The Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department proudly congratulates alumnus Travis Coe ’15, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting, on his appointment as co-Artistic Director of Double Edge Theatre, a multigenerational, experimental ensemble located in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

As previously reported in this blog, Coe was appointed Associate Artistic Director of the company in 2020. His appointment as co-Artistic Director was announced by the company on June 7, 2022. “For the past six years Travis and I have worked together in so many ways, and I have witnessed and share his commitment to creating outstanding Art, Living Culture, and Art Justice,” said founding Artistic Director Stacy Klein in announcing Coe’s appointment. “Travis is a creator, actor, director, training leader, and dear friend. His generosity, vision, and willingness as a young artist to see the past are only equal to his daring to bring that past into a new future of hope and dreams for our fractured world. As Founding Artistic Director, it is with inspiration and love that I join Double Edge in celebrating Travis as our new Co-Artistic Director, on this occasion of our fortieth anniversary.”

Founded in 1982, Double Edge is an artistic, community, and cultural collective that describes its art as “grounded in a rigorous ensemble aesthetic unfolded in dream, imagery, metaphor, mystery, and symbolism.” In addition to performing in Double Edge’s ensemble-created touring works, Coe has served as the head of enrollments and co-leader of the company’s art justice program.

Coe joined Double Edge Theatre in 2016, a year after he first connected with the company as a student at the Columbia College Theatre Department, where Double Edge had a residency in January of 2015. During this residency, Coe and other students worked with Double Edge on the creation of an ensemble-devised performance piece, The Wonderers and Other Stories, which utilized Double Edge’s pedagogy of physical theatre training and research. The innovative production mixed circus and spectacle, vaudeville and clowning, live music and poetic narrative to transport the viewer into the colorful, vibrant world of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her contemporaries. Images, text, music, and dance coalesced in a 30-minute pageant vibrating with sound, color, movement and magic inspired by Latin American Magic Realism. The Wonderers and Other Stories was presented as part of the cutting-edge NEU NOW Festival 2015, held in Amsterdam in September of that year and sponsored by the European League of Institutes of the Arts. Appearing as the Room | 916 Collective, the ensemble of Columbia College Theatre students and alumni was the only company of American artists invited to participate in the prestigious and competitive juried international event.