Jacob’s Pillow, the celebrated dance center in Western Massachusetts, may be home to the nation’s oldest dance festival, but when it ended its 94th summer season last week, it was the first time the center had staged a full season in seven years.
In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, Jacob’s Pillow canceled its summer season for the first time since its opening in 1933. In November of that year, one of the center’s two historic venues, the Doris Duke Theater, burned to the ground. The summer of 2025 was meant to mark a triumphant rebirth, in part by opening a new, state-of-the-art theater, but a fatal accident that killed a longtime staff member abruptly ended the season.
The accident happened when a production manager, Kat Sirico, was crushed by a cart carrying sheets of engineered wood used to protect the stage. Sirico’s death led to claims of unsafe working conditions at Jacob’s Pillow, and prompted an investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
For close to a century, across more than 200 acres down a dirt road in Becket, Mass., Jacob’s Pillow has served as a mecca for movement, with performances from New York City Ballet, premieres from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and a residency by the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. This summer, the Martha Graham Dance Company celebrated its centennial at the Pillow, as regulars call the center. The San Francisco Ballet and the Akram Khan Company returned after decades away. Dancers from as far away as Denmark and Australia traveled to the Berkshires.
But to many people associated with the Pillow, last year’s accident was never far from mind, even as OSHA, in a report released this summer, determined that the center was not to blame for it.
“This was a traumatic event for the entire campus,” Pamela Tatge, the Pillow’s executive and artistic director, said, referring to Sirico’s death.
A triple birch tree near the new Duke theater — rebuilt for roughly $30 million — now honors Sirico, who used they/them pronouns. A so-called ghost light left onstage there each evening does, too. In June, when the choreographer Shamel Pitts premiered his work “Touch of Red” at the Duke, he dedicated it to Sirico.
“They were a really gifted and caring professional person,” said Pitts, who had known Sirico well. “It was just quite beautiful to work with them.”
Pitts had planned to premiere “Touch of Red” in 2025, after a five-year wait brought on by the pandemic and the fire that reduced the Duke to little more than a pile of ash (the cause remains unclear). But days before he was to head to the Berkshires, Pitts received a call: There had been a fatal accident on campus, and the rest of the festival would be canceled.
Sirico, 40, first worked at Jacob’s Pillow two decades ago as a college intern and listed the Pillow as a “favorite place” on LinkedIn. In the summer of 2025, Sirico was employed as a production manager.
They had a booming laugh, according to their family, as well as a love for cast recordings of stage musicals, “Hamilton” in particular, and for knitting socks for their relatives. They could hardly wait to return to the Pillow at the start of the summer.
“They loved that place and wanted to be a part of the future of it,” Mary Sirico, a younger sister, said in an interview.
The summer of 2025 was supposed to be a big one for the Pillow, too. The festival had devised an ambitious slate of programming to celebrate the rebuilt Duke, one of the world’s most technologically advanced dance theaters. But, according to interviews with current and former employees and a review of internal communications, the staff faced long days as employees worked to iron out the kinks of a new venue.
According to two employees who worked at the Pillow in 2025, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal, when the lighting on stair risers did not turn on, staff members taped battery-powered string lights in place. After the system that allows performers to hear cues malfunctioned, a makeshift monitor was set up. Often the theater’s entire electrical system needed to be restarted. The loading dock, where companies delivered their set pieces, was crowded with items left over from construction. Sirico maintained a spreadsheet of everything that needed to be fine-tuned.
“It is always a great feat for a staff to open a new theater,” Tatge said, adding that “all of the inspections were completed and approved prior to occupancy.”
On Aug. 1, with three weeks left in the season, Sirico was working to make space at the theater for a delivery from Pitts. They were amid a stretch of weeks of overtime, with hardly a day off. According to the OSHA report, Sirico had arrived at the Duke around 9 a.m., after working 13 hours, and leaving the theater at midnight, the day before.
Sirico placed 32 sheets of Masonite, a dense, wood-like material that was used as protective covering for the stage floor, on a cart. Each sheet weighed 44 pounds. With the help of an intern, Sirico began rolling the cart, and its roughly 1,400-pound cargo, along a sloped path leading out of the theater.
Moments later, Sirico and the intern lost control.
The cart gained speed as it rolled downhill, according to the OSHA report and a report from the Massachusetts State Police. Sirico tried to slow it by blocking its path, but they fell underneath the heavy load. They sustained severe head trauma and died instantly.
According to a video recording of a staff meeting reviewed by The New York Times, Tatge soon told employees, “We will not continue with the remainder of the festival,” adding that “the campus will remain closed to the public until further notice.”
Several former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they were not surprised about what had occurred. The Pillow had long offered a well-regarded introduction to the dance world for college students, with a robust summer internship program. But according to the former employees, students were often ill-equipped to perform the tasks asked of them — rigging equipment from high above the stage, moving heavy materials and assembling intricate set designs.
According to Tatge, “All members of the production team complete safety training commensurate to their role and experience at Jacob’s Pillow.”
Three years before Sirico’s death, in 2022, several Pillow employees wrote a letter to the center’s management, which was reviewed by The Times, describing an institution that did not value its employees’ well-being and demanding fewer hours, more breaks and overtime pay. That summer, an intern fell face-first into a concrete orchestra pit, requiring extensive dental work, according to several former employees familiar with the episode. When the demands outlined in the letter were not met, at least one employee quit, according to a resignation letter also reviewed by The Times.
Later that year, Jacob’s Pillow did raise salaries, shorten its summer festival by a week and create a formal human resources department, according to a report by the Berkshire/Columbia Counties Pay Equity Project, which studies compensation and other employment benefits in the region.
“Every festival season is unique, and we consistently work to maintain a safe environment for our staff, artists and audiences,” Tatge said. “We review our safety and training procedures on an ongoing basis and will continue to do so.”
Still, concerns persisted into 2025, according to the OSHA report, which included interviews with current employees who described long hours spent on the job, by Sirico in particular.
After concluding its investigation, OSHA declined to issue a citation to the Pillow. It did not give a reason for its decision.
According to Tatge, ahead of this year’s summer season, which reverted to a full 10 weeks, the Pillow hired a consultant to examine its practices, and it required new training for certain positions. She added that interest from summer interns, who receive a stipend and on-site housing, had remained strong: The Pillow received more than a thousand applications for 20 positions.
Tatge said an anonymous donor had ensured that a part of the endowment’s earnings each year would go to staff members facing financial hardship, in honor of Sirico, whom she called a “compassionate, empathetic person.”
“We are healing,” she said.
As for Sirico’s family members, the past year has brought a pain they say is unlikely to dissipate. They have honored Sirico in their own way, by creating a scholarship at Sirico’s high school to recognize a graduate dedicated to “creativity, inclusion, mentorship and community service.”
“But,” Mary Sirico said, “there is still a hole in our family.”
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