n April 1982, Double Edge premiered its first performance, Rites, a modernization of The Bacchae set in a women’s bathroom by playwright Maureen Duffy. Stacy Klein, who founded the theatre along with a courageous ensemble of women, was the director of the performance and decided to name our fortieth anniversary celebration after that piece. The entirety of RITES was dedicated to the Art, Living Culture, and Art Justice which DE has embodied over the past forty years. It included new ensemble offerings, collaborations with DE participants from throughout the theatre’s life, partnerships, an indoor festival in partnership with The Magdalena Project, an outdoor festival together with partner organizations, and the full-circle world premiere of The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae.
Founding Artistic Director Stacy Klein calls this 40-year milestone “unbelievable and astonishing”.
Double Edge Theatre / Magdalena International Festival
April 20 – 24, 2022
ITES began with a festival in partnership with The Magdalena Project on April 20 – 24, 2022. The five days included performances and gatherings from worldwide women, non-binary, and trans artists.
Performances included:
- Geddy Aniksdal, Grenland Friteater (Norway):
No Doctor for the Dead - Jill Greenhalgh (Wales):
Daughter - Shey Rivera (Rhode Island & Puerto Rico):
ANTIGONX - Ebony Noelle Golden, Jupiter Performance Studio (Harlem, NY):
SPECTER OF SUNLIGHT// - Walken Schweigert, Katie Burgess, Open Flame Theatre (Wisconsin, MN):
The Garden - Jeremy Louise Eaton, Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA):
Lightning - Ana Correa, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Lima, Peru):
CONFESIONES & Rosa Cuchillo - Hayley Brown, Aerialist (Ashfield, MA)
- A Symposium discussion led by Anishinaabe Theater Exchange
Emerging Artist performances included:
- Tomantha Sylvester, Anishinaabe Theater Exchange/Double Edge Theatre (Sault Ste. Marie, MI/Ashfield, MA):
Something Else - Lydia Lai (Los Angeles, CA):
Ryotatio - Ebony Webster (New York, NY):
Sit High, Fly Low
Festival participants included:
Javiera Benavente, Lorien Corbelletti, Vanessa Gilbert, Elaine Vaan Hogue, Ashley James, Morgan Jenness, Barbara Lanciers, Amrita Ramanan.
Constellations
An Outdoor Festival of Performance
May 27 – June 12, 2022
rom May 27, 2022 – June 12, 2022, we held an Outdoor Festival that highlighted DE’s partnerships with Ohketeau Cultural Center, The Hinterlands, and Jupiter Performance Studio:
- Larry Spotted Crow Mann’s Freedom In Season, co-presented by DE and Ohketeau (Ashfield, MA)
Performances from May 27 – 29, 2022
- The Hinterlands’ Will You Miss Me? (Detroit, MI)
Performances from June 3 – 5, 2022
- Jupiter Performance Studio’s In The Name Of The Mother Tree (Harlem, NY)
Performances from June 8 – 12, 2022
The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae
Previews: July 15 & 16, 2022
Performances: July 20 – August 6, 2022
uly and August — The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae, directed by Stacy Klein and created with the Double Edge Ensemble, is a response to Euripides’ Bacchae in which women’s rites are no longer in hidden territories but freely able to express their deeply held desires.
The Radical and The Revolutionary
October 16 at 2-4 pm, meal 4-5 pm
Stacy Klein, Founding Artistic Director of DE, and Baraka Sele, independent producer and consultant, had a conversation titled The Radical and The Revolutionary on their experiences in theatre and life, followed by a meal in honor of DE’s 40th anniversary.
Stacy Klein is a radical visionary who came to the realization that she could not find a place among institutionalized formalities or rigid identities to create her art. In 1982, Stacy Klein became the Founding Artistic Director of Double Edge in Boston, MA. She is also the founder of the Farm, DE’s center of Art, Living Culture and Art Justice. Over the 40 years of DE, Klein’s work with the Center has been written about in numerous publications and received awards, among them the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award for artists who have transformed their field.
Throughout her over thirty-five-year career in the arts, Baraka Sele has focused on collaborations and presentations with artists of diverse communities and cultures in order to build enduring partnerships and to facilitate inter-cultural exchange. Ms Sele was the Assistant Vice President of Programming at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, New Jersey from 2004-2011. From 1996 – 2011, Ms. Sele also served as the Curator/Producer of NJPAC’s Alternate Routes (formerly NJPAC World Festival), an international performing arts series.
This event was held at Double Edge Theatre and livestreamed via Howlround.
The forty years of DE is a history and a presence. It is about how we meet this moment in history. Rather than being just a legacy celebration, this year is about how we want to face the future of our world and shape art with cultural exchange, equity and partnership. As our Ensemble weaves our work of today alongside our partners, we must and are beginning to look at how we will transform to contribute to dialogue, understanding, and creativity.
