Double Edge Theatre Names New Development Director and Company Manager

Double Edge Theatre announced that it has filled two newly created staffing positions, hiring Jeff Freeman as Development Director and Emma Baar-Bittman as Company Manager. Both will arrive to Double Edge on July 20, 2016. These new positions were created in response to the rapid growth the Western Massachusetts-based company has experienced over the last three years.

Jeff Freeman comes to Double Edge from Penumbra Theatre, the nation's preeminent African American stage, where he served as both Grants Manager and Coordinator for the Summer Institute, a three-year leadership development program where students create art about race and equity issues which shape their community. Freeman is a theatre development specialist with a passion for art that empowers the individual, and innovates artists' connection to community. He is a graduate of Emerson College where he majored in Theatre Studies with a minor in Post-Colonial Studies.

"The scale and scope of our work has grown in such leaps and bounds that it has become increasingly challenging to keep up with the demands of raising the necessary support to be sustainable." says Matthew Glassman, DE's Co-Artistic Director. " We couldn't be happier to have found in Jeff someone not only very capable to do this important work, but who is as passionate about the role of the artist to animate culture and community as we are."

Emma Baar-Bittman graduated from Sarah Lawrence with a BA in Directing, and an MA from Emerson College in Theatre and Community. She served as the Program Coordinator and Theatre Specialist at Shire Village Camp, located in Western MA. Emma then worked as the Fellow at HowlRound, editing, coordinating, and helping publicize the evolving international forum on theatre. "I'm thrilled to be joining the team at Double Edge, " Baar-Bittman said, "I'm looking forward to working with this adventurous and magical theatre!"

Stacy Klein, Double Edge Founder and Co-Artistic Director, commented on this new growth and staffing developments, saying "We are very grateful for the enormous growth of DE in the past years, owing to our wonderful local community support and subsequent tours. We are delighted to have Emma Baar-Bittman with her vast experience and long love for western MA join our team to help organize all this growth."

Double Edge Theatre was founded by Stacy Klein in 1982 as an artist-owned ensemble theatre, in which each member would be responsible for the art making as well as the business and board leadership. In 1994 the ensemble moved from Boston to a 100-acre Farm in the Ashfield Massachusetts Hilltowns to further the sustainability of the theatre and its international artist collaborations.

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 its ensemble of artists and their rich interaction with the communities in which the work takes place-and by cultivating a permanent center of performance, training, research, and cultural exchange at The Farm in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

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