FRIENDS

I am writing on behalf of Carlos and I to share some wonderful news, for Double Edge, and for the future.

As of the reading of this letter, Carlos and I will step aside from our roles as Artistic Directors of the theatre, and our work will be focused on art making and continuing the vision of DE’s future. I will formally be known as Founder, Artistic Director Emerita, and Carlos will be the Cultural Strategist.

What we will not be doing is ‘running the theatre’ which has become a huge responsibility with our twelve ensemble members and twenty other staff, fifteen buildings, year-round performances, and festivals, partner organizations and residencies. Since its founding in 1982, DE has been a multigenerational ensemble and over the course of moving to Ashfield 29 years ago started on its course as a collective, and finally a collective of collectives with our four partners running their own distinct organizations. I am happy to say that in the past several years I have witnessed the DE Co-Artistic Directors Jennifer Johnson, Milena Dabova, and Travis Coe taking over the daily artistic leadership of Double Edge as they each establish and grow their own amazing creative processes. Alongside of our Producing Executive Director Adam Bright, my dear partner heading DE’s business for the past five years, Co-Producer Cariel Klein, and Director of Artist and Community Engagement Hannah Jarrell, the team leading the theatre is not only solid, but has the means and energy to carry the theatre into its next forty years. 

These above 6 people are held, as Carlos and I have been, by the other four members of the Ensemble who share in shaping and visioning what DE is and will become. They are Jeremy Louise Eaton, John Peitso, Amanda Miller, and Tomantha Sylvester. 

In celebrating my 40^th and 41^st anniversary performance The Hidden Territories, I had the pleasure of working with one of the founders of DE, Daina Robins, which brought me full circle to the meaning of Ensemble. All of us have worked, whether 41 years, or 30 years, or 18 years, or 7 years, on trying to identify ourselves as artists and as human beings in the context of the other people who are struggling, sometimes joyfully, sometimes not, to do the same. It is an artistic home we have built, a family, not just for ourselves but for all of you who participate with us. These things have lost value in our culture --- longterm, artistic path, ensemble creation, and even the word legacy has become fraught, but, especially in these deeply disturbing times, they are a singular process of healing and of creation. 

I am proud of what we have accomplished and prouder still of those who will take the lead on accomplishing more. I look forward mostly to spending my time in the inside of Double Edge’s incredible barn, making ensemble performances, finally separated from my constant organizational companion, my smartphone, devising and dreaming up the next layer of essential imagination. 

Carlos, as always, wants to share some words borrowed from the Uruguayan poet Don Mario Benedetti, offered to continue walking the path together.

With so much love,
Stacy and Carlos

Double Edge Theatre acknowledges and recognizes the Indigenous People – the Nipmuc & the Mohican, who have been present and lived on these lands for millennia, and whose travel and cultivation of this land we now benefit from.

We lift up the legacy of the countless peoples of African descent whose blood, bones, bodies, brilliance, and unpaid labor also built and sustained these lands.

Truth, reconciliation, rematriation and healing will only come with acknowledgement as a first step, followed by cultural and economic reparations and other restorative actions.

Double Edge and its community believe in the power of theatre. We are invested in cultural exchange, localization, protecting the land, community collaboration, the next generation of artists, and the creation of a living, sustainable culture that elevates the human potential. 

Photos by Doug Mason, David Weiland, Philip Arnoult, and Stacy Klein

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