RITES
1982 · 40th Anniversary celebrated in 2022
Forty years from the premiere of RITES, our first performance. A multi-festival season dedicated to Art, Living Culture and Art Justice.
In 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 that has rooted our work and continues to shape our future.
Founding Artistic Director Stacy Klein calls this 40-year milestone “unbelievable and astonishing”.
What happened in 2022
Magdalena International Festival
In partnership with The Magdalena Project
RITES began with a festival in partnership with The Magdalena Project. 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: 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
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 (May 27–29) — Based on Mann’s great-great-great-grandfather Samuel Vickers, Union Civil War Veteran. An emotional account that centers around the untold story of Nipmuc men in the Civil War, dispossession of Nipmuc lands, and removal of their children.
- The Hinterlands’ Will You Miss Me? (June 3–5) — A haunting song echoing across the holler draws a traveler into a funeral service for one of many white workers who moved from Appalachia to Detroit in the last century.
- Jupiter Performance Studio’s In The Name Of The Mother Tree (June 8–12) — A new theatrical ceremony exploring the magic, mystery, and medicine of a people charged with remembering their ancestors’ earth-saving rituals.
The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae
40th Anniversary Summer Spectacle
Directed by Stacy Klein and created with the Double Edge Ensemble, The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae 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 premiere of DE’s 40th Anniversary Summer Spectacle. Previews July 15–16; performances July 20 – August 6.
The Radical and The Revolutionary
A conversation between Stacy Klein and Baraka Sele
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. Held at Double Edge Theatre and livestreamed via Howlround.
Two voices, forty years apart
Stacy Klein, Founding Artistic Director of DE, and Baraka Sele, independent producer and consultant, in conversation on their experiences in theatre and life.
Stacy Klein
Founding Artistic Director, Double Edge Theatre
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 continues to shape the field of ensemble theatre and place-based artistic practice.
Baraka Sele
Independent producer and consultant
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.
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 continue.
