About | Shantigar

Shantigar
Peaceful Home

The History of Shantigar

Shantigar, located on a beautiful old farm on a mountainside in Western Massachusetts, is a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to practices of creativity, meditation, and engagement with nature.

For 250 years, the Davenport dairy farm was known for its hospitality. School teachers lodged there and Mrs. Davenport hosted pot luck suppers on Sundays. For awhile the farmhouse served as the local post office.

2022 Oct 8, Davenport Farm photos from Rick LaPierre's visit 5 edited.jpg

The van Itallie family purchased the old Davenport Farm in the late 1940s, after their refugee flight from Belgium during the Holocaust. Jean-Claude often visited the farm during his youth.

Starting in the 1960s, Jean-Claude van Itallie’s work was seminal in the revolution of Off-Off Broadway theatre. Among his best-known works are the anti-war trilogy America Hurrah; The Serpent, created in collaboration with the Open Theatre; The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Reading Aloud, and prized translations of Chekhov’s major plays. Many performing artists joined Jean-Claude at the farm to create new waves of experimental theatre.

Learn more about Jean-Claude’s plays, operas, and books.

In the 1970s, Jean-Claude’s Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, spent one year at the farm to write his renowned Shambala teachings.

Trungpa renamed the farm Shantigar, which means Peaceful Home.

Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche at Shantigar.jpg

In the 1990s, Jean-Claude created the Shantigar Foundation, devoted to the practices of creativity, and engagement with nature—and discovering where these practices meet. The Foundation’s mission:

To engage with the world from a more profound place through transformative workshops, retreats and performances.

Joining meditative and artistic practices with the healing power of nature,

we can live more peacefully on our planet.

Before his passing in 2021, Jean-Claude worked with the Franklin Land Trust to preserve more than 200 acres of the farm. Along with five other families, the Warner Hill Conservation Area offers several miles of public trails across 650 acres.

The Shantigar Community

Over the past fifty years, Shantigar has been visited by remarkable theater artists, spiritual teachers, healers, visual artists, writers, dancers, visual artists, and muscians. Many have performed, led workshops, or created original work on the farm.

Theatre and Film

Joyce Aaron, Hilton Als, Mark Amitin, Robert Anton, Richard Armstrong, James Barbosa, Peter Brook, Shirley Bukrey Lloyd, Joseph Chaikin, Shami Chaikin, Nancy Cooperstein Charney, Jordan Charney, Bill Coco, Dorothy Dean, Kermit Dunkelberg, Jake Eberle, Alvin Epstein, Angelina Fiordellisi, Maria Irene Fornes, Spalding Gray, Lorraine Grosslight, Cynthia Harris, Judd Hirsch, Morag Hood, Linda Hunt, Adrienne Kennedy, Francoise Kourilsky, Daniel Kramer, Jacques Levy, Kristin Linklater, Leueen MacGrath, Joan MacIntosh, Jun Maeda, Peter Maloney, Kim Mancuso, Judith Malina, Evangeline Morphos, Lizzie Olesker, Pearl Padamsee, Peggy Pettit, Carol Fox Prescott, Rosemary Quinn, Ronald Rand, Roger Reese, Alain Resnais, Hannon Reznikov, Gordon Rogoff, Mimi Savage, Michael Schneider, Peter Shaffer, Sam Shepherd; Tina Shepherd, Louise Smith, Michael Townsend Smith, Ellen Stewart, David Threlfall, Lois Walden, Robert Wilson, Rae C. Wright, David Willinger

Dance

Megan Bathory-Peeler, Elaine Colandrea, Emilie Conrad, Melanie Gambino, Nancy Spanier

Literary Arts

Alfred Chester, Diane di Prima, Rand Engel, Merle Feld, Edward Field, Richard Giannone, Richard Gilman, Wendy Gimbel, Allen Ginsberg, Didi Goldenhar, Piero Heliczer, Roger Henri Klein, Elizabeth Mailer, Diane di Prima, Michael Stuart

Music

John Adams, Alison Charney, Andrea Clearfield, Terry Eder-Kaufman, Bill Hart, William M. Hoffman, Steve Gorn, Jonathan Hart Makwaia, Charles Mingus Jr., Alice Quinn-Makwaia, Mariana Quinn-Makwaia, Marianne de Pury, Steve Sweeting, Alexandre Tannous

Visual Arts

Barton Benes, Helena Vallee D’Allaire, Gwen Fabricant, Jonathan Fabricant, Kaffe Fassett, Mary Frank, Robert Frank, Esther Gilman, Nicholas Gilman, David Gothard, Juke Hudig, Gene Kaufman, Jeremy Lebensohn, Juanita McNeely, Gerry Vezzuso, Claus Virch, Jeanne Wrubel

Spiritual Teachers

Rabbi Edward Feld, Domo Geshe, Rinpoche Kalu Rinpoche, Tania Leontov, Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Steven Post, David Rome, Adnan Sarhan, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Rabbi Sheila Weinberg