Double Edge

Short Synopsis

Theatre on the Edge, a feature documentary film by Julie Akeret, explores the innovative work of the internationally acclaimed laboratory theater company, Double Edge, located in the rural town of Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Description/Treatment

Description

The documentary film, Theatre on the Edge, explores the innovative work of the internationally acclaimed laboratory theater company, Double Edge, located in the rural town of Ashfield, Massachusetts. Since 1982, the company has been developing a creative process, a "living culture," where the emphasis is on the connection between the local community and the artists who share values, experiences, goods, and services. Double Edge collectively creates strikingly original theatrical spectacles, explores universal themes of love, despair, democracy and chaos that engage audiences intimately and powerfully, blurring the line between personal life and community/society. Their ideals come to life through educational programs and performance, where Double Edge challenges society’s conventions, using language, visual design, and movement to redefine the typical theatrical experience, questioning our deepest values. This film reveals Double Edge’s impact on their local and global community, the effect of their immersive educational training program, and glimpses of their internationally acclaimed performances. The company draws from everything from ancient stories and myths to current events, while redefining the typical audience/performer relationship by creating a space where performers dance, fly, and swim among the audience.

This film will engage viewers because it is the actual story of a committed group of people who care about what they do and how they connect to those around them. They want to make a difference in the small town they live in as well as in the contemporary theater world by making their creative process transparent and by examining the very issues that define our world – pain, joy, chaos and order. This is cultural programming for television at its best, a film that draws the audience into the imaginary world of theater while pulling back the curtain to reveal the ideas and aspirations of the people involved.

No film has been made about this New England cultural treasure, Double Edge Theatre. This film will tell the story of this unique western Massachusetts creative laboratory; how the company individuals chose to establish their creative nexus in Ashfield, how they connect and collaborate with the people in the community, and how their challenging performances spill over from the stage into the surrounding landscape. The film will appeal to anyone who is curious about how people struggle and thrive in the arts today, as it explores one group’s approach to social change through creativity. The film will illustrate how Double Edge Theatre reaches out and connects to the community through their everyday business activities, their educational workshops, their arresting performances and grand spectacles. The New England Foundation for the Arts Culture Count, which evaluates the economic benefit of various art groups on the local economy, has stated that the company has had a dramatic impact on the economy by creating more jobs related to tourism, construction, and hospitality.

This documentary is a co-production with WGBY, public television in Springfield, MA, which is providing major in-kind services. The piece has a tentative broadcast date on that station and WGBH, Boston, in December 2010.

Treatment

The film will open with shots of an idyllic farm complete with red barns, cows in a pasture, and tractors by a pond. Music and vocal training will fade up over these farm images. Slowly, moving figures will emerge as company members begin warm-ups in the barn, beside the cows and on a bridge over a pond. Actress Karen Allen begins the introduction to Double Edge Theatre. Her narration will provide background information and transitions throughout the film.

From this point, the film will go behind the scenes with verite footage of Double Edge Artistic Director Stacy Klein working with company members on a scene for an upcoming production. In these opening scenes, concepts cultivated by Double Edge, such as “actor-centered theater,” “physically focused training,” and theater and art as a “living culture,” will be explored in interviews with director Stacy Klein and others. These concepts will be illustrated within the context of their work.

In addition to footage from rehearsals and performances, the film will include interviews with various company members, collaborators, and community members. These include everyone from New York art critics to the nearby baker who supplies free baked goods and the neighboring farmer who helps maintain the farm in exchange for season tickets and use of the fields for his herds. Visiting students from Yale University and guest artists from Eastern Europe, who come to observe and train at Double Edge Theatre, will be interviewed as well. The people who drive this creative team, who live and work in he community, who come to study and learn will become be the real people of "living culture" in this documentary.

The range of performance material included in the film will be wide. From the indelible images of Don Quixote fighting against giant windmills and righting the wrongs of the world, to the writings and art of Bruno Schulz, a visionary whose fertile creations foreshadowed the looming evil of 1930s Poland. Double Edge does not hesitate to tackle dark, provocative material. Yet darkness is balanced with light, as the sweeping love stories of Arabian Nights testify to the healing power of storytelling.

The style of the documentary, like Double Edge itself, is different. In a world that bombards us daily with split-second media clips and sound bites, we appreciate a relevant story and the time it takes to tell one. We will make a full one-hour film, which is what it will take to allow verite scenes, intermixed with personal interviews, to unfold naturally. This does not mean, however, that the style or camerawork will be in any way staid or predictable. Mark Langevin (cameraman) has established techniques that create an intimacy between audience and subject. Much of the film has been shot from precarious barn rooftops, moving wheelbarrows, and picturesque cow pastures.