Community and Education

Underground Railway Theater's acclaimed innovative community and educational programs in theater, puppetry, and thinking through the arts can give your school or organization a fresh, dramatic perspective. The Community and Education Program serves schools, after-school programs, museums, colleges and adult day care programs. URT Educators work directly with you to custom-design a plan that best suits your program.

School & Community Residencies

Residencies are custom-designed and led by URT's experienced and creative team of teaching artists. Residencies can include student workshops, professional development for teachers and staff, youth training, curriculum planning, the creation of original plays, and performances by URT artists and/or workshop participants.

Page to Stage: Playwriting to Performance

URT teaching artists guide teachers and students from both schools and community organizations in a curriculum devoted to using playwriting as a tool to:

• Strengthen literacy skills
• Explore other areas of the curriculum
• Deepen students' ability to empathize and take on perspectives different than their own

This hands-on program includes age-appropriate acting and improvisation activities.

Shadow Puppetry and Puppet-Making

A great introduction to the art form! Create simple shadow puppets and magical special effects or build and manipulate a simple rod-puppet character!

Professional Development Workshops

URT artists share teacher-tested techniques for using the arts to engage students in critical and creative thinking across the curriculum. First, students are inspired by getting inside the way an artist thinks, deepening their understanding of work of visual art, a performance or a piece of music. Workshops can include the purchase of Art Works for Schools, a curriculum guide created by URT, Harvard University Graduate School of Education's Project Zero, the DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, and public school teachers.

Art InterACTions

A Program for Art Museums' Education, Outreach, and Interpretive Programs

Museum Tours

Specially trained actors lead 20-45 minute tours of museum collections, using improvisational and interactive theater to engage targeted audiences (families, youth or adults) with a museum's collections. Art InterACTions tours are very enjoyable - alternately humorous and lyrical, high-energy and reflective - while being at the service of helping visitors deeply explore works of art.

Trainings for Museum Guides

Master teachers with extensive experience with Art InterACTions share their techniques with museum guides, using their museum's collections. During a 2-3 hour workshop, guides explore and try out techniques for using theater as an interpretive tool. The workshop includes guidance on how guides might tailor-make techniques to suit their own styles and target audiences.

Theater Intensives

Join URT for week-long intensives during public school vacation weeks and summer for a fun, challenging program that explores improvisation, play-making and performance. Open to ages 6-16. Scholarship information available upon request.

For more information about the Community and Education Program, contact Maggie Moore Abdow, Education Director 781-643-6916 mabdow@undergroundrailwaytheater.org

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