Underground Railway Theater, Engine of Delight & Social Change

This interactive, multi-media ebook is a vivid, often amusing chronicle of Underground Railway Theater's (URT) touring years (1978-2001) by its Founding Artistic Director, Wes Sanders and the Current Artistic Director of URT, Debra Wise. JULIE TAYMOR says of the book, "I was an early collaborator of theirs...this book is a testament to the unbridled experimentation and success they have achieved in this rare art form." The ebook traces the company's origins in the U.S. experimental theater scene of the 1970s--dropping the reader into the middle of a rehearsal with the theater ensemble Kraken, with collaborators Julie Taymor, Bill Irwin and Herbert Blau. It goes on to describe URT's innovative combinations of puppetry, acting and music during the troupe's touring years (the first 25 of its 40-year history, so far), going into detail about the company's process of devising plays--its evolution as an interracial ensemble with each new production--including puppet-collaborations with such American musical institutions as The Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Pops. VIDEO-EXCERPTS FROM SEVERAL URT PRODUCTIONS ARE ACCESSIBLE TO READERS THRU HYPERLINKS TO THE VIMEO PLATFORM from the text. The narrative is copiously illustrated with more than 100 photos of rehearsals, performances, puppets, posters and designs . Sidebars are frequent, providing colorful, often humorous, commentary from the perspectives of URT's artistic collaborators. The co-founders of URT describe the process by which the ensemble used research and improvisation to devise both its wholly original actor-plays & its puppet-spectacles to classical music, picking up along the way such stories as (1) the artist-residency in Tblisi, Georgia, when the Berlin Wall was crumbling and (2) field research as part of a Sanctuary caravan taking Central American refugees to churches throughout the U.S. URT's history is painted against the backdrop of its socio-political context throughout, because URT is--among many other things--a troupe which engages robustly with the issues of its times.