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Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro

Stacy Klein | Double Edge Theatre

“Double Edge integrates dance, circus, masque, puppetry, multimedia, live music and elements inspired by Argentine Carnival to create theatrical events that are […] vividly experiential.” — The Boston Globe

In 2016, Stacy Klein and her Double Edge Theatre dazzled Peak audiences with their acclaimed, kaleidoscopic The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century). They return in 2018 with the world premiere of Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, a fantasia on the relationship between two remarkable artists: the Mexican painter, writer and feminist Leonora Carrington and the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Drawing on the music, dance and magic realism of Latin American culture, Double Edge’s new project promises to be challenging, provocative and beautiful.

 

Engage

The Cultural Engagement program in Montclair State University’s Office of Arts and Cultural Programming involves students, faculty, and community members in creative and intellectually stimulating education events that connect audiences with artists from around the globe. All engagement events are free and open to the public. Click here to see our full list of engagement events for this season.

 

Artists

stacy klein Stacy Klein founded Double Edge Theatre in 1982 and, under her 35 years of leadership, the company has grown into one of the foremost ensemble theatres and theatre centers in the US. Klein has conceived and directed four original performance cycles, which have earned her international recognition for daring and innovation. In 2013, she was honored with a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, given to artists of profound influence on the field in this country. Likewise, her work in developing the concept of “living culture,” a term categorizing engagement of communities in the creation of art and culture, has been groundbreaking. Klein’s most recent performance creation, Once a Blue Moon – Cada Luna Azul, premiered at Double Edge’s Center in 2015, and has toured in different manifestations to Jamaica Plain, MA (2016) and Springfield, MA (2016). This performance is part of the Latin American Cycle, Klein’s 5th Double Edge Cycle, and she is presently working on its signature indoor performance set to premiere in 2018/19. Klein conceived and directed The Grand Parade, part of the Chagall Cycle, which premiered at Arena Stage (Washington, DC) in February 2013, followed by tours to The Golden Mask Festival, Moscow (2013), the Redfern Performing Arts Center, New Hampshire (2015); the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (2015); ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center, Boston (2015); Brygga Kultursal, Norway (2015); the PIT Festival, Norway (2015); and Peak Performances @ Montclair State University (2016).

Beginning in 2002, Klein began directing an annual Summer Spectacle series: indoor/outdoor traveling performances that take place throughout the grounds of the Farm Center, drawing on classic novels and legends, and using larger-than-life puppetry, live music, and street theatre techniques to bring audiences on a literal and figurative journey. Recent Spectacles include The Illustrious Return of Don Quixote, The Firebird, The Odyssey, and Shahrazad, A Tale of Love and Magic. These Spectacles have begun touring to engage other communities, including The Odyssey/Shahrazad in Halden, Norway and Amherst, Massachusetts, and The Odyssey at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Klein’s other projects include the International Womyn’s Theatre Festivals in Boston (1980–81), the US/Latin American Spiral Mirror Project (1996–2001), the summer Ex-CHANGE Program (2002–2004), and, with Poland’s Gardzienice Theatre, the International Consortium for Theatre Practices (1999–2001). The Conversations Series, convened with Philip Arnoult (2006-2010), brought internationally renowned artists, writers, and thinkers to the Farm for wide-ranging discussions, broadcast live over the internet. Klein’s methodology has been profiled in New Theatre Quarterly, American Theater, Theater Heute, TheatreForum, and TDR, and she has written for Theater Topics and The Open Page. Klein received the Outstanding Career Achievement Award from Tufts University (2014), the OTTO award (2006), the MCC Artist Award (1999), an InRoads grant (1998), and was a Mentor in the New Generations Mentorship Program. She holds a PhD in Theatre History and Criticism from Tufts University, an MA in Political Theatre Education from Goddard College, and a BFA in Directing from Boston University.


 

Program

pdf program peak performances

 

In The News

THE BOSTON GLOBE: “For Its Ambitious Ideas, Troupe Needs Its Space”
“Life on ‘the farm’ … allows for full flight of the company’s multidisciplinary aesthetic. Under the leadership of founding artistic director Stacy Klein, Double Edge integrates dance, circus, masque, puppetry, multimedia, live music, and elements inspired by Argentine Carnival to create theatrical events that are densely thematic, but, for audiences, vividly experiential.”


THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: Leonora Carrington “In the Cauldron at Midnight”
One morning in Mexico City in 1991, the English Surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington and the art historian Whitney Chadwick set off for the Mercado de Sonora, a traditional market in a rough part of town that is also known as a mercado de brujería, or witches’ market. “It is here that the shamans and the curanderas [folk healers] find their supplies,” Carrington explained.


PEAK PERFORMANCES/14 WOMEN WHO WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD: “Cover Yourself, Leonora: The Surrealist Who Would Not Be Silenced” by Caitlin Donohue
“100 years after her birth in Lancashire, England, and six after her death in Mexico City, one can imagine a future in which the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is no longer relegated to a secondary mention in the compendia of the movement.”

 

Credits

Programs in Peak Performances’ 2017–18 season are made possible in part by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Photo by Maria Baranova.

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