What happens when Mr Drag comes back to visit his sisters for the holiday season only to find out that their whole world has been turned upside down into a strange and bizarre alternate reality? Only a slew of song and dance will help him make sense of it all….and of course a few to several martinis.

Set within large-scale installations constructed throughout the Shea Theater Arts Center, monsters, heroes, nymphs, dryads, satyrs, mortals, deities, and other fantastical beings wander through the dark maze of the building, passing through stone gardens, enchanted forests, sensual, twisted underworlds, banquets, piles of bones, seas of fabric, light, sound, and more. Traditional lines of performance blur as players and audience members weave in and out of multiple timelines and narratives.

Welcome to Charley’s - a cozy, one-night-only escape from your present-day cares.  Join us as Charley invites you into an evening of tropical cocktails and mocktails, dreamy music, cozy meetings over chess games - and, for the adventurous - an unexpected theatrical journey into the mind of its owner.

Secret to Life features original compositions performed by an ensemble of women of color (WOC) based on private stories or “secrets” of WOC, gathered through interviews and guided writing.

Experience the joy of writing with others in this 5-week online writing workshop with Terry Jenoure. Join a caring community where your words matter. Whether jumpstarting a project or simply searching for fresh ideas…this workshop series is for you!

Come ready to write * Come ready to play

Welcome to Charley’s - a cozy, one-night-only escape from your present-day cares. Featuring an evening of beer, wine, and tropical non-alcoholic drinks, dreamy music, cozy meetings over chess games - and, for the adventurous - an unexpected journey into the mind of its owner.

Description This family friendly show created by artists Katherine Adler of Greenfield, Ashley Kramer and Rebecca Schrader of Northampton features short performances with comedy, dance, vaudeville, and music that is fun for all.This is the perfect chance to grab a cider and bring the kids for wholesome fun and frolic.

The collision of evocative art forms, including, but not limited to music, dance, theater, sculpture, painting, and film with a “choose your own adventure” structure creates a uniquely powerful immersive experience for performers and audience alike, where the lines between witness and participant are disrupted and dissolved.

Deus Ex Machina is a love letter to the Shea Theater and to theater-making itself.  Made for an intimate audience of 18 participants at a time, the hour-long piece guides them - scene to scene - through a series of encounters with characters inspired by the Shea’s history and legacy.  

WRITE NOW! the spring gathering. A 5-week online writing workshop with Terry Jenoure.

Terry Jenoure (composer, violinist, vocalist) has assembled a sextet of her longtime collaborators. The stellar lineup includes Angelica Sanchez (piano), Wayne Smith (cello), Avery Sharpe (bass), Joe Fonda (bass), and Reggie Nicholson (drums). After 30 years as Director of UMass’ Augusta Savage Gallery and while serving concurrently for 20 years on Lesley University’s graduate faculty, Jenoure now focuses her attention on projects most close to her heart, namely music memoir. Her new composition highlights recently discovered family letters dating back nearly 100 years. They depict the conflicted thoughts of her Jamaican immigrant grandfather, written to his wife while detained at the Canadian border.

Description goes hereFor this latest saga in the Drag Family's life, Joe Dulude II, who created and performs the role of Mr Drag wanted to write a show that celebrates the Drag Sisters at their best for this farewell. He is moving away from the Pioneer Valley and wanted to give one last hurrah . Alongside Joe, Jane Williams portrays his older sister Kat and Myka Plunkett their younger sister DD. Joining them on stage is Linda Tardif as their musical device Jinnifer, plus some special guests.

”This is not goodbye...it is until next time. Cheers!”

Conceived by Sam Perry (Old Flame, SVIP) n his directorial debut, A Happening is a multi-leveled immersive experience that will expand audience perception what live theater can be. Encounter a surface world of characters with hidden motives. Just below stirs dark secrets and mysteries kept hidden in corners and shadows. Join them for an evening of revelry through auditory & visual delights!

A 5-week online writing workshop with Terry Jenoure. Come and discover precious gems that lay buried and waiting! Join a community of writers where our words matter.

Joe Dulude II as Mr. Drag welcomes back Myka Plunkett, Linda Tardif, Jane Williams and Emily Pritchard to the magical, musical, shaken not stirred life of Mr. Drag and all of his escapades.

New theatre collective MAD House presented An Intervention, Mike Bartlett’s fast-paced and funny two-hander which examines the limits of friendship and responsibility and asks us to consider how and when to intervene in both personal and political matters.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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, 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.

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, 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.

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 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.