As shown in an architectural rendering by a design team that includes Francine Houben, founding architect of Mecanoo.
BECKET — Four years ago, when a fire destroyed the Doris Duke Theater at Jacob’s Pillow, Artistic director Pamela Tatge knew she had to turn this horrible loss into opportunity.
“We took something that was the ultimate tragedy – the loss of a theater that had served audiences and artists for 30 years – and decided to build a theater deeply rooted in the Earth and equipped for the future,” Tatge said.
Next summer, on July 9, the Pillow will open the doors to its new Doris Duke Theater, kicking off seven weeks of programming focused on shows using emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and robotics.
“It has the potential to provide access to dance and art in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Pamela Tatge said of the new Doris Duke Theater’s streaming capabilities, seen here in an architect’s rendering.
“The Duke will be equipped to host works at the intersection of dance and technology, which is a direction many artists are heading in,” Tatge said. “There is a real need for space to create these works and present them.”
At 20,000 square feet, the venue is nearly three times larger than the former Doris Duke Theater, which opened in 1990. It is also capable of broadcasting live performances, has stage and audience configurations flexible and can accommodate between 220 and 400 spectators. This stands in stark contrast to the Pillow’s two other venues, both of which are proscenium spaces: the Ted Shawn Theater, with more than 600 seats, and the Henry J. Leir Outdoor Stage, which seats up to 400 people.
“We are under pressure to select (dance) companies that can fill the Ted Shawn Theater for six performances, 635 seats per performance,” Tatge said. “Whereas with 235 people in the new Duke, there is much more space for experimentation and to showcase emerging and early career artists.”
The organization worked with Mecanoo, a Dutch architecture firm, and the firm’s founding architect, Francine Huber, as well as landscape architecture film Marvel, theater and acoustics consultants Charcoalblue and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, currently represented at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art with “Full power because we are different” to build the theater, as well as new outdoor spaces including a garden with native and medicinal plants. The new theater, along with outdoor spaces, was funded by insurance claims and donations, including $10 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
“The building itself is really designed to incorporate Indigenous design principles and values,” Tatge said. “Our architect wanted us to really connect with the environment that gives Jacob’s Pillow its quintessential identity, so that the doors open to the outside and you can start your show outside and move to the interior.”
This is the case of “Vástádus eana — the answer is land”, a piece which, presented at the Doris Duke Theater, will mark the debut in the United States of the Norwegian Sami choreographer Elle Sofe. “It’s about honoring the land we exist on and being one with it,” Tatge said.
Another play that will be staged at Duke this summer, “Weathering” by Faye Driscoll, is also about the surrounding lands.
“It really grounds us in our current environment,” Tatge said. “There is a real sense of the effects of climate change and what it will mean for us.”
“The outpouring of memories, love and support has been remarkable and has only fueled our determination to build back better, as they say,” Pamela Tatge said in November 2021, a year after a fire destroyed the original Doris Duke Theater.
Additionally, Tatge programmed four state-of-the-art plays at Duke.
In his world premiere “HERE,” interactive electronic dance and theater artist Andrew Schneider uses spatial sound, a technology that can make sound appear to be coming from different directions and distances.
“Instead of sound emanating from certain positions, it can emanate from anywhere because of how it is projected in space,” Tatge said.
“Touch of RED” by Shamel Pitts, 2020 Pillow Lab resident, “is really about the intersection of two bodies and a project that takes place around the work, on the floor and above the work ” said Tatge. “The projected film frames the performance in a very exciting way. »
Eun-Me Ahn developed her work “Dragons” during the pandemic, when she could not bring dancers together in physical space. “She found 3D holographic technology in which dancers could be depicted in the show, but not in reality, so the dancers on stage were dancing with the 3D holograms.”
Finally, Huang Yi, dancer/choreographer and inventor of robotics, makes his Pillow debut with a work that includes not only live human dance, but also two robots.
“They look like industrial machines but they have an appendage that the dancer dances with and between and among,” Tatge said.
As for the rest of Yi’s piece, it includes floor-to-ceiling projections where dancers dance with calligraphic images.
“It’s this kind of immersive experience where the dancers trigger projections in front of your eyes, so there’s a real dialogue between this visual image and the body.”
Tatge hopes that with proper funding, the Duke can have a nine-week season in 2026, pursuing a mix of cutting-edge pieces and others that “require a more intimate relationship between artist and audience ”, as Tatge said. “There will always be a balance.”
