Double Edge Theatre's Summer Spectacle WE THE PEOPLE Opens 7/19

We The People has its roots in Double Edge's thirty-five-year question of what makes up identity. What are the paradoxes, stories, and dreams that make up a human being, a community, a society? The audience will experience the beauty of the hills, pastures, and gardens of the Farm surrounded by music and flight, weaving through different paths toward a culminating grand scene.

Through this work we ask how we choose to define ourselves and our evolving communities, beyond what we are told by the dictating voices and forces of our society. The audience will walk freely between intimate installations where characters from nature, history, and imagination create and inhabit lyrical, integrated worlds. We The People is a traveling rumination on finding freedom through creativity, a profound relationship with the land, and a curiosity and reverence for past generations.

Spectators will meet Henry S. Ranney - the original settler of Double Edge's property in Ashfield, himself a farmer and one of the Founders of the Liberty Party in Ashfield, an abolitionist political party predating the Underground Railroad. We watch the mysterious inhabitants of our forests soaring through indoor and outdoor spaces. We experience a legacy of freedom through the vital voices of recognized and unrecognized historical figures who resisted social and political oppression.

What are the hidden territories of the land, of history, and how do they speak to us in the present moment? This summer we attempt to articulate the beauty of our environment, uncover lost voices, and joyfully inhabit a world of wild imagination.

We The People
Previews: July 14-15
Performances: July 19 - Aug 6 (Wed-Sun) & Tues Aug 1
8pm, rain or shine

Double Edge Theatre
948 Conway Road, Ashfield, MA

Purchase tickets at www.doubleedgetheatre.org or call 413.628.0277 for more info.

About Double Edge Theatre

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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