Salt Tree Art will present the inaugural Berkshires NEW Theater Festival (The Berkshires NEWT) on Saturday, July 4, 2026, gathering artists from five continents for a day of original performance in the Berkshires.
Led by Artistic Director Chris Browne Valenzuela, an award-winning actor, playwright, and educator whose work has been presented across New York and Chile, the festival brings together emerging and established artists working across theatre, movement, dance, puppetry, and music. The program is rooted in an exploration of the relationship between people, place, culture, and the natural world.
Set within the region’s distinct cultural and ecological landscape, the festival is conceived as a space of encounter—between artists and audiences, disciplines and traditions, and local and international creative practices.
“We wanted to create something that responds to where it is, not just what it presents,” says Valenzuela. “The Berkshires carry both artistic history and natural presence, and we’re interested in what emerges when those forces meet live performance.”
Across the lineup, participating artists bring distinct cultural and theatrical languages into dialogue, shaping a program that emphasizes process, collaboration, and exchange over fixed form.
Among them is Anissa Naji (Morocco/Germany), a multilingual actor, writer, and musician based in New York. She describes her practice as moving fluidly between languages and performance registers, noting: “I’m interested in what happens when language stops being a barrier and becomes part of the rhythm of performance. Theatre, for me, is a space where cultures can overlap without needing to translate everything perfectly.”
Similarly, Sancho Alcina (Spain), a bilingual actor trained in Madrid and New York at La Manada and Circle in the Square Theatre School, approaches theatre as “a continuous act of translation—between people, emotions, and versions of ourselves.”
Taking place on the 250th anniversary of American independence, the festival frames its program around questions of identity, exchange, and collective storytelling rather than historical commemoration. Works presented will explore themes of land, migration, memory, belonging, and transformation through interdisciplinary and experimental approaches.
For Sasha Novich (USA / Eastern Europe), a New York-based actor and singer whose work spans both contemporary and classical theatre, the focus lies in how performance is shaped in real time: he is drawn to how the real-time conditions of performing in nature will actively shape this particular performance—changing rhythm, presence, and interaction in the moment it happens.
Yun Gao (China / USA), a New York-based actor and Circle in the Square Theatre School graduate who previously worked in film and television in China, similarly highlights connection as central to her practice. “What excites me is how performance can collapse distance,” she says, “between cultures, and between people and the natural world.”
The Berkshires NEW Theater Festival positions itself as an evolving platform for international artistic exchange, foregrounding performance as a shared space of inquiry rather than fixed presentation.
“We’re not trying to define a single aesthetic,” says Valenzuela. “We’re trying to create conditions where artists can surprise each other—and the audience—through proximity, difference, and collaboration.”
Anissa Naji (Morocco/Germany), Sancho Alcina (Spain), Sasha Novich (Eastern Europe), Yun Gao (China), Cherie Chalouhi (USA/Lebanon), Chris Browne Valenzuela (Chile), Eliot Madrid (USA), Brian Soliwoda (USA), and Jen Jurek (USA).
Tickets and full festival information are available
here.
