Underground Railway Theater, Engine of Delight & Social Change: Third Edition 2023

Winner of the 2022 Nancy Staub Award for scholarship and academic excellence in puppetry from UNIMA, the International Puppetry Guild, this interactive, multi-media ebook is a vivid, amusing chronicle of Underground Railway Theater's (URT) touring years (1978-2001). VIDEO-EXCERPTS from several URT PRODUCTIONS ARE ACCESSIBLE TO READERS thru hyperlinks, including COLOR SHADOW-PUPPET BALLETS choreographed to classic LEONARD BERNSTEIN RECORDINGS OF "THE FIREBIRD" AND "TILL EULENSPIEGEL'S MERRY PRANKS." Penned by URT's Co-Founders, Wes Sanders and Debra Wise, this ebook is described by JULIE TAYMOR as "a testament to the unbridled experimentation and success [URT has] achieved in this rare art form. I was an early collaborator of theirs."
The book begins with the company's origins in the U.S. theater-scene of the 1970s, parachuting the reader into the middle of a rehearsal with the experimental ensemble "Kraken," with such collaborators as Julie Taymor, Bill Irwin and Herbert Blau. The book goes on to describe URT's innovative combinations of puppetry, acting and music during the troupe's touring years ––the first 25 (the company lasted 45 in all, evolving into today's Central Square Theater)––diving from time to time into detail about the company's process for devising plays and its development as a MULTICULTURAL SOCIAL JUSTICE THEATER COMPANY with each new production--including shadow-puppet collaborations with orchestras like The Boston Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra. The text is lavishly illustrated with 100 photos and numerous videos of rehearsals, performances, puppets, posters and designs . Sidebars throughout provide colorful, often humorous, commentary from the perspectives of URT's actors, writers and producers.
The co-founders of URT describe the process by which the ensemble has used research and improvisation to devise both its wholly original actor-plays & its puppet-spectacles to classical music, picking up along the way many colorful stories, such as (1) the artist-residency in Tblisi, Georgia, when the Berlin Wall was about to be torn down and (2) field-research in a Sanctuary caravan taking Central American refugees to churches throughout the U.S. The theater-group's history is painted against the backdrop of its socio-political landscape. URT is a troupe which––in addition to its innovations in integrating puppetry and music with acting––has always engaged robustly with the issues of its times.