Ben Cameron, Philip Arnoult, and Martha Coigney.

Awards and Press

Double Edge received ‘Best of Boston’ awards for four plays in the Women’s Cycle, and two ‘Best of the Valley’ awards for performances at the Farm. In 2005, the theatre received the Otto René Castillo award for excellence in international political theatre. the UnPOSSESSED was the subject of Julio Velez-Sainz’s feature in the book Cervantes and/on/in the New World, and the theatre has been covered in dozens of journals, magazines, and newspapers in the US and Europe. A book by Stacy Klein, On Theate, is in preparation. Double Edge is the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Kevin Landis at Tufts University, and a Collection Record Archive has opened at the W.E.B. DuBois Library at UMass/Amherst. Double Edge has received major grants from APAP/Doris Duke Ensemble Theatre Collaborations, the NEA, the MAP Fund, Inroads, CEC ArtsLink, the MCC/ Mass Development Cultural Facilities Fund, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, TCG/ITI, the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Culture and US Universities, the New England Foundation for the Arts Expeditions program, the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the TCG/Doris Duke New Generations Mentorship Program.

Stacy Klein is the director of Double Edge’s productions and the leader of the company with Co-Creator / Master Actor and Producing Director Carlos Uriona; Co-Creator / Lead Actor and Co-Director Matthew Glassman; Actor/ Program Director Jeremy Louise Eaton; and Associate Actor / Technical Director / Company Manager Adam Bright. The Double Edge Ensemble includes the following permanent artists: Hayley Brown (Actor / Program Associate), Carroll Durand (Co-Founder / Lead Designer / Actor), and Hannah Jarrell (Associate Artist / Administrator). Resident Artists are Dramaturg, Music and Second Stage Director Brian Fairley, Associate Music Director Scott Halligan, and Designer Michal Kuriata. Double Edge's Apprentice is Milena Dabova. Double Edge works with long-term collaborators: Charlestown Working Theater Co-Directors Jennifer Johnson and John  Peitso (Boston), q-Staff Theatre (Albuquerque, NM), lighting designer Mary Louise Geiger, technical directors Mack Headrick, Jeff Bird, and James Latzel, rigger Arlie Hart, storyteller/ farm manager Davis Bates, chef Rob Lizotte, photographer Chelynn Tetreault, and Tae Kwon Do Master Robert Markey. Double Edge Theatre's Board of Directors is run by the core group of artists, along with Amy Shapiro, Franklin County CDC, David Colfer, Brandeis Theater’s Managing Director,and Ceceile Klein of Belman Klein Associates, and Philip Arnoult, Director, Center for International Theatre Development, is Double Edge Theatre's Associate Director.