In an effort to rebuild the Shantigar Foundation’s once-magnificent theater barn, foundation members present two stagings of foundation creator Jean-Claude van Itallie’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead (or How Not to Do It Again). A longtime practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, Itallie founded the non-profit to meld the disciplines of theater, meditation and healing into a cohesive program of developmental study. Shantigar’s original main building, once the largest dairy barn in Franklin County, burned to the ground three weeks after its extensive renovation, and foundation members have since been forced to carry on in a temporary tent structure.
This year, however, supporters have marshalled a grand effort that brings the production to Montague, Northampton and eventually New York City in its attempt to raise funds to replace the barn, now a decade gone. Itallie’s work, performed in conjunction with Pilgrim Theater, is an adaptation of the original 8th-century masterpiece The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, by Guru Padmasambhava, and it incorporates inspirational poetry that is read aloud and often demolishes the “fourth wall” between performer and audience. The event seeks to draw people in through its examination of the senses, its analysis of choice and its constant questioning of the nature of being.
Oct. 3-4, $15-18, 8 p.m., The Maezumi Institute, 177 Ripley Rd., Montague, (413) 367-2080, www.zenpeacemakers.org; Oct. 17-18, 8 p.m., Oct. 19, 7 p.m., Northampton Center for the Arts, 17 New South St., Northampton, (413) 584-7327, www.nohoarts.org.
