Why would anyone do this, exert him- or herself to the point of exhaustion? Why would one try to mount one of those giant wooden spools, which keep rolling away under one?s feet? A precarious balance is difficult to achieve. Why try to climb atop that large metal cylinder, another tool used in the Training, and walk on it as on a tightrope? Why get entangled in those bungee cords suspended from the ceiling, that look so easy and are so hard to handle with skill?

What has this to do with theatre? Circus artists can do these things better, and professional athletes have more muscle and brawn than the members or students of Double Edge Theatre will ever develop.

I admit that I found the Training intimidating when I joined Double Edge Theatre for a three-week intensive seminar at their homestead, a 105 acre farm in Ashfield, Massachusetts this summer. In principle I knew what to expect, as I had experienced an afternoon of open training the year before. Why did I come back for more at a time of life when other people start to take things easy or go into retirement? Moreover, I am not professionally linked with the theatre, although I have been passionately interested in it since childhood. Last year?s experience went beyond my interest in contemporary theatre. It did something to me. It reached me at a level that had to do with myself, the way I related to my body and to other people. It had to do with being alive in a way I never experienced before, despite the training I had in dance and various sports at different periods of my life. I followed the invitation to take part in the seminar, because I wanted this experience again and get to the bottom of it.

The first week was tough. But during the second week, when we started to develop our own improvisations, which at the end of the third week led to a performance, I loved the work and started to feel totally free in my movements and actions. I could see why it needed the Training to reach this point.

The daily Training, spelled with a capital T, is the foundation of everything that is done at Double Edge. It is structured in a way that hard physical exercise leads to more creative configurations, and individuals are joined in a living organism. The practitioners find their own physical expression and at the same time their place in an organic whole. Spontaneity does not preclude being part of a whole. There is a constant give and take, a movement of systole and diastole, an awareness of oneself and the rest of the group.

Students are invited to choose among a variety of objects and to establish a relationship with their chosen object and to spend time exploring it. The improvisation evolves from this creative dialog with an object, its transformations, the moments of intensity when we have a sudden insight or a feeling we did not know before. What to an outsider may seem like a strange ritual, performed by a motley group of revelers interacting with objects, such as old hats, odd pieces of garment, flags, poles and sticks, rocks, bottles, empty trunks, whatever is at hand, is for the participants a supremely meaningful process of liberating their creative energies. As the Training comes to a culmination point after two hours or more, bodies streaming with perspiration, there is a sense of elevation and exhilaration, even of trance.

When I experienced this process the first time, I felt alive as never before. There was a surge of energy which did not only extend to physical abilities, but to other areas as well - how I related to others, how some loose ends in my creative work might come together. There was an invigoration on all levels.

There is no doubt about the reality of this Training. It is an ongoing encounter with others, as bodies move together to the rhythms of music. A dialog is established as one body reacts to the physical expression of another and the group process, taking up cues, following the general movement, while creating one?s own statement. There is bonding in this mutual giving and receiving. There is trust. We develop a sense of identity by interacting with others, and this ?other?, as we experience in the second week, can also be an inanimate object. It is for us to make it come alive, to transform a rag into something of beauty or fantasy. Whatever we do, we are encouraged to put our heart into it, to appropriate the act and make it our own. If authenticity is thus established in the interactions during Training, it will gradually transform our actions in ?real life?, too.

This is what makes Double Edge Theatre such a special experience: The theatrical act, the creation of a dramatic image or scene is rooted in this authenticity, the identity of the players with their act. This is reality, not make-believe. It is a training for life. All the work of the Theatre over the years has developed from improvisations on the basis of the Training. It is in this spirit that we explore our objects, develop improvisations, create sketches, some of us alone, some with partners, moving in and out of each other?s orbits, remaining aware of the group and the space we move in. Towards the end of the three weeks these improvisations will come together in a unified, rather: stratified whole, supervised and skillfully woven together by Stacy Klein, the Artistic Director and founder of Double Edge Theatre.

We have been given a loose framework of ideas to work in. It is the imaginative world of the Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz. Double Edge often uses a literary source, such as Cervantes? classic Don Quijote for the most recent performance, The UnPossessed. They have worked with the Schulz material for years, and the troupe developed several scenes which will be blended with our improvisations in our performance at the end of the seminar.

Stacy Klein supervises the Trainings and gives her comments at the end of the sessions. She uses words sparingly, but to the point. During the second week everyone is asked to prepare an improvisation of a few minutes and present it to the group. Sometimes the director asks: ?What is your idea??, if the act is too complex or muddled. She helps to clarify the idea, but makes no further comment. Every idea is accepted. We feel encouraged to continue working on our ideas using an object that appeals to us, exploring moments that gave us a sense of identity.

In the second week I have a talk with Stacy Klein about the philosophy of Double Edge and the Training as its dominant feature. What is the purpose of this intensely physical Training?

?We use the physical to reach the untapped spirit and imagination of the human potential?, Stacy says and continues to explain that it is necessary to transcend one?s limits.

?In our Training you leave the known behind and enter the unknown.?

This takes courage and a sustained effort, but it is precisely this transition - so scary in the beginning - which opens up the spirit.

?We are using only a fraction of our imagination?, Stacy says.

Indeed, brain research established the fact that we are only using a small percentage of our mental capacities, as is well known. But as Stacy points out, the human potential goes far beyond the rational mind. It encompasses imagination, awareness, the emotional life, the urge to create. Imagination fuels our dreams and aspirations and gives us a sense of identity.

?It is imagination?, Stacy says, ?which makes us human. It distinguishes us from all other living beings.?

She believes that ?we all have a bottomless well of creativity?, and that ?everyone can tap this well?.

She literally means every human being, irrespective of age and social or cultural background.

?You can achieve whatever you want to achieve, provided you are prepared to work hard for it.? This is why one has to go to one?s limits in the Training and not give up at the point of exhaustion.

As Stacy Klein explains, technology has practically eliminated the necessity to move in order to survive. We don?t even have to get out of a chair any more to survive: ?Survival is all in the computer.? Unlike us, an animal will die if it does not move. But we have lost touch with our animal nature. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Klein observes, people had to get up and move to provide the necessities of daily life. In the last century a dramatic change took place. In the industrialized world, human beings are dropping into a state of inertia, an invisible death on the physical and, likewise, on the mental and emotional level. The two are linked. Deprivation of movement inevitably leads to an impoverished emotional life and ultimately to depression. We are left with the choice either to submit to inertia, the slow death of body, spirit and soul, or to make an effort to regain our humanness. The Training of Double Edge Theatre is designed to regain this basic human aliveness.

?What we are doing here is not an invention?, Stacy Klein says. ?It is not a discovery we made, but a return to what is natural and human.?

The technique of the Training was elaborated over the years, after Stacy Klein and some of the company had made contact with the Theatre Laboratory inspired by the Polish director Jerzy Grotowski and trained with them, as well as with the Gardzienice Theatre Association of Poland. Especially Rena Mirecka of Gardzienice taught her what Stacy Klein calls the ?total act?.

As a training in survival, the farm grounds are included in the Training as well as the performances, and the audience follows the actors to the various sites - the former silo, for example, or the pond at the far end of the premises. The whole Farm is the stage. It makes the players as well as the audience aware of the natural surroundings. Moving from one site to another, all the senses are involved, and you have to watch your step.

In the Double Edge vision, the Training and the theatre itself are not separate from daily life. Training to be an artist, Stacy Klein says, does not require anyone to step outside the challenges of real life. They should be confronted squarely, and all the skills developed as an artist should be brought to bear on the demands of life, and vice versa.

?People who are creative must create?, Stacy Klein says. ?We help them create their dreams.? There is a great need for creativity in our world.

It is part of the larger vision of Double Edge Theatre to function as a ?centre for the development of a living culture?. The key to it is the Training. If we really want to change the world, Stacy Klein says, we have to start with ourselves - to be more aware, more sincere, more authentic about our own lives. It is a holistic view, in which art and theatre are not seen as opposed to the real world.

The members of the small company live together in a community and invite others to stay and share their Training and daily work. Two beautiful spaces are available for Training and performances, as well as musical and other equipment, such as an archive of books and videos. There is a large communal kitchen and housing for guests. A fine vegetable and flower garden need to be tended, as well as the large stretch of lawn. Strolling over the premises, working for their maintenance, taking in the peace and the natural beauty of the landscape in the foothills of the Berkshires, is part of the total experience at Double Edge. There is luscious vegetation everywhere and a rich animal life, including the Farm pets, the cats and dogs and chickens. In this scenery the daily Training takes place, outside and in the adapted barn with its fine wooden floor. Here it is possible to come upon that hidden reservoir of strength one did not know one possessed.

All the performances of Double Edge Theatre, most notably The Song Trilogy of the 1980?s and 90?s, more recently Master & Margarita (based on the famous novel by M. Bulgakov) and The UnPossessed (based on Cervantes), evolved from long periods of Training. As Stacy Klein says, only a small percentage of the material developed in the Training is actually used in the performance. It is a constant process of sifting and trying out new ideas, just as we do in the seminar.

Maintaining an innovative theatre such as Double Edge, Stacy Klein says, is a walk uphill, but she is undaunted by twenty-two years of struggle.

?I have not lost my drive?, she declares. She is confident that she is not fighting a losing battle. As more and more young people are becoming receptive to what Double Edge has to offer, and respond enthusiastically to the Training, there is hope.

Most participants of the seminar are in their early twenties. These young people are looking for a life worth living. They accept the rigors of the Training as a way to recreate themselves as genuine, imaginative, creative human beings. What they receive in that old barn converted into a superb training space is the vision of an integrated life and a theatre that is not phony.

At the end of the intensive seminar I think that the price is not too high. The Training is tough, and transcending one?s limits can be uncomfortable, but there is the reward: a heightened sense of awareness, a surplus of energy, a sense of freedom and joy. The visible result of our Training is a public performance, a firework of images and scenes which evolved from our improvisations, guided by the directing skill of Stacy Klein. It was an altogether memorable experience.

What I cherish most are perhaps those moments of intense dialog with a partner or my chosen object, a long piece of white fabric, when hitherto unknown possibilities of being were disclosed to me. Without the arduous Training that went before, these moments would never have happened. Thus, the Double Edge practice is not only a training in authentic, spontaneous theatre, but a school for discovering and exploring the creative potential dormant in all of us.

If the members of Double Edge and the people they reach through workshops and seminars achieve this goal even to a minimal degree, the Training may indeed be the catalyst of a better world.

There is no greater gift conceivable than to be guided toward unity of being. It is an adventure. It is a risk. This is the price to be paid for an authentic life in our time.