Double Edge Theatre and Jupiter Performance Studio
Present
The Art and Survival Performance Festival
August 1, 2023—Double Edge Theatre (DE) and Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) amplify the movement for climate justice with the Art and Survival Performance Festival, a gathering for artists, organizers, educators, and land stewards. The Festival will take place September 8-11 and is DE in collaboration with JPS. Co-curated by Stacy Klein and Ebony Golden, the Art and Survival Festival brings artists, organizers, land stewards, water workers, and educators to Ashfield, MA for three days of performances, workshops, conversations, and meals exploring creativity, climate reparations and community-building. The festival will engage some of the most important issues related to climate change in urban and rural areas and seeks to be a moment for invited participants to imagine strategies for resilience and repair. Art and Survival revolves around three thematic imperatives:
Creativity: How can creativity, and more specifically theatrical performance, advance the movement for climate justice in urban and rural settings?
Climate and Environment: What are the strategies that support the holistic thriving of our built and natural environment?
Culture and Community: What are the rituals of resilience and repair that foster well being?
The festival expands DE and JPS’ long-standing partnership and centers climate resilience, community-building, and nature-based performance work. The vision for this festival is to create pathways and opportunities for addressing environmental justice and climate reparations through the lens of joy and hope. Ebony believes that addressing these issues is not only of environmental concern, but spiritual, economic, political, and social as well. The festival’s focus is to amplify hyper-local knowledge systems and alternative methodologies, to create new possibilities for thriving communities. By sharing rituals of repair, stories, and strategies we hope to imagine and create restorative and generative models for climate reparations and what it means to collectively thrive. Stacy Klein said, “We are coming to Double Edge to discuss cultural reparations because it is critical to partnership. Partnership with the planet, organizations, and each other. We can not have justice without repair.”
Presenters and performers include Mondo Bizarro (New Orleans, Louisiana), Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Durham, NC), Erika Dickerson-Despenza (New Orleans, Louisiana), Viktor Le Givens (Houston/Crockett, TX), JPS (Harlem, NY), and DE (Ashfield, MA). The festival also features performances by emerging artists Sara Green (New Orleans, Louisiana), Ebony Webster (Harlem, NY), and Tomantha Sylvester (Ashfield, MA).
Additionally, the festival features a walk with Little Amal, the internationally celebrated 12-foot-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian girl. Amal’s walk during the festival will shed light on the refugee rights and the environmental impact of displacement on children.
Ebony Noelle Golden, co-curator said, “I am excited about this festival. We’ve created this space to be a watering hole, an opportunity to break bread, imagine, and exchange ideas about how to live in right-relationship with the planet. I can’t wait to see what grows from our time together.” In addition to the performances, the festival features a series of talks and workshops that explore the realities and opportunities for climate resilience in rural and urban communities.
The Art and Survival Performance Festival marks the sunset of the eponymous program launched by Double Edge in 2014. After the festival, JPS and DE will begin planning the launch of an institute for the study of ecowomanism and ritual performance, based on Golden’s scholarship and theatrical work.
A limited number of tickets will be made available in August. Visit https://doubleedgetheatre.org/ and jupiterperformancestudio.com or email art.survival@doubleedgetheatre.org.for more information and to purchase tickets.
—-
About the Festival Organizers
Double Edge Theatre, founded in 1982 by Stacy Klein, is a cultural cooperative and ensemble collective -- a place of nurturing and sanctuary. We fuse the highest caliber of artistic work, a deep love of the natural environment, and an unwavering faith in human potential. Like the water that runs around and through the land it occupies, Double Edge is a river for artists who thirst -- from all ancestral legacies, cultural backgrounds, community contexts, walks-of-life. Often artists, educators, scholars come here to identify more clearly, to understand themselves, and to seek where their courage will allow them to go. https://doubleedgetheatre.org/
Jupiter Performance Studio
Ceremony. Spectacle. Flight. Established in 2020 by Ebony Noelle Golden, Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) is a hub for the study of diasporic Black performance traditions. Current and recent projects include: The Art and Survival Fellowship, in collaboration with Double Edge Theatre; The Keeping, commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center with major support from Creative Capital and In The Name Of The Mother Tree, commissioned by Apollo Theater and National Black Theatre with major support from Double Edge Theatre and the National Theater Project. JPS supports climate justice and reparations through Watering (W)hole, the studio’s community-powered engagement platform. IG: @jupiterperformancestudio. jupiterperformancestudio.com
