Rainbow Theater Presents: The Underground!

Rainbow Theater, the only multiracial/multi-ethnic student-facilitated theater organization at UCSC, puts on 4 plays every year plus Poets Corner. These plays celebrate the achievements and lives of those whose voices have been silenced within the canon of major Western playwriting tradition as well as Western academia. This year, the 'fifth element', the longest and traditionally the most intensely characterized play, will be 'The Underground.' The Underground is a journey into the subway culture in New York City. This play illustrates the characteristics, stories and experiences of the people we see on public transportation everyday through the lens of hip hop culture. In short, The Underground delves deeper into the everyday unseen. The Underground combines poetry, dance, poetic monologues, along with traditional theater techniques in order to tell the stories of those whose lives are rarely presented clearly by mainstream culture. In fact, this story focuses on the fact that most of these people's lives are silenced particularly because their stories, with their pain, their agonized experiences with such societal traumas as 'the beauty myth' turned sour for one woman, another man's experiences with his own attempts to escape from the life of poverty which social myths about black folks' possibility for advancement have at once trapped him into while at the same time offering him the temptation of an escape that comes through robbing other people of their own ability to access something like freedom. He faces his choice with all the dignified suffering and tragic terror that might be expected of a black man steeped in the desperation which this society makes all but sure he will never stop feeling. Times he does manage to escape from this terror, all that he finds himself inside of is more myth, more fantasy and more illusion.

In the midst of the momentary clarity brought on by the contact with reality that is symbolized within the innocence of the lies that four high school students are already beginning to tell one another in order to survive this world, he cannot accept reality. He is faced at once with the shock of stepping outside of that web of terror build on lies outlining what he can and cannot do, and his choice yanks at the webs that were originally created ultimately by the corporations. In enacting his rage as he does, he reflects back upon us all of the Truths that we do believe about how society is "supposed" to operate, challenging nothing with his attempt to challenge the very solidified constraints of his own life,

This and other characters bring the story to life....come see the play!!!!