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Underground railroads: performance and community at the Underground Railroad Theater's Youth Program.

Wed, 03/07/2012 - 10:22 — Dave Culver
Section(s): 
Arts & Culture
Youth & Education

URT has a history of outreach to underserved families, with shows for young audiences, families, and adults performed across the United States and internationally. Its Community and Education Program functions through performance and rigorous community and education programming.

Radical Teacher

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This article is based on an interview with Maggie Moore Abdow, director of the Underground Railroad Theater's Youth Program (Cambridge MA) since 2004, and her summary of that exchange. The interview (11/3/2009) was conducted by Saul Slapikoff, member of Radical Teacher's editorial group and former board member of URT. The theater was founded in Oberlin, Ohio. Its name honors the fact that Oberlin was one of the last stops on the Midwestern Branch of the Underground Railroad. Active for some 30 years, URT has a history of outreach to underserved families, with shows for young audiences, families, and adults performed across the United States and internationally. Its Community and Education Program functions through performance and rigorous community and education programming. (The cluster editors)

Collaboration is never easy, and all the more so when it aims to bring controversial issues to public attention. For the young people involved in the Underground Railroad Theater's Youth Program (Youth Underground) in Cambridge, MA, the challenge is also to find ways of positioning themselves in relation to their families, communities, and schools, especially as they, and many in their audience too, may be exploring and grappling with the very issues raised in their performances. Inevitably, these young people face new and often unanticipated challenges, putting themselves on the fine. Alongside them, the challenge is also for the adults working with these youth, notably Maggie Moore Abdow as program director and Vincent Earnest Siders as teacher and drama director, working together since the program was first piloted four years ago.

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