The Underground Railway Theater has become known over the last twenty years for socially conscious large-scale productions featuring a variety of puppetry techniques, especially full screen shadows, combined with live actors. Their latest production, the world premiere of award-winning playwright Melinda Lopez's docudrama"How Do You Spell Hope ?" is the result of years of practice with this hybrid form. Lopez's 1998 show based on the life of "underground railroad conductor", Harriet Tubman, toured initially for four years, and has been revived since. This time she has woven together scenes from the life of abolitionist and runaway slave, Frederick Douglass, with the plight of a modern black teenager whose dyslexia threatens his cherished goal of becoming a hockey player, while incidently telling the tale of the boy's Hispanic-American reading tutor, perhaps based on some of her own experiences.
Two actors portray all the characters of the piece. Dorian Christian Barcum plays Douglass as a man, both free and slave, and manipulates a large Czech-style marionette when playing him as a child. Barcum also becomes Peter, a frustrated highschool student agonized by his inability to read, aware that he will never get to play real hockey, at which he excels, unless he can graduate and go to college. He also does a brief turn as the elderly manager of a grocery store. Debra Wise, a co-founder of the troupe and its current artistic director, plays the woman who teaches Douglass to read the Bible, and Marta Gonzales, a Hispanic-American grocery clerk turned reading teacher by fortuitous circumstance. Both cast members also manipulate various puppets onstage, reveal the foldouts and pop-ups which change the scenes, participate in the complex shadow sequences which illuminate a giant open book at the back of the set, and do a bit of singing when necessary. Their invisible partner is stage manager/puppeteer Kathleen Conroy, a master's candidate in Puppetry Arts at UConn, who must also cue and operate most of the lights and sound as well as manipulate a number of puppets, notably the apparition of failure, disguised as a teacher.
The ingenious setting was designed and painted by muralist David Fichter in his recognizable style of heightened realism seen around the Boston and elsewhere on community and school murals. His original puppet designs were realized under the supervision of Will Cabell, who has worked with the company for the last eight years, sharing an IRNE design award with Fichter for their "Alice Underground". The puppets include the reprise of the marvelous stained-glass shadows the two created for last year'sworld premiere of Rodriguez' "The Tempest" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for whom the troupe has credited several shows over the years. Will Cabell is also the co-director of the Starbird Puppet Theatre of Tamworth and Plymouth NH. This show, which will tour for the next year, has a scale and finish not usually seen in such educational efforts.
An original score for the show was composed and recorded by well-known jazz guitarist, Claudio Ragazzi. Its rhythms and themes help weave the brief incidents of the three stories together. Ragazzi's other works include the film score and top ten CD from "Next Stop Wonderland" and the music for the Boston Ballet's "Blue Tango". His work here keeps the action moving without drawing attention to itself except when punctuation is required. When the recorded track backs up Wise and Barcum's unique voices, the effect is moving.
This is plainly a didactic presentation. Douglass's famous autobiography, Marta Gonsalez' move from the checkout counter to the school library, and Peter's struggling to read are each intended to answer the question raised by the title. Lopez hasn't shied away from a moral while providing an entertaining way to get there. Director Greg Smucker has paced the show so that actions seems to spring from the actors, while puppets may spring from anywhere to punctuate scenes. Both Wise and Barcum change focus with ease, moving from direct audience address to believable interaction, changing characters as quickly as they rearrange the scenery. Young audiences will find so much to watch, they may forget that they are being told quite clearly that they should learn to read, not matter how hard it may seem.
The show will tour to several Boston Public Library branches this November, then go on the road from January to May, to various locations the northeast. Funded by a range of public agencies and educations foundations, "How Do You Spell Hope?" exceeds the expectations of such a project. The unspoken motto of the Underground Railway Theatre has been that if a show is worth doing, it is worth doing well, and the best people available increase the chances that the results will be worthwhile. Presentations for young audiences, including educational ones, deserve the level of artistry consistently displayed by this company.