West Stockbridge – Escape the ordinary and dive into the groove of the summer at The Foundry, the Berkshires leading multi-disciplinary arts venue/ listening room! A sneak peak of what awaits you: underground tropical punk, bilingual circus clowns, a 71st generation kora player, multi award-winning international physical theatre, and an undefinable gender-bending creative explosion sing-a-long!

June leads the way with a Pride Month celebration featuring a diverse line-up of local LGBTQIA+ singer/songwriters. Having historically held space for queer artists year round the venue is excited to welcome back Namoli Brennet on June 8th, a trans artist whose music has been described as, “an uplifting shot of hope.. that queers the sonic landscape.” Brennet has performed in most of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Her music has been nominated for the German Music Critics Award; been featured on NPR; and can be heard in the Emmy-Award-winning film Out In the Silence. Her latest album, The Poet Tree, was released in December of 2023.

New York City’s Pinc Louds takes to the stage on June 10th, whom The Village Voice writes lead singer Claudi “… is a colorful and original amalgam of her loves and influences: she digs ’20s jazz, Gene Austin, Billie Holiday, doo-wop, harmony groups and punk… Put that together in the body of a gender-bending Latinx artist obsessed with children’s books and possessed of unfettered, unrestrained creativity and you get Pinc Louds.”

Also in June, The Foundry will welcome Ann & Me: Or The Big Bad Abortion Play, winner of the 2023 United Solo Festival “Best Story Teller” award on June 6th and June 7th. Written and performed by Jessica Bashline, this original piece of theater is harrowing, hilarious, and interactive. A portion of the proceeds from the event will be donated to Tapestry (Sexual & Reproductive Health Clinic), a leading expert in the community on critical public health issues, which offers safe spaces in all four counties of Western MA for anyone to receive the care they need without the fear of judgement or stigma.

The summer continues, with The Foundry bringing nationally touring comedian with Berkshire roots, Kevin Bartini, and The Berkshire Mountain Comedy Arts Festival. Bartini has brought top notch headliners to the venue and consistently sold out shows. Audiences will be rolling on the floor with laughter on June 22.

The venue’s beloved Family Friendly Series returns this summer with Happenstance Theater‘s clown circus on June 29 and then the bilingual crowd pleaser Pinot & Augustine on July 10. Happenstance Theater is a physical theater ensemble from Washington DC that devises, produces and tours original performances. Also in the works is an interactive intergenerational story telling workshop with the creators of the wildly popular WBUR’s Circle Round podcast that adapts folktales from around the world into sound and music-rich radio plays. Narrator, writer and veteran public radio host, Rebecca Sheir, and composer for the stage and screen, Eric Shimelonis, will run the event with the date soon be announced.

July 3 brings the fourth appearance of Tipsy Carol AKA McBoozie’s Singalong. The quirky, outrageous multitalented performer, Tom Truss, inhabits Tipsy for the immersive, themed singalongs that inevitably bring audiences to their feet while and leaving their faces hurting from laughter. The July performance will undoubtedly be red, white, and blue with some tongue in cheek protest songs alongside American flag-waving classics. Party favors and prizes are guaranteed.

uly 14 brings an experience of the history, power, magic and guidance of the West African Kora with world renowned 71st-generation virtuoso Madou Sidiki Diabaté, accompanied by his longtime student Salif Bamakora, as the duo explore and interpret the traditional repertoire of songs and stories of the Djeli, or Griots, the hereditary keepers of knowledge encoded in music. Then July 27, Arkai, the award-winning electroacoustic duo that has inspired audiences around the world through their genre-defying string music, returns to the venue.

Committed to the mission of holding space to develop new work, The Foundry has contemporary performer and choreographer Fern Katz and circograph and acrobat Ricardo Paz at the venue for a residency and performance in July. The multidisciplinary duo, When Paths Cross, will use the residency as an incubator to create a site-specific performance at the end of the month blending new circus and physical dance theater.

August 15 and 16 bring the Voloz Collective, a multi award-winning international physical theatre company that reinvents and recharges physical comedy by exploiting the capacities of the human body and blurring the lines between the theatrical and cinematic. Hailing from three different countries, the team of four was brought together by two years of study at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Their devised piece, The Man Who Knew Too Much, is described as Wes Anderson meets Hitchcock meets Spaghetti Western and is a multi-award-winning, intercontinental, intergenre, cinematic caper of accusations, accidents, and accents.

More information about these and additional events visit The Foundry’s website at thefoundryws.com!