Production History
A shortlist of past productions and engagements .
Stagehand
Melding video game language with immersive theater, audience pods met online over Zoom to step into a first-person live narrative set in a pair of historic theaters in Northampton and Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Participants were connected to an in-show avatar named Charlie who was tasked with helping some late-staying cast members of Hamlet while traveling through a mostly empty, and possibly haunted theater that is seemingly larger than it should be.
Promenades
Partnering with an audio software developer, Eggtooth created an app that uses geo-locative audio to send our audience members into a world that changes as they travel. An intimate theatrical event, each walk guides the listener though a combination of voice, soundtracks, and binaural field recordings across a public landscape in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts. Developed by John Bechtold in the early months of the pandemic, Eggtooth will also use its app to offer a new audio walk celebrating Bee Fest in downtown Greenfield on May 22, 2021.
Mr. Drag and friends
Mr Drag was created by Emmy-nominated makeup designer, Joe Dulude II, while he was exploring his own gender fluidity, identity and the balance between his masculine and feminine sides. While on the surface Mr Drag appears a stoic, satirical drunk, he in fact has a deep love and understanding of family and community. The Annual Holiday show was born out of a desire to not only entertain the community but to bring them in and make them feel like part of the Drag Family. And during the pandemic, while we were all quarantined in our homes, Mr Drag wanted to find a way to entertain the community with short 10 minute videos where he told stories, mixed cocktails and sang songs. His and Joe’s goal with this character and these shows is to bring some light into what can be an often dark world.
Vital, Vibrant, Visible
These portraits of local Indigenous folks were made in collaboration with curator, Rhonda Anderson [Iñupiaq - Athabaskan] and photographed by Sara K. Lyon as part of the Radical Interconnectedness Festival in 2019.
And we hope it will be written in your hearts and your minds – We Are Vital. We Are Vibrant. We Are Visible. We Are Still Here.” –excerpt from Rhonda Anderson’s curatorial statement
Photo credit: Sara K. Lyons
Pelala
Pelala is Terry Jenoure’s solo performance of music, storytelling and video that weaves a new fable for our day. The one woman show was commissioned as part of the Radical Interconnectedness Festival in 2019.
Activist Arts Generator
The idea of the Generator is to bring Artists/Makers together from all different genres (theater, dance,
music, fine art, photography, writing, poetry, film, etc.) to share ideas, knowledge and make connections and relationships to create an action plan for activist art in Franklin County. The plan is to generate the impetus for work that makes change.
Deus Ex Machina
Developed as a tribute to the Shea Theater in Turners Falls, audience members were threaded through the historic building in small groups, which has been a home for 1920's vaudeville troupes, a controversial 1970's commune, and a now-thriving regional performance venue. Watching a disconnected host ghostlike performers in their makeup rooms, private corners, and the stage wings, audiences experienced the intimacy of theater-making and the thrill of going where you’re usually not allowed to go in a theater.
The Winter’s Tale
The Winter’s Tale, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play was set in the five-story Arts Block building in Greenfield in 2016. Using the rich narratives of Shakespeare’s late play and Persephone’s descent to Hades and back, the production spread across the five floors of the Arts Block building in downtown Greenfield. Large installation sets, lighting, and sound design highlighted the byzantine space. Free-wandering audiences explored the layered worlds of the play before being brought together for the final scene—the restoration of Queen Hermione.
Frankenstein
A new adaptation by Lindel Hart presented at the First National Bank, Greenfield and at the Springfield Museums 2014. With projection art mapped and created by Florian Canga from Albania, Frankenstein takes the audience on a roller coaster ride through the life experience of the Creature. We follow his birth, his rejection by his father, his abuse and mounting rage, and his superhuman travels around the world ending in the Arctic on an ice floe as he relentlessly seeks connection with his father, Victor Frankenstein.
TRUTH
TRUTH, a new opera about the life of Sojourner Truth presented at the Academy of Music and the New York Fringe Festival 2012-2013. Composed by Paula M. Kimper, with a libretto by Talaya Delaney, projections rendered by Amy Johnquest and staging by Linda McInerney, TRUTH illuminates the life and legacy of this complicated, brilliant woman who, though illiterate, was a relentless and articulate champion of those deprived of justice and freedom, and whose influence has for too long been overlooked.
My Bronx
Terry Jenoure’s My Bronx is a celebratory memoir depicting early childhood in an urban Puerto Rican and Jamaican family. In it, we hear tales of school during the early years of integration, we’re offered wisdom from ancestors, and we watch an adolescent girl make hard choices. Weaving spoken word, music, and dance, My Bronx is rooted in a collaborative, improvisational style, offering its own homage to The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Joining the performers on stage are over one hundred of Jenoure’s hand-sewn dolls, all witnesses to her journey. Note: For their 2013 performance in Greenfield, Jenoure’s ensemble included by Bob Weiner on drums and Maria Mitchell, dancer. For their tour of Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo, Jenoure and Mitchell were joined by saxophonist Berhani Wadu.
The Captivation of Eunice Williams
The Captivation of Eunice Williams composed by Paula Kimper with libretto by Harley Erdman was presented in Deerfield, The Academy of Music, Northampton, NYSHA, and in Skopje, Macedonia in 2004-2006 thanks to a grant from the International Music and Art Foundation. In February of 1704, 112 Puritan Colonists were captured by the Mohawks and marched north through the snows to Kahnawake, near Montreal. Among the captives was a young girl of seven years. The opera The Captivation of Eunice Williams dramatizes the life story of this girl.