Shantigar, located on a spectacularly 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 old Davenport farm was known for its hospitality. In 1900 the local post office was in the farmhouse, school teachers lodged there, and Mrs. Davenport hosted pot luck suppers on Sundays.

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Jean-Claude van Itallie, born in Brussels, Belgium, was four years old when he fled the Holocaust with his family. He was raised in Great Neck, New York and attended Harvard University. In the early 1960s, Jean-Claude’s work was seminal in the revolutionary new theater in Greenwich Village. He was one of LaMama’s first playwrights and served as playwright-of-the-ensemble for Joe Chaikin's Open Theater, with whom he wrote The Serpent.

 

Jean-Claude’s trilogy America Hurrah, three views of the USA, was the landmark play for anti-Vietnam war protests. His other plays include War, Light, The Traveler, Bag Lady, I'm Really Here, Almost Like Being, Struck Dumb (written with Joe Chaikin), Ancient Boys, Fear Itself, and The Tibetan book of the Dead or how not to do it again. His translations include the major plays of Anton Chekhov's and Jean Genet's The Balcony; he also wrote a dramatic version of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. Other works include The Playwright's Workbook and Tea with Demons: Games of Transformation. 

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In 1977, Jean-Claude invited his Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, to retreat at his farm in Western Massachusetts to write his renowned Shambala teachings. Trungpa renamed the farm, "Shantigar," which means "Peaceful Home." Jean-Claude subsequently turned Shantigar into a not-for-profit foundation. 

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The Shantigar Foundation is devoted to the practices of meditation, theater of sacred intent, and engagement with nature—and discovering where these practices meet.

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​Starting in the 1960’s, Shantigar has been visited by remarkable theater artists, spiritual teachers, healers, painters, writers, dancers, photographers, composers, singers and poets.