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 third cycle of work, The Garden of Intimacy and Desire, 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 UnPOSSESSED, which premiered at La MaMa ETC in 2004 and has toured extensively in Spain, Poland, and to the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. 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.” A revival will be presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in June 2008. Republic of Dreams, inspired by the writings, artwork, and life of Polish-Jewish visionary Bruno Schulz, premiered at La MaMa in March 2007, and was hailed by Backstage.com 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 series. The fourth part of the cycle, the Disappearance, created with Mexican author Ilan Stavans, will premiere 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.

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 twenty-year collaborators Gardzienice Theatre from Poland 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, BU, Emerson, Columbia, the University of Georgia, and the University of New Hampshire.

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, Double Edge purchased in 1995 a 105-acre former dairy farm in rural Ashfield, MA, and within two years had relocated the theatre from its previous performance space in Allston, MA. In the years since, ‘the Farm’, has nurtured the theatre’s experiment in ‘living culture.’ The center’s facilities include permanent housing for company members, two performance spaces, archives, and a newly purchased historic 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 US’s first artist’s think tank 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 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 Theatre, will be published in 2008. 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 or 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 and Lead Actor/ Director and Associate Producing Artistic Director Matthew Glassman. The Double Edge Ensemble also includes the following permanent group of artist/ managers: Hayley Brown (Actor and Program Associate), Jeremy Louise Eaton (Actor/ Training Leader and Program Associate), Adam Bright (Associate Actor and Technical Director), Hannah Jarrell (Associate Artist and Business Manager), and Carroll Durand (Co-Founder, Lead Designer/Actor). The company’s current  Resident Artists are Dramaturg, Music and Second Stage Director Brian Fairley, Designer Michal Kuriata, and Apprentice Actor/ Musicians Thomas Pasculli and Todd Trebour. Double Edge works with long-term collaborators such as writer Ilan Stavans, Charlestown Working Theater Co-Directors Jennifer Johnson and John  Peitso (Boston), q-Staff Theatre (NM), lighting designer ML Geiger, technical directors Mack Headrick and Jeff Bird, storyteller/farm manager Davis Bates and Tae Kwon Do Master Robert Markey. Double Edge’s Board of Directors is run by the core group of artists, along with David Colfer, Brandeis Theater Company’s Managing Director, and Ceceile Klein of Belman Klein Associates, with Senior Consultant Philip Arnoult, Director of the Center for International Theatre Development, and planning consultants Javiera Benavente and Amy Shapiro.