Zoe Batson

Zoe Batson is a developing midwestern trans artist based in Ashfield, MA. Since 2015 Zoe has been a theatrical lighting technician, designer, and visual artist working primarily for Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA on the Farm center and on tour. The designs Zoe installs aim to transform everyday spaces into magical other worlds. Audiences are invited into a visual / visceral experience that use non-standard lighting techniques and active invention to evoke feelings of flight, transporation, and participative joy. These imaginal worlds quote the visual language of surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, familial folk art of Wisconsin, renaissance dynamism and detail, and dwell on the notions of object worship as a vehicle for memory, duality and the shadow self, grief as the visceral feeling of being adrift, trauma, and ecstatic communal joy.

Most work is based at Double Edge Theatre's home base and main performance center "the Farm." The Farm is a permanent center of devised performance, training, research, and cultural exchange. Works developed on the farm include indoor performances and site-specific indoor/outdoor traveling spectacles, both of which are developed with collaborating visual and music artists. Performances at the Farm reach upwards of 3000 people every year. After development and performance at the farm, works are toured and transformed into site-specific pieces both in and out of traditional theatres. With Double Edge Zoe has installed free, large scale public performances of The Latin American Spectacle at Forest Park in Springfield MA, and The Ashfield Town Spectacle and Culture Fair in Ashfield MA in the past and is looking forward to a future outdoor performance installation of Leonora's World in Leeds, UK. The sprawling public performances incorporate local performing and visual artists, especially youth performers from at-risk groups.

Both at home and on tour Zoe strives to create inventive, immersive experiences with a high degree of precision and technical capability. The Farm center has created space for significant expansion from a novice technician to a capable and dedicated artist working with light and image. In the future Zoe hopes to expand their technical capabilities by pursuing certification as an Entertainment Electrician from the Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP). This education will allow further expansion of Zoe's capability to make excellent and safe work when touring outdoor spectacles in often challenging settings with limited access to electricity, and facilitate transferring indoor shows from venue to venue.