Double Edge Theatre Heads to L.A. for Encuentro Festival 

This November, Double Edge Theatre will tour to Los Angeles to perform music from Cada Luna Azul (Once a Blue Moon) at the 2017 Encuentro de las Americas ("Encuentro 2017"): Celebrating Dynamic Contemporary Latinx and Latin American Theatre. This international festival seeks to bring together Latinx and Latin American artists from across the hemisphere to share work, approaches, and methodologies with other theater makers in the pursuit of a common, multi-faceted understanding of the field at large.

In March 2018, Double Edge will premiere our new indoor performance, Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, at the prestigious Peak Performances at Montclair State University. The theme of the Peak Performances 2017-18 Season is Women Innovators in the Performing Arts, and DE's Founding Artistic Director Stacy Klein was chosen to be among the featured artists. The performance, which draws on the music, dance and magic realism of Latin American culture, is based on the lives and work of the remarkable British-Mexican painter, writer and feminist Leonora Carrington and her artistic dialogue with the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.

As part of the artistic development of Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, Klein and Co-Artistic Director Carlos Uriona recently conducted a research expedition to Mexico City, where Leonora Carrington lived and worked after fleeing Europe in 1940. They met with Carrington's son, a teacher and artist, saw many of Carrington's paintings and sculptures, and visited the forests and highlands of central Mexico-some of the same lands that Carrington walked during her research for one of her most famous paintings, the mural El Mundo Magico de los Mayas.

Double Edge Immersion Training Programs: This week Double Edge welcomes twelve students from the U.S., Iceland, Argentina, Uruguay, and South Africa to Ashfield for its Fall Immersion training program. Double Edge's Artist Immersion program is a three-month residency for people looking for an in-depth experience of our training as the springboard for developing their own creative path. Double Edge will offer a new one-month training program: artists will train with the Double Edge ensemble and create material through ongoing dramaturgy, design and music labs, and mentored work sessions using Double Edge's multi-layered creation process individually and/or collaboratively. The program is ideal for artists who are developing proposals to incubate future works or those who want to explore a new creation process.

Double Edge received a grant from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (MCMA), the second oldest charity in the country, to purchase equipment for our scene shop. Double Edge is the first arts organization receiving an award from MCMA, in acknowledgment of the company's apprentice model of student mentorship.

Double Edge Theatre, an artist-owned organization, was founded in 1982 by Stacy Klein. The ensemble applies vigorous physical training and the principle of an artist's autonomy to create work intimately woven with the community. In 1994, Double Edge moved from Boston to a 105-acre former dairy farm in rural Ashfield, MA, to create a sustainable artistic home. In 1996 Argentine actor, puppeteer Carlos Uriona joined DE and wove into the ensemble his community-based street theatre. Today, the Farm has become an International Center of Living Culture, including performance, international touring and artist collaboration, year-round theatre training, conversations, convenings, greening and farming initiatives, and a popular indoor-outdoor traveling spectacle which takes place alongside the hills, pastures, river, and gardens of the Center. A highlight of 2017 is the Ashfield Town Spectacle, which involved the whole community, a celebration throughout the town inspired by the spirit of Direct Democracy.

Double Edge Theatre creates performance cycles based on identity, including the Women's Cycle, the Song Trilogy, the Garden of Intimacy and Desire, and the Chagall Cycle, with its signature Grand Parade, inspired by the life and imagination of Russian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Double Edge is currently creating the Latin American Cycle, an exploration of the artistic acts, culture, and magic realism of societies of struggle and dictatorship. This fifth cycle includes Cada Luna Azul, premiered in 2015 in a traveling version at DE's Farm (reprised in 2016); and the touring versions in 2016 in Jamaica Plain, MA and Springfield, MA. In March 2018 the Ensemble will premiere the indoor performance of the Latin American Cycle, Leonora and Alejandro, la maga y el maestro, undeniably immersing itself in the current cultural and socio-political realities through the eyes of artists Leonora Carrington and Alejandro Jodorowski.

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