‘We have the ability to dance around the world now.’ Residents get peek at new Doris Duke Theatre ahead of Wednesday opening

By By Dylan Thompson Gillian Heck — The Berkshire Eagle The Berkshire Eagle

BECKET — Top-notch, bleeding edge and the best in the country. That’s how Pittsfield resident Paul Gniadek described the new Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow.

His favorite part of it?

“The whole architecture and the natural wood and the functionality of the main stage,” Gniadek said.

On Sunday afternoon, Gniadek was one of hundreds who gathered for a free community open house and dance celebration at Jacob’s Pillow. The event was three and a half hours long and included activities, dance performances and a sneak peek of the Doris Duke Theatre, which has been rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 2020.

Tours were given every half hour, and there was an unveiling of “To Touch a Wide Span,” a newly commissioned work by Cherokee artist Brenda Mallory.

The official ribbon cutting and opening night performance in the reimagined Doris Duke Theatre will be held on Wednesday. Jacob’s Pillow has a full slate of opening week events, which can be found at jacobspillow.org/opening-week-celebration.

The new theater was built with the community in mind. Gniadek said they did a “beautiful job here today in terms of community building” and that it was a “great opportunity” to see the space.

In its new form — a three-story, 20,000-square-foot makerspace that preserves the integrity of the original black box stage — the Doris Duke Theatre embraces advanced technology, flexible performance spaces, accessible design, sustainable practices and an overall design informed by Indigenous values.

The event started with the opening of the digital exhibition “Dancing the Algorithm,” curated by Katherine Helen Fisher. The exhibition, featured in the Doris Duke Theatre Gallery, has immersive and interactive installations that help dissolve the boundaries between physical and virtual, human and machine and performer and spectator.

Fisher says the exhibition is an “invitation to move your body and mind” and allows people to “leave with a feeling of curiosity.”

Mallory’s work centers on the theme of seven generations, a symbolic number of Cherokee cosmology. She highlighted the importance of sustainability and environmental issues and the use of beeswax, which she used to draw a connection between nature and humanity.

The School at Jacob’s Pillow school administrator Karen Karlberg provided the beeswax for the installation. She started crying when Mallory mentioned it.

“It means everything,” Karlberg said. “This is such an important piece of land [that] we dance on.”

Ashley Ferro-Murray, the program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Foundation, attended with her two kids and said they “had fun running around and playing in some of the exhibits.”

“I think it’s going to be a center for the community and for the country and internationally,” Ferro-Murray said.

Built on the site of the original 8,500-square-foot Doris Duke Theatre and nearly three times its size, the $35 million project — $30 million for the building and $5 million for an endowment for its future needs and upkeep — is just $500,000 shy of its fundraising goals.

After the original theater was destroyed in 2020, the foundation donated $10 million to kick-start the fundraising for the new theater. The theater, which opened in 1990, was named after the foundation’s namesake, heiress Doris Duke, in 1997, following a $1 million donation made in its inaugural year.

The event also featured a community pop-up performance of “Celebration!” choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The performance featured dancers on the lawn in front of the theater and on the roof.

Karlberg says the building is for now and the future. She says that “we have the ability to dance around the world now” and that “somebody in Africa can watch a stream from this building.”

In addition, an Ingenious garden and firepit, located next to the Doris Duke Theatre, were designed by members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, whose ancestors lived in the Berkshires. The garden and communal firepit will serve as a way to reflect the land’s cultural traditions and recognize its original inhabitants.

Ferro-Murray says it’s amazing that they’ve designed the garden to be an inside, outside space. She says she noticed when walking to the theater that “kids were immediately gravitating to this nature area” and that it almost “led them inside the theater.”

Ferro-Murray says that the foundation believes in artists having a home to work, perform and explore how to create for generations to come.

“This for us, it’s like a beacon and a pillar of the work that we hope to do,” Ferro-Murray said. “We really believe in the ways that artists can impact the future.”

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