PERFORMER
Director: Kate Valk

Set: Elizabeth LeCompte

Lighting: Jennifer Tipton & Ryan Seelig

Costumes: Enver Chakartash with Naomi Raddatz (2014-16) & Christine Stevenson (2014)

Sound: Bobby McElver, Max Bernstein (2014-2016) & Eric Sluyter (2017-)

Production Manager: Emily Rea (2014-2015), Bona Lee (2016-)

Stage Manager: Erin Mullin

Technical Directors: Bill Kennedy (2014-April 2015), Eric Dyer (May 2015-October 2016), Jacob Bigelow (2017-)

Assistant Director: Jamie Poskin & Matthew Dipple (2017-)

Assistant to the Director (2014): Eleanor Bishop

In EARLY SHAKER SPIRITUALS, The Wooster Group channels the 1976 LP of the same name recorded by the Sisters of the Shaker Community in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, giving a new live rendering to their songs and finding inspiration for a series of dances.

EARLY SHAKER SPIRITUALS returns to an artistic practice that the Group has used throughout its history: working with record albums as source material for original productions, among them HULA (1981) and L.S.D. (…JUST THE HIGH POINTS…) (1984). The piece also expresses the Group’s long-standing interest in the Shakers, a millenarian, celibate, communitarian sect. In 1980, Elizabeth LeCompte, Kate Valk and other members of the company visited the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community and met with Sister R. Mildred Barker. Around that time, the company first began listening to the record album that forms the basis for this piece.

With Cynthia Hedstrom, Elizabeth LeCompte, Frances McDormand, Bebe Miller, Suzzy Roche, and Max Bernstein (2014-16), Matthew Brown, Gareth Hobbs (2017), Modesto Flako Jimenez, Bobby McElver, Jamie Poskin, and Andrew Schneider