Double Edge's LEONORA & ALEJANDRO Comes to Peak Performances

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), the Posthumously Celebrated Artist, Writer and Feminist, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Surrealist, Chilean Filmmaker, Inspire This Production Developed on Double Edge's Farm in Rural Western Massachusetts

Peak Performances Presents
Double Edge Theatre
Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro (New York / New Jersey Premiere)
Conceived and Directed by Stacy Klein
Performances: March 17-18 and 22-25
Critics are welcome March 17 & 18 for an official opening on March 19
The Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave., Montclair, NJ)
$20; FREE for Montclair State undergraduates with ID
www.peakperfs.org or 973.655.5112

Peak Performances welcomes back Stacy Klein and Double Edge Theatre for the New York / New Jersey premiere of Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, a fantasia on the relationship between two remarkable artists: the late, recently-resurgent Mexican surrealist painter, writer and feminist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Chilean surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929). In 2016, Double Edge dazzled Peak audiences with their Chagall-inspired, kaleidoscopic vision of 20th Century history, The Grand Parade. They return with another provocative piece inspired by bold, perception-changing artistic careers, and draw on the music, dance and magic realism of Latin American culture in the creation of beautiful and challenging theater that speaks to current cultural and socio-political realities.

Jodorowosky, known for his violently hallucinatory films like El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre and for forming the Panic Movement theatre collective with Fernando Arrabal and Roland Torpor, has been a source of inspiration for two previous works in Double Edge's Latin American Cycle (2015's Cada Luna Azul (Once a Blue Moon) and 2016's A Latin American Spectacle), which Alejandro and Leonora culminates.

In this third part of the Cycle, Double Edge turns its focus on Carrington, a multi-talented artist whose output included paintings, sculptures, plays, novels, short stories, and more, and whose work has been newly celebrated with the 2017 centenary of her birth. Of Carrington's role in the genesis of Leonora and Alejandro, Klein says, "Where the Bird Sings Best, Jodorowsky's imaginative journey through his ancestry, was the starting point when I began working on Double Edge's Latin American Cycle. Yet as the 2016 election approached, and so much misogyny laid bare, I realized that I could not make any more performances without a woman as a central figure. Discovering Leonora Carrington, someone who remains all too embedded in the hidden territories of our cultural landscape, is no less than a revelation-of an artistic partner, mentor, guide, and inspiration."

In the late 1930s, encouraged by her then-romantic and artistic partner Max Ernst, Carrington first turned to Surrealist painting with a self-portrait both ominous and whimsical. She pictured herself in an empty room with a rocking horse floating above her, and her hand outstretched to a hyena-the beginnings of a career whose haunting output would pair nature and staunchly feminine mysticism. She and Ernst lived together in Paris, and were torn apart when Ernst was arrested by Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp-and escaped by fleeing to America. During WWII, Carrington developed severe anxiety and ultimately suffered a breakdown-after which she was hospitalized by her parents and given the potent, convulsion-inducing drug Cardiazol. While her parents attempted to have her moved to another hospital in South Africa, she made her escape at a stop in Lisbon, fled to the Mexican Embassy, married diplomat friend who worked there, and managed to get back to Mexico. She went on to write her memoir, Down Below, a harrowing account of her experience in the asylum, described by the LA Review of Books as "a marvelous reworking of the frequently too-romanticized Surrealist female madness narrative." Decades later, she would become a leader of the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico.

As Jodorowsky describes in his autobiography, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Carrington was a spiritual initiator to him. He befriended her in the mid-1960s at the suggestion of Zen Buddhist master Ejo Takata, who told him, "Art is your path. Accept my friend Leonora Carrington as your teacher." They collaborated on a play, Penelope; she schooled him in the occult and taught him the tarot-whose mythic imagery marks both of their works, and to which Jodorowsky would devote decades of study. As recently as 2011, when Carrington passed away, The New York Times reported that Jodorowky was still giving readings to strangers in Paris once a week.

Klein's imagined conversation between Carrington and Jodorowsky highlights the similarities in the artists' sensibilities, and their differing artistic approaches to aligned ideas. Klein notes that in the writings of both artists "things grow out of nothing, out of daily life," but, she says, "In Carrington's writing, that growth is personal, intimate, while in the case of Jodorowsky, it's always large-scale, epic." Leonora and Alejandro commingles themes common in Jodorowsky's and Carrington's work: the silencing of women, the role of military puppets and corporate thugs, and the purposeful devastation of land, water and people.

Double Edge developed Leonora and Alejandro collectively at the 105-acre dairy farm in Ashfield, MA, where its members have sustainably resided, and freely experimented with various theatrical training traditions, since 1994. Stacy Kleinconceived, devised the overall design for, and directs the work, which is co-created by with Jennifer Johnson, Carlos Uriona and Matthew Glassman. The creative team includes Michal Kuriata, Michael Fitzgerald and Jeff Bird (scenographers); Tadea Klein and Amanda Miller (costume designers); Holly Gettings (lighting designer); Alexander Bakshi (composer); Liudmila Bakshi (musical director); Adam Bright (producer, aerial architect); Cariel Klein (associate producer, aerial choreography); Morgan Jenness and Nina Mankin (dramaturgical consultants); Beckie Kravetz (mask designer); Susan L. Aberth (Leonora Carrington advisor); Milena Dabova and Jeremy Louise Eaton (ensemble acting and design work); Walton Wilson (company voice and text work); Ed Branson (glass sculpture); Mark Day and Jay Burnett (metal fabrication); Andrew Todd, Zoe Batson, Madison Crippes and Ernie Hansche (carpenters); Nancy Marshall and Suzi Day (seamstresses); Melissa MacDonald (production assistant) and Alice Terekhova (production assistant and Russian translator).

The cast features Jennifer Johnson as Leonora,Carlos Uriona as Alejandro, Amanda Miller as the Pajaro, Travis Coe as the Hyena, Matthew Glassman as a Shadow, Adam Bright as a Shadow, Evan Barth as a Shadow, Hannah Jarrell as the GiantessandMicaela Farias Gomez as the Cook. John Peitso and Manuel Uriona perform live music.

Since the Argentine actor and puppeteer Carlos Uriona joined Double Edge in 1996, and became a co-artistic director alongside Klein, he has infused the company's productions with traditions of his culture and its approach to performance. Although Uriona has been a major influence on the company's artistic development during the past 20 years, it had not fully explored his Latin American culture. Double Edge's Latin American Cycle responds to that need, with works suffused with performance customs he's brought to the table-as well as an urgency and political bent derived from Uriona's history of resistance and theatrical protest during the Argentine military dictatorship.

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances of Leonora and Alejandro will take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ), Saturday, March 17 and Saturday, March 24 at 8pm; Thursday, March 22 and Friday, March 23 at 7:30pm; and Sunday, March 18 and Sunday, March 25 at 3pm.

Critics are welcome March 17 & 18 for an official opening on March 19.

Tickets, affordably priced at $20 (and free for Montclair undergraduates), be purchased at www.peakperfs.org or 973.655.5112.

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.

The Double Edge ensemble includes Artistic Director Stacy Klein, Co-Artistic Directors Carlos Uriona and Matthew Glassman, Producing Director Adam Bright, Associate Artistic Director Jennifer Johnson, Associate Directors Jeremy Louise Eaton, Milena Dabova and Hannah Jarrell, Musical/ Lighting Director John Peitso and Co-Founder Carroll Durand (emeritus). Associate ensemble members are Amanda Miller, Andrew Todd, Evan Barth, and Travis Coe. Together the group, who hail from across the US, England, Bulgaria, and Argentina, lead the art, the training, the producing, and the Board of the theatre and have been working together from 9 to 35 years. Alongside the ensemble is the Double Edge company which includes resident artists, and farm production and staff: Cariel Klein, Michael Fitzgerald, Jeff Freeman, Rob Lizotte, Tadea Klein, Michal Kuriata, Robert Carlton, Hayley Brown, Zoe Batson, Jose Neustadt, and David Flaxman.

About the Artists

Stacy Klein (Direction, Design, and Creation)founded Double Edge in 1982 and moved the theatre and her family to a farm in rural western Massachusetts in 1994. She has conceived and directed five original performance cycles, which have toured internationally, and in 2013 she received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, given to artists of profound influence on the field of arts. In 2002, Klein began an annual Summer Traveling Spectacle at the Farm, which now also tours to engage other communities. The Spectacle, and the Farm itself, are the signature pieces of Klein's concept of creating a "Living Culture" in communities throughout the U.S.

Jennifer Johnson (Co-Creator & Actor) joined the Double Edge ensemble in 2016 after two decades of collaboration as an actor, dramaturg, and trainer. She was a co-creator and actor of Keter, the Crowning Song in the 1990s, Relentless in the early 2000s, and appeared in many Spectacles at Double Edge, most notably as Lucy Stone in We The People, Athena in The Odyssey and Senora in Once a Blue Moon. Johnson also directed the oral history project in The Ashfield Town Spectacle. She was the Co-Director of the Charlestown Working Theater in Boston for 24 years.

Carlos Uriona (Co-Creator & Actor)is from Argentina, and is celebrating his 20th anniversary with the Double Edge ensemble. He co-created The Grand Parade and Once a Blue Moon, based on Latin American story, music and dance, as well as Uriona's history of resistance during the Argentine military dictatorship. He also co-created and was a lead actor in all four performances of the Garden of Intimacy and Desire Cycle. In 2002, Uriona and Stacy Klein conceived Double Edge's annual Summer Traveling Spectacle series. Closely connected to this work is Uriona's role as the leader of Double Edge's grassroots campaigns and audience development initiatives. Before coming to Double Edge, he founded the award-winning puppet theatre Diablomundo.

Matthew Glassman (Co-Creator & Actor) began working with Double Edge in 2000. He has co-created several performances, including Once a Blue Moon, The Grand Parade, and the Garden of Intimacy and Desire Cycle in leading acting roles. As a director, Glassman has worked on Total Verruckt! and The Oven. He has also written Double Edge summer spectacles Shahrazad 2014 and Once a Blue Moon and created scenes in The Ashfield Town Spectacle, including the Town Meeting (an art and democracy project) and Figures. Since 2014, Glassman has been curating the biennial Art & Survival Convening.

Amanda Miller (Actor & Costume Designer) has been with Double Edge since 2011. She has performed in Double Edge's Summer Spectacles We The People, Once a Blue Moon, Shahrazad, and The Odyssey, as well as in The Ashfield Town Spectacle. She is also the costumiere and a musician for The Grand Parade. Miller is originally from Dubois, Indiana.

Travis Coe (Actor)developed the role of W.E.B. Dubois in We the People, and is working on a solo performance titled SUGA. He is a leader of Art Justice at Double Edge. Coe is a Co-Founder of Round Room Image where he serves as the Director of the Live Department. He received his BA in Acting at Columbia College Chicago.

Adam Bright (Actor & Producer) joined Double Edge in 2005. He created the role of the Englishman in Once a Blue Moon and co-created The Grand Parade. As producer he leads all major projects of the theatre, including the Spectacles, touring performances, and the events and business of the Farm Center, as well as rigging all of the theatre's performances. He recently produced The Ashfield Town Spectacle. Originally from Kent, England, Adam holds an honors degree in Theatre from Hull University.

Evan Barth (Actor)has been working with Double Edge Theatre since 2012 and is an actor and the grounds manager for the theatre's beautiful Farm Center. He has performed in the Summer Spectacles We The People, Once a Blue Moon, and Shahrazad, as well as in The Ashfield Town Spectacle. He has also toured with The Grand Parade as the sound/video operator. Barth is originally from Los Angeles, California.

Hannah Jarrell (Actor) has been with Double Edge since 2006, most recently incorporating stilts and flying in her performance work. She is also a training leader for Double Edge's student programs and leads K-12 programming. In this capacity, she directed local youth in The Ashfield Town Spectacle and led a major part of the parade. Jarrell is originally from San Antonio, TX and holds a BA from Southwestern University and MFA from Goddard College.

Micaela Farías Gomez (Performer) is a performer of song, dance/movement, and music, and also conducts and produces her own program in the National Folkloric Radio of Argentina. She has her solo and band projects and is dedicated to research and production of Argentine and Latin American folkloric music in the encounter with other roots, new currents of sound, and other artistic disciplines. Farías Gomez has collaborated on diverse projects with national and International Artists and is a coach of vocal rhythm and expression in music and theater. She worked with her father, renowned musician and composer Chango Farías Gómez, on incorporating tools in the formation of his musical ensembles.

John Peitso (Musician) has collaborated with Double Edge for over 20 years as music director, performer, and lighting designer, and moved from Boston to Ashfield in 2016 to join the ensemble. He was lighting designer and lead musician for The Grand Parade, and co-adapted and created the music for Once a Blue Moon and its subsequent tours to Boston and Springfield. He also worked on The Ashfield Town Spectacle, for which he is responsible for all musical events, including the parade. Peitso was the Technical and Music Director of the Charlestown Working Theater for 24 years.

Manuel Uriona (Musician) is dedicated to the study of the roots of Afro-Latin folkloric music. He is a disciple of Sekou Sylla in the United States and has participated in the Uruguayan Official Competition of the Montevideo Carnival with Murga La Clarinada (2001-2002), and A Contramano (2003). In Cuba, he was a disciple of Familia Angarica y los Chinitos, a professional course in the National School of Arts in Havana. He was a percussionist with Chango Farías Gómez in the final years before his passing and a percussionist with Bersuit Vergarabat for more than 15 years. He also works as a musician and producer with Mica Farías Gomez and Santadiabla.

Alexander Bakshi (Composer) was born in Sukhumi in 1952 and graduated from the Don Conservatory. He has lived in Moscow since 1985. In his artistic searches, he works with a synthesis of theater and music and has developed a new genre - the "theater of sound." Bakshi has written music for over 30 dramatic productions, often working with director Valery Fokin. Together with his wife Lyudmila, Bakshi founded the Theater of Sound Laboratory in 2003. They organized the first International Theater of Sound Festival in Moscow in 2003.

Liudmila Bakshi (Musical Director) holds a Ph. D. in musicology from the Institute of Art Research in Moscow and has published numerous articles about contemporary music. As a musician, a soprano, she has performed throughout Europe, Japan, and the United States, often in the works of her husband Alexander Bakshi. She has staged a dozen musical-theatrical productions in Russia, Poland, and other countries.

Michal Kuriata (Scenography) is an alumnus of the Wroclaw Academy of Fine Arts in professor Christos Mandzios studio. He works with sculptures, paintings, drawings and stage design. Kuriata was born in Wroc?aw, Poland, and is currently living in Ashfield, MA.

Michael Fitzgerald (Scenography) was born and raised in Ashfield on the Fitzgerald Family Dairy Farm, now Double Edge's Farm Center. He has 4 decades of manipulating the human-built world - carpentry, farming, building homes, churches, and theatrical productions. Fitzgerald is chairman of Ashfield's Planning Board.

Jeff Bird (Scenography) is currently the Technical Director at Amherst College. He has been working as a college technical director since 1999. Bird first worked with Double Edge on Don Quixote in 2002 and since then has collaborated as both builder and designer on a number of projects. Some of his favorite projects include a banquet table that became a ship for the voyages of Odysseus and a Waterfall/House of Memories for the finale of Once a Blue Moon.

Tadea Klein (Costume Designer) was raised in Ashfield and graduated from Bard College with a degree in Creative Writing & Judaic Studies. After studying in Israel, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, she is now the Costume Designer and Resident Farmer at Double Edge Theatre.

Beckie Kravetz (Mask Designer) began her sculpture career as a theatrical mask maker. She received her training at the Yale School of Drama, the Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali in Italy, the Taller de Madera in Guatemala, and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico. In 1988, she became the resident mask maker for the Los Angeles Opera. Her skills have helped transform the faces of dozens of singers, including Placido Domingo, Sir Thomas Allen, Carol Vaness, Samuel Ramey, Gerald Finley, and Rod Gilfry.

Holly Gettings (Lighting Designer) started lighting shows in Boston during the folk revival of the 1980's. She grew up in northern Massachusetts and studied at Boston University, starting in community theater and moving into music production, specializing in acoustic, jazz, opera, ballet, and vintage rock shows. She has toured with both music and dance programs and has designed at most of the major venues in the Boston area and many national venues. She has been Technical Director for the Cambridge River Festival since 1990, works extensively at Harvard University, and has been the technical director for the Ko Festival of Performance in Amherst since 2009.

Morgan Jenness (Company Creative Consultant) has worked as an educator and activist and has been in literary office and former Associate Producer at The Public Theater, and Associate Artistic Director at NYTW and LATC. They have served in dramaturgical capacities at theaters and developmental situations all over the American theater for over three decades, and as creative consultant at both the Helen Merrill and Abrams Artists agencies. Jenness is also a recipient of an Obie for Long Term Support of Playwrights, the prestigious LMDA Lessing Award, the first Elsa Rael VintAge Award and a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award.

Nina Mankin (Dramaturgical Consultant) is a dramaturg, writer, and performer. As a dramaturg, she has worked with many artists including Anne Bogart, Faye Driscoll, Ricky Ian Gordon; Tony Kushner; David Levine and Taylor Mac with whom she has developed numerous works including The Lily's Revenge. This is her third opportunity working with Double Edge.

Susan L. Aberth (Carrington Advisor) is an associate professor of art history at Bard College, specializing in Latin American surrealism. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, her M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is a recipient of the professional development fellowship from the College Art Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the author of Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art (2004).

Cariel Klein (Associate Producer & Aerial Choreography) has been part of Double Edge since before she can remember. After performing as a child in four Summer Spectacles, she left to pursue a circus career and trained at New England Center for Circus Arts in VT, and at the Circus Warehouse in NYC, while at the same time receiving her degree in the Political Performance of the Self at the Gallatin School of NYU and in Buenos Aires. In 2017, Klein assumed a permanent role as Associate Producer of the theatre, engaging in all performance, production, and business activities.

Milena Dabova (Ensemble Acting Work)joined Double Edge in 2009. She most recently created the lead role of Luna in Once a Blue Moon and also co-created The Grand Parade. In addition to acting, she is the theatre's choreographer, including The Grand Parade, Shahrazad, Once a Blue Moon and The Ashfield Town Spectacle, and is originally from Bulgaria.

Jeremy Louise Eaton (Ensemble Design Work)has been with Double Edge since 2004. She has created many roles with Double Edge, including Shahrazad in Shahrazad, A Tale of Love and Magic, and Bella Chagall in The Grand Parade, andcreated the murals for the Latin AmericanSpectacles on tour. Recently she directed a short performance based on Calder's Circus for The Ashfield Town Spectacle. Eaton directs the theatre's student training programs and directed a residency at the Boston Conservatory in 2016.

Walton Wilson (Company Vocal and Text Work) serves as chair of the Acting Department and Head of Voice and Speech at Yale School of Drama. He is the resident voice and speech advisor at Yale Repertory Theatre and has served as voice, text, and dialect coach for productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. A proud member of Actor's Equity Association for over thirty years, his professional acting credits include productions Off-Broadway and in regional theatres and Shakespeare festivals across the country. He is a long-time member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA.

About Peak Performances

Peak Performances is a program of the Office of Arts and Cultural Programming at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with an Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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