By Debbie Gardner
dgardner@thereminder.com
The Berkshires beckon again this summer – not just as an affordable arts getaway in a year of inflation-induced worries – but also as a place to take part in the celebration of milestone achievements for two well-known meccas for artistic expression.
The haven for all things dance nestled on a hilltop in Becket reaches a stunning milestone this summer, celebrating 90 years of nurturing dance and dance expression in America. Now recognized on the National Register of Historic places, the Pillow Dance Festival, which draws viewers from across the country – and the globe since also going virtual for many performances – has come a long way from its humble beginnings.
“Modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn, bought the Jacob’s Pillow farm in 1931. Shawn had long harbored a dream of legitimizing dance in America as an honorable career for men, and in 1933, he recruited eight men for a new dance company. In July 1933, Ted Shawn and his men dancers started offering “Tea Lecture Demonstrations” in their barn studio (now known as the Bakalar Studio) to promote their work, establishing roots for what was to evolve into Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival” cites the Pillow’s website, www.jacobspillow.org, of the festival’s early years.
Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis, had been America’s leading dance couple before they split in 1931, popularizing dance rooted in theatrical and multicultural traditions – rather than European ballet – and had toured successfully. Their students became the next generation of legendary dance pioneers: Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Doris Humphrey and Jack Cole.
From 1933-40, Shawn and his men dancers mounted successful tours of the U.S. and Europe and continued the “Tea Lecture Demonstrations” during summers in Becket, drawing increasingly larger crowds. World War II – and selective service – brought the men’s dancers to an end, and facing debt, Shawn began renting out the Pillow, first to dance teacher Mary Ball Washington, who produced the first Berkshire Hills Dance Festival in 1940, and in 1941 to British ballet stars Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, who launched the first International Dance Festival at the Pillow.
Locals were so impressed by what was happening at the property they formed the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Committee, raised $50,000 and built a theater to host performances – instead of performing in the barn – and hired Shawn as director. The theater architect, Joseph Franz – who also designed Tanglewood’s Music Shed – created a post-and-beam structure that harmonized with the existing farmhouse and barns. The Ted Shawn Theater opened on July 9, 1942. Shawn was at the Pillow’s helm – with the exception of a sabbatical for an Australian tour in 1947 – until his death in 1972. The Pillow added more performance spaces as the years went on – the Doris Duke Theater under Artistic Director Liz Thompson (1980-90) and Blake’s Barn under Samuel A. Miller (1990-94). Throughout the nine decades – and changes in dance styles and audience tastes – the Pillow has endured and grown as a dance conservatory and teaching center, serving as a place to nurture dance innovation and encourage students to pursue their dreams.
Prime spoke with Pamela Tatge, executive and artistic director at the Pillow since 2016, about the importance of this artistic milestone and the Pillow’s plans for this anniversary season.
“The idea that for nine decades artists and audiences have made their way to the top of this mountain in Beckett to encounter dance from all over the world is extraordinary, that we are celebrating our 90th anniversary coming out of the [coronavirus] pandemic is such a joy,” Tatge said.
Preparations for the 90th anniversary began six years ago with a look at the Pillow’s signature performance space, Tatge said.
“One of the priorities of the 90th anniversary … what we wanted to do is to renovate the Ted Shawn theater. It’s the first theater in America that was created to be dedicated to dance and that theater opened in 1942. That theater is [now] 80 years old and when we realized about six years ago that the wooden beams that support the roof also support the rigging onstage – and they need tending to – the only way to really restore the theater and give it structural integrity was to create a steel structure,” Tatge shared. The renovations have completely replaced the stage, added air cooling and a new ventilation system – “something very important now,” Tatge noted – and made the stage accessible to disabled artists for the first time in its history.
“We also added an orchestra pit, that means we will welcome the Miami City Ballet [Aug. 24-28] with a live orchestra, we’ve never been able to welcome a ballet company with a live orchestra [before],” Tatge said.
The 90th Anniversary Gala, which took place in June, included 10 dance companies representing the “nine decades of our past,” Tatge said. The event was both an in-person and a livestream event for individuals who were unable to make it to Becket. Welcoming gala attendees digitally was “a big deal,” Tatge said, and continues an outreach the Pillow began last year as a way to overcome issues presented by the coronavirus pandemic. “Last year we welcomed people from 66 countries” to view Festival performances online, she said. The livestream access will continue for many of the 90th anniversary performances this summer, she added.
The 90th anniversary season spans the breadth and scope of dance in 2022, according to Tatge, with a 10-week schedule running from the end of June until August.
“I think we have 10 amazing companies coming to the Ted Shawn theater and we are continuing our outdoor performance program on the Henry J. Lear stage. There will be a different performance each night of certain weeks [on the Lear] and other weeks the [performing] company will take over all the evenings of that week,” Tatge explained. On the outdoor stage “We have everything from a Brazilian tap dance ensemble [Music from the Sole] to a beautiful ballet company to an Indigenous enterprise company from the Southwest to Taylor Stanley from the NYC ballet presenting a program of works commissioned specifically for him to dance,” Tatge said.
Besides the staged performances Tatge said “There’s so much going on, from talks to classes to workshops… and there’s dance parties.
“On certain Saturdays people can come and enjoy dance by the performers in our school for free [as well],” she added.
In addition to the free dance school performances on select Saturdays, Tatge said the Pillow is doing something else to celebrate their 90th Anniversary.
“For the performances on the outdoor stage we have something called ’90 for the 90th’ where each day we will have free tickets available for that day’s performance. People can go to the website (www.jacobspillow.org/90forthe90th/) to find out how to get these tickets,” Tatge said.
“We really want to be a place where everyone feels they can come and be inspired,” Tatge continued. “We have great food, there’s the opportunity to picnic before and after a performance, people can really make a summer day of it.”
And she hopes people will come out to experience the 90th Anniversary Festival at Jacob’s Pillow this summer.
“I think there’s something so magnificent about seeing dance in this natural [setting]. The generative energy of nature joins the creative potential of the human body and makes for an extraordinary place to see dance. There’s no better place to see dance than Jacob’s Pillow,” Tatge said.
Jacob’s Pillow is located at 358 George Carter Rd. in Becket. For more information call 243-9199 or visit www.jacobspillow.org.
The Pillow isn’t the only Berkshire favorite to be celebrating a milestone anniversary this year. Shakespeare & Co., located on Kemble Street in Lenox, is celebrating 45 years of remarkable productions with a Sapphire Anniversary Season.
“It’s pretty amazing … the sapphire season, representing something relatively permanent in a gemstone – blue, welcoming and enticing – this is the summer to get people out again,” Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Allyn Burrows told Prime. “We really puled out the stops and it’s going to look like a [pre-coronavirus pandemic] year.”
Shakespeare & Company is lucky, Burrows noted, that it completed construction of its outdoor New Spruce Theatre last season. With that and the smaller Roman Garden Theatre, the company has ample seating to mount productions even if the coronavirus pandemic throws a kink into the summer in the Berkshires. “We never anticipated last fall that we would be navigating the [coronavirus] pandemic in its wild and wooly ways again,” Burrows said during the early June interview, when the omicron variants were causing COVID-19 cases to rise again in Massachusetts.
Shakespeare & Company also has “state of the art HVAC equipment” in its indoor Tina Packer Playhouse and Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, so people need not worry about coming to an indoor production, Burrows added. “We want people to come out and enjoy themselves despite all the unpredictability. We like to keep the unpredictability onstage,” Burrows said with a laugh.
Shakespeare’s iconic Tina Packer Playhouse is named for the company’s founder. Packer emigrated from England in 1970s, with the vision of creating a theater company “that merged the power suits of British actors and American actors: the spoken word and the physical body.” (www.shakespeare.org/about/companyhistory )
Packer founded Shakespeare & Company in 1978, and until 2000, the company mounted summer performances on the outdoor stage at The Mount, Gilded Age author Edith Wharton’s Berkshire summer home, which is also located in Lenox. Shakespeare & Company purchased its current home on Kemble Street in April of 2000, creating a campus that now houses its administrative offices, two indoor and two outdoor theaters, rehearsal halls and space for Shakespeare & Company’s year ‘round actor training and theater-in-education programs. The company produces a slate of Shakespeare’s works, as well as classic and contemporary plays annually, for an estimated 45,000 patrons and employs approximately 150 actors.
“It’s a robust season, and we really went back to kind-of our level of 2019 programming,” said Burrows, who added the 2021 season was constrained both by construction of the Spruce Theatre and the shifting landscape of COVID-19 precautions.
This summer’s season kicks off with a full production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” on the main stage of the outdoor New Spruce Theater beginning July 2. “We haven’t done [that play] on our main stage in 17 years,” Burrows shared.
On Aug. 19, Shakespeare & Company brings another Shakespearian classic – “Measure for Measure” to the Tina Packer Playhouse. “It’s a play we’ve never done on our main stage,” said Burrows. “We did it 20 years ago in our stable theater at The Mount, and we workshopped it last year and people responded well, so we’ll be giving it a full production this year.”
Another sapphire season highlight, Burrows said, is a full production of the play “A Walk in the Woods” by Lee Blessing, which opens in the Roman Garden Theatre on July 16. “It was done on Broadway years ago with Sam Watterson,” Burrows said of the play, which was originally written in 1988.
“I programmed this play [for the 2023 season] before the Russian invasion of Ukraine… it’s about Russian arms negotiations between an American and Russian arms dealer and speaks to a lot of the issues [of today],” he continued, adding the play is based on a true story. “It poses a lot of interesting and challenging questions about the state of the world, even though it was written many years ago.”
Producing “A Walk in the Woods” in an outdoor theater seemed fitting, he added.
On July 22, Shakespeare & Company will mount “Hymn” by Lolita Chakrabarti in the indoor Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre.
New this season is a series Burrows called “Plays in Process,” which will presented on select weekends during the season.
“This is a new venture for us. They’re plays that are in the process of being developed, and it allows the audience to peer into what goes into playmaking, what goes into storytelling and what goes into putting on a show.”
Plays in Process opens the weekend of July 9-10 with “This Soil…These Seeds” by Bonita Jackson and closes the weekend of Aug. 6 and 7 with a reading of Samuel Beckett’s 1957 radio play “All That Fall” featuring Annette Miller.
The company is also hosting a series of Free Friday Talks throughout the summer. Hosted by educator and member of Shakespeare & Volunteer Company Ann Berman, according to the website, the series will examine various themes surrounding many of the 2022 season’s titles and will feature various directors, cast members, design-team members or others at each presentation. Though the series is free, tickets are still required and are available on the website, www.shakespeare.org/shows
The season ends in September with an indoor performance of “Golden Leaf Ragtime Blues” by Charles Smith in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. “It’s about an aging vaudevillian and what happens when his daughter and a young African American man show up. It’s all about communication and crossing those lines and it’s a very amusing piece. I think people will respond to it,” Burrows said.
For information on the complete sapphire season at Shakespeare & Company, visit www.shakespeare.org.
Burrows said that there isn’t a special ticket promotion for the 45th anniversary sapphire season, but that mid-week performance tickets are less expensive, and the company does offer “a senior citizens discount” on all performance tickets.
And despite the rise in gas prices and the effects of inflation on patrons’ budgets, Burrows hopes people plan to make a trip to visit the Berkshires, and especially Shakespeare & Company, this summer.
“Just come out. We have a full plate (of entertainment) for you. We’re ready for you when you want to show up, and we want you to take advantage of it,” said Burrows.
