ABOUT
- Mission
- Who We Are
- Press
- Bios
- Board
Mission
Triple Shadow creates visual theater
with live music, real-time video projections,
masks, puppetry and dance
challenging artistic boundaries,
revealing the interconnectedness
between human cultures and nature
the collaborative process is intercultural and interdisciplinary, affecting audiences in sensory and subconscious ways
questions arise: what is sound? what is hearing? what is light? what is the nature of energy and movement? what are the boundaries between one mind and another, one moment and another, one culture and another, one species and another?
We are dedicated to sharing this work with diverse communities.
Who We Are
Triple Shadow’s unique combination of comic, subtle and transcendent elements evokes the world of nature as an active force in the unfolding of human events. The collaborative's approach reflects technique and spirit of diverse cultural sources. These include Bali and Java, where Beth Skinner and Edward Herbst have spent more than four years doing performance and research.
Triple Shadow’s dramatic worlds are manifested through striking visual imagery and music in an innovative style linking mask and puppet characterization with extraordinary voices, dance and acting. The evolving style of speech, chant and song uses overtone harmonics and other multiphonics, microtonal slides, yodels and calls. Within the group’s performance aesthetic, visual elements are animate and set design is always in motion and interactive.
After twenty years of creating original performance work as Thunder Bay, we have found our identity transforming as our activities have spread out in many new directions. At the beginning of 2008, we have changed our name to Triple Shadow to reflect our emerging aesthetic.
The company is a theater collaboration between director Beth Skinner, composer/musician Edward Herbst, designers Jun Maeda and WindRose Morris, video/lighting designer Paul Clay, video artist Nico Herbst, video operator Chang-Jin Lee, costume designers Mari Andrejco and Heidi Henderson, and interdisciplinary performers Mari Andrejco, Sara Bragdon, Emma Dweck, and WindRose Morris. Additional collaborators have included artists from Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Hungary, Romania and Russia.
In 2003, Triple Shadow formed an exploratory partnership with the performance companies Artus/Company Gábor Goda (with Ernst Süss) from Budapest, Hungary and Toaca from Bucharest, Romania, directed by Nona Ciobanu and Iulian Baltatescu, to pursue new directions and contexts for performance and future collaborations (in consultation with Philip Arnoult and the Center for International Theatre Development).
Triple Shadow creates and rehearses at its Performance Barn in East Otis, South Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and also maintains a base in New York City and an annual season in New York State.
Press
"Theater pieces billed as multimedia often
turn out to be regular plays with a couple
of video projections tossed in. The Triple Shadow company’s “Alice: End of Daze,” which takes
its inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s “Through
the Looking Glass,” is a true and often graceful
blend of forms…The piece (at La MaMa E.T.C.)...
using music, dialogue that comes from actors
and puppets, and video that resembles art
gallery installations...is no children's story,
but a reminder of how often kiddie tales are nightmares about fleeting time and death.”
— Caryn James, New York Times, May 2008
"Triple Shadow brings Alice’s colorful world—along
with the confusion it inspires—to
multidimensional, thought-provoking life...The
audience is brought
into the young girl’s mind
frame through spinning, morphing, and vanishing projections; characters
that shrink and grow in size...
consistently captivating.”
— Ronni Rich, Backstage, April 2008
“The music is performed live on stage during
the show; a refreshing taste compared to
many off-Broadway productions that choose
to generate the score in a studio and replay
it using a theater’s speaker system...While
dark and nightmare-inspiring, composer Edward Herbst's score is strikingly original...A visual and
audio feast for the mind, Alice: End of Daze takes
us to the brink of our imaginations.”
— Nick Breault, Show Business Weekly, May 2008
“...a nonverbal
ecological opera of sound, shadow
and spirit that ranges from the chilling
to the cartoonish to the quietly transcendent.”
— Mark Gevisser, The Village Voice
“Imagine the Marx Brothers performing a
play written by Samuel Becket, directed by
David Lynch, and accompanied by the Throat
Singers of Tuva.”
—
Seth Rogovoy, WAMC Northeast Public Radio
“Theater handcrafted from pure timeless
raw material...leaves me floating, rested,
purged, and high.”
—
Allen Kennedy, The Village Voice
“Even the most mundane of sites
was transformed into the mystical...”
— Marjorie Pritchard, The Boston Globe
“...at once disturbing, soothing
and beautiful; they speak a language
to children and adults alike. ”
— Karen Shreefter, The Berkshire Courier
“In its use of masks and puppetry,
its visual textures and palette,
the ritual nature of its storytelling,
“Arctic Circle” resonates with the
voice of an ancient culture reaching
across a vast expanse of time to touch
this culture and society in ways
that are as new as they are old.”
— Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle
“We are witness to an accumulation
of natural sounds and images which have
mysterious, mythic power... dazzling.”
— David Sears, Involvement, New York Puppetry Guild
“Skinner and Herbst show great skill
at these techniques...approaching the
strange, grave beauty of their sources.”
—
Robert Massa, The Village Voice
BETH SKINNER (director) has premiered seven productions at La MaMa E.T.C. with support from the theater programs of NEA, NYSCA and Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as grants from NEA Opera and NEA Multidisciplinary Program. The company has toured to Egypt, Italy, Mexico, Baltimore, Boston, Santa Fe, Toledo, Bread & Puppet Circus, countless small New England towns, and at Theater for the New City, Judson Church, and Movement Research. As director of Triple Shadow, she has collaborated with artists from Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia and Russia.
In 2003 she initiated an exploratory partnership with the performance companies Artus from Hungary and Toaca from Romania, to pursue new directions and contexts for performance.
Beth is a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique, originated by her aunt, Joan Skinner. For three years she studied and performed mask dance theater in Indonesia, with Nyoman Kakul and other masters, and researched the aesthetics of traditional and experimental performance practice, sponsored by the National Dance College of Bali. Jacobs Research Fund supported a residency with Salish Native Americans of British Columbia.
Skinner’s works, Arctic Circle and Sea Change, were presented at the Cairo 2005 International Festival for Experimental Theatre., for which she received Recognition for Directing.
EDWARD HERBST (composer-musician) comes from a contemporary music orientation of improvisation and acoustic experimentation. Drawn to exploring new aesthetics and cultures, he traveled to Bali and Java on a Fulbright and then on Asian Cultural Council and Ford Foundation grants, researching vocal and gamelan music for dance and shadow puppet theater for four years.
He attended H.S. of Music and Art in New York City, received a B.A. from Bennington College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. He has performed his music and theater works throughout the U.S., Canada (Traditions Musicales du Monde) in Europe (Festival Pantelleria, Sicily and Theatre Grutli, Geneva, Switzerland), Egypt (Cairo 2005 International Festival for Experimental Theatre) and Mexico (Festival Cervantino). As composer and solo vocalist, he was commissioned by Sardono Kusumo's experimental Indonesian dance theatre company to collaborate on MAHA BUTA as well as Sardono’s film, The Sorceress of Dirah, in Indonesia.
His book, VOICES IN BALI: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1997. A new CD of his solo vocal music, sensations of tome, is currently in production.
MARI ANDREJCO (performer) has been a theater performer, director, producer, writer and teaching artist for over three decades. Trained by Sandford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC, she also holds a BA in theater from Temple University. Ms. Andrejco has performed in Europe and the U.S., done stage acting, television and video, appearing as Queen Elizabeth I and Susan B. Anthony for PBS, working with Shakespeare and Company, Triple Shadow, and the Pleiades Company which she co-founded. Her dramatic portrayal of E. Dickinson has been performed all over the Northeast.
Ms. Andrejco also teaches at the Institute for Arts in Education in the Albany schools. As teacher/director of Troy’s LEEP Program, Mari taught social action theater, which redirects the impulses of inner city kids towards a more creative way of handling their troubled lives; inculcating ethical behavior, providing a safe place for young teens and fostering a sense of community.
SARA BRAGDON (performer) holds a B.F.A. in Dance from Julliard and an M.A. in Dance Research and Reconstruction from CUNY City College in N.Y. She has danced in Bill T. Jones "Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin," with Pooh Kaye’s Eccentric Motions at Jacob’s Pilow and La MaMa, and spent five years with Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works. She has taught at several schools and colleges in the Northeast.
Most recently, Sara has spent some time with Bread and Puppet Theater where she and her children Ella and Thomas have been able to perform together in aesthetic-tragic-comedies. In addition to raising her children and performing with Triple Shadow, Sara practices massage therapy.
PAUL CLAY is a visual artist whose work spans many different fields. He has presented in galleries in New York City including Heskin Contemporary, Diesel Gallery, and with Art in General at The Armory Show. He has also shown internationally at The Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Cairo Opera House Art Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; and Galleria Arte de Mexico, Mexico City DF, Mexico. In stage work he served as designer for the 2005 USA entry in the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater, "Sea Change & Arctic Circle", by Triple Shadow.
He received the 2004 Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards Best Design, for "Perfect" at Contact Theatre, Manchester, UK. He designed the set for the Pulitzer prize-winning Broadway musical "Rent", and received a 1997 Municipal Arts Society Times Square Spectacular Award from Tibor Kalman for his redesign of the marquee and exterior of the Nederlander Theater as well as a 1997 Drama Desk award, for "Rent", Los Angeles. Other awards include the National Endowment for the Arts/ TCG Fellowship, and the Bessie award.
He has also done set, lighting, and video design for Mabou Mines, Susan Marshall, David Dorfman, and many others in the New York City theater and dance community.
EMMA DWECK (performer) Emma Dweck has been performing all her life. She received a Bachelor's degree in Theater from Skidmore College where she studied a range of theater methodologies including viewpoints and Suzuki. She has trained at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and the Theater Arts Academie in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 2002 she founded the Art & Soul Theater Project where she produced and directed No Exit and other plays. In addition to working with Triple Shadow, Emma is a member of the Bazaar Productions ensemble, and serves on the advisory board of the Berkshire Fringe. Prior to living in the Berkshires, Ms. Dweck lived in Chicago where she worked at American Theater company.
NICO HERBST (video) has exhibited and performed in the U.S., the UK, Italy, and Germany, most recently at the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck. He recently relocated from NYC to Southern California.
CHANG-JIN LEE (video projection artist) is a visual artist, and has exhibited extensively including at The Queens Museum of Art, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Asian American Arts Centre, and Chinese American Arts Council in New York.
Her large-scale public art project "Homeland Security Garden" was presented at the World Financial Center Winter Garden. This project received national and international broadcast media attention, including radio and television, New York 1(NYC), Yue-Sai Kan's World(Shanghai) and Tokyo FM (Tokyo); was reviewed in publications including Public Art Review, The New York Times, The Daily News, Time Out New York, The Associated Press, New York Arts, The Korea Times, The Korea Daily, The Washington Journal, Metro, and New York Press; She has received awards including a World Financial Center Sponsorship, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Sponsorship, The Puffin Foundation Grant, and a Manhattan Community Arts Fund from The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
JUN MAEDA (scenic design) has been Resident Set Designer at La MaMa E.T.C. since 1975. He has collaborated with Andrei Serban, Joseph Chaiken, Jonas Jurasas, John Jesurun, Ellen Stewart, Jean Claude van Itallie, Linda Mussman, Tokyo Kid Brothers, Francois Kourilsky, Otrabanda & Talking Band. He received a 1981 OBIE Award for Sustained Achievement in Set Design, & 1981 Villager Award for Set Design. Maeda has been a member of Triple Shadow since 1989, as co-conceiver of several productions.
WINDROSE MORRIS (mask & puppet design): As both a visual and performing artist WindRose has performed and created in the US, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France. She holds a BA in Creative Dramatic Writing from the Union Institute and University.
Her training includes work with Shakespeare & Company, the Omega Institute, Celtic Shamanic training with Geo Cameron, Shamanic training in the UK and a four year apprenticeship in Mexihka Pactli (holistic Aztec medicine) with indigenous healer Eloxochitl Ivonne Buedia Sanchez.
She has had the pleasure of performing with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson on film, has starred in a television movie, Hitting Home, aired on HBO, some of her puppet creatures have found their way into a film Under the Bed, which received honorable mention at Sundance. Other notable projects have taken place at The British Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, BBC Television Centre in London and both the Oxford and Cambridge Botanical Gardens in the UK.
Teaching includes: The School of the Science of Acting, The Method Studio, and Eastside Educational Trust in London. She directed a new play for The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2004. She has performed as a storyteller for the anniversary celebration of the Entente Cordiale in Paris.
HEIDI HENDERSON's costumes for dance are now few and far between but used to be seen on stage at the Joyce, Danspace at St. Marks Church, La Mama and other wonderful places in NYC. Heidi received her B.A. from Colby College in English and her M.F.A. from Smith College in Dance and her training in sewing and design from Penny Babel Couturier. Currently an Assistant Professor at Connecticut College, Heidi is the 2000 recipient of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellowship for excellence in the field. Her company “elephant JANE dance” has performed in London, New York City, all over New England, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out and in Taegu, Korea. Heidi has danced in the companies of Bebe Miller, Nina Wiener, Peter Schmitz, Sondra Loring, and Paula Josa-Jones.
Triple Shadow Board of Directors
Beth Skinner (President)
Artistic Director
Edward Herbst (Treasurer)
Artistic Director
Libbie Shufro (Secretary)
Consultant, Commonwealth Compact
(former President and CEO, Boston Center for the Arts)
Rochelle Prunty
General Manager, River Valley Market, Northampton, MA
Charlotte Tiencken
Managing Director, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Seattle, WA (former General Manager, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival)