Artist Bios: Diane Edgecomb  

With over 25 years of varied theatre experience, Edgecomb has trained and performed in many performance disciplines.

She has worked with some of Boston’s most innovative experimental theatre companies; Stage One Theatre Lab (1975-78),and Double Edge Theatre (1989-92). With Double Edge Theatre she performed the role of Bruno Schultz in their acclaimed production ‘Song of Absence’. The company received numerous awards for this piece including ‘Best of Boston’ in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix and the New England Monthly. In her experimental theatre work, she has been greatly influenced by the work and methods of the Polish Laboratory Theatre.

Her traditional theatre work has included such roles as Joan in St. Joan at Worcester Foothills Theatre; Nora in Plough in the Stars at Lyric Stage, Boston; and Susannah in Bedroom Farce at Tufts Arena Theatre for which she won a Year’s Best Performance Award from the Boston Herald.

Alongside her work in experimental venues, Ms. Edgecomb has become widely known and respected as a master storyteller in the revivalist performance form of storytelling. She has created over 20 storytelling performances many in collaboration with Celtic harper Margot Chamberlain, composer Tom Megan and other musicians. Publisher’s Weekly stated: ‘A storyteller in the grand tradition, Edgecomb is a virtuoso of the spoken word.’ She recently received the National Storytelling Association research award to collect folkloric stories from the Kurdish people.

In keeping with her working interest in bringing mythology into stronger focus, in 1997, Diane began The Living Myth Project- a series of interactive performance events, workshops and publications dedicated to bringing the revitalizing power of mythology into our daily lives and to rekindling our deep connections with the natural world. The first major performance project, Millennium LabyrinTh, was a collaboration with Mari Novotny-Jones and Ean White. This project broke new ground when it received permission from Boston’s mass transit system to hold roving- interactive performances throughout the entire subway ‘maze’. It culminated in a multi-media ritual at Back Bay station for First Night Boston’s Millennium Celebration.

Ms. Edgecomb has led workshops for students, teachers, storytellers, and theatre artists on her approach, inspired by the work of Zbigniew Cynkutis of the Polish Laboratory Theatre, to integrating voice-image-movement into a living whole.

Visit Diane Edgecomb's website at www.livingmyth.com.