Who We Are
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 10 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. 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.
Artistic Directors:
Beth Skinner (co-artistic director) has premiered ten productions at La
MaMa in New York City, with support from the theater programs of NEA,
NYSCA and Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as grants from NEA
Opera-Musical Theater and NEA Multidisciplinary Programs. The company has toured to Egypt (Cairo 2005 International Festival for Experimental Theatre), Italy (Festival Pantelleria, Sicily), Chiapas, Mexico, Santa Fe Institute of the Arts, Baltimore, Boston, Toledo, the Bread & Puppet Circus, countless small New England towns, and at Theater for the New City, Judson Church, and Movement Research in New York. As co-director of Triple Shadow, she has collaborated with artists from Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Hungary, Romania, and Russia. Beth is a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing Technique, originated by her aunt, Joan Skinner. She studied and performed mask dance theater in Indonesia for three years. Jacobs Research Fund supported a residency with Salish Native American women in British Columbia.
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 grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Robert Lemelson Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar award.
He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan
University and has performed his music and theater works throughout the U.S., Canada (Traditions Musicales du Monde), Switzerland (Theatre
Grutli, Geneva), Egypt 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 and Sardono's film, The Sorceress of Dirah.
His book, VOICES IN BALI: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and
Dance Theater, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1997.
Currently he is writing a book focusing on the research and repatriation
strategies of the Bali 1928 Project.
Jun Maeda (scenic design) April 3, 1941 - April 6, 2020
Resident Set Designer at La MaMa E.T.C. since 1975. He 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 was a member of Triple Shadow since 1989.
Paul Clay (video and lighting design) is a multimedia artist and designer
whose work includes set lighting and video design for the National Theatre Wales, Volcano Theatre, Welsh National Opera co production “Shelf Life”, Swansea, Wales and De Nederlandse Opera’s “Commedia”, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has also done set, lighting, and video design with Mabou Mines, Susan Marshall, David Dorfman, NYTW, BAM, and many more in the New York theater and dance community. 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.
WindRose (mask & puppet design): As both a visual and performing artist, WindRose has performed and created in the U.S., England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and France. 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, and some of her puppet creatures have found their way into a
film Under the Bed, which received honorable mention at Sundance.
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 B.A. 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.
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 Pillow and La MaMa, and spent five years with Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works.