ASHFIELD — Double Edge Theatre, which has passed some significant milestones in the last few years — 40 years of total operation, 25 years of staging performances in Ashfield — is marking another important moment.

Founder Stacy Klein, who started the ensemble in Boston in 1982, and her husband, Carlos Uriona, a longtime actor and creator at Double Edge, are stepping down from their leadership roles to assume new responsibilities.

Klein will now be formally known as founder, artistic director emerita, and Uriona will become the group’s cultural strategist.

In a statement, Klein said the couple will still be focused on art making and examining ways to build the ensemble’s future. But she and Uriona will not be involved with day-to-day management of the group, a “huge responsibility” that involves 12 ensemble members and 20 other staff, 15 buildings and year-round performances

“For me, it is such an enormously exciting time where I can refocus on my directing and devising performances after many years of combining that with the daily running of the theater,” Klein said.

She said she’ll also be able to “work more with our partner organizations, and with the growth of our survival, in terms of continuing the vision of our full site in Ashfield and the economy of that vision.”

Uriona, in turn, will be focused on “the national and international vision of his grassroots work that has brought so many, many people to [Double Edge] since he came to the theater in 1996,” Klein noted.

Double Edge Theatre at 948 Conway Road has made its mark in numerous ways: expansive outdoor theatrical productions called “Summer Spectacles” that mix music, drama and pageantry; cooperative productions with partner arts organizations and community groups; intensive theater training workshops; and collaborative work on all their productions.

The group is also a “multigenerational ensemble,” Klein noted, that since moving to Ashfield as a collective has evolved into “a collective of collectives, with our four partners running their own distinct organizations.”

Klein said she’s watched over the last several years as the ensemble’s three co-artistic directors — Jennifer Johnson, Milena Dabova and Travis Coe — have taken over more of the daily leadership of Double Edge “as they each establish and grow their own amazing creative processes.”

And with three other key personnel — Producing Executive Director Adam Bright, Co-Producer Cariel Klein, and Director of Artist and Community Engagement Hannah Jarrell — becoming part of that day-to-day effort, too, Klein said “the team leading the theater is not only solid, but has the means and energy to carry the theater into its next 40 years.”

Double Edge’s four other ensemble members — Jeremy Louise Eaton, John Peitso, Amanda Miller and Tomantha Sylvester — are also an integral part of “shaping and visioning” what the theater is and will become, according to Klein.

“I am proud of what we have accomplished and prouder still of those who will take the lead on accomplishing more,” she said.

For more information on Double Edge Theatre, including a November production, “Lightning,” visit doubleedgetheatre.org.

Reach Steve Pfarrer at
spfarrer@gazettenet.com.