The artists from Underground Railway Theater (URT) are absolutely delighted to be part of this Boston Pops family concert!
URT’s mission is to connect professional theater with communities, combining actors, puppetry and music to engage diverse audiences with theater that challenges and delights, informs and celebrates. The company was founded in Oberlin, Ohio, one of the Midwestern stops on the Underground Railroad, and toured nationally for 30 years before becoming a resident company at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge.
URT’s work with symphony orchestras dates to 1979, when the company first met Boston Symphony Orchestra Associate Conductor Harry Ellis Dickson. He commissioned URT to create large-scale shadow puppet plays that premiered with the BSO: Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (inspired by Richard Strauss’ tone poem) and The Firebird (set to Stravinsky’s ballet suite). These were followed by The Soldier’s Tale (a fable for adults performed with Stravinsky’s chamber masterwork), Carnival of the Animals (a participatory spectacle for young audiences based on Saint-Saens’ musical menagerie), Creation of the World (shadow puppetry and masked dancing inspired by Milhaud’s ballet), and Tempest (a cross-cultural concert dramatization of Shakespeare’s play with puppetry and masks, created with composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez and commissioned by BSO’s Youth Concerts to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of Symphony Hall). URT’s repertoire for the concert hall has been cited for excellence by l’union internationale des marionettes and the Los Angeles Times, and has toured nationally to scores of orchestras and puppetry festivals and internationally to Europe and Asia.
Along with its work with orchestras, URT pursues other cross-disciplinary collaborations. Ongoing programs include the Catalyst Collaborative @ MIT science theater project, the History Play project, and Art InterACTions (improvisatory theater in dialogue with visual art, which has been seen at both the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art).
URT offers a full season of theater at Central Square Theater. The Hound of the Baskervilles, a send-up of Sherlock Holmes, opens in July, followed by Truth Values – One Girl’s Romp Through MIT’s Male Math Maze, The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East by Naomi Wallace, Ti-Jean and His Brothers by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott (a collaboration with area Haitian and Caribbean artists), and Breaking the Code by Hugh Whittemore (a CC@MIT production, about the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing). Ongoing programs for children (Classes @ CST) and teens (Youth Underground) include training by and mentorships with professionals.
www.centralsquaretheater.org
![[Underground Railway Theater]](/images/_images/pops/UndergroundRailwayTheaterx95.jpg)
