Upon These Boards:

"Praise [for its] theatricality. For anyone interested in the art of storytelling, it's a must-see. Stuart and his design team employ an unconventional theatrical language, synthesized from cultures around the world...everything in the physical environment is endowed with observable kinetic energy...complex staging of the type pioneered by UTB generates considerable excitement."
- Marin Independent Journal

"With innovative props and puppets, the production hits its high note...”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“... breaks new ground in visual theater. ... animated forms of all kinds - from puppets to fabric shapes...one of the most innovative productions of this year.”
- Talkin’ Broadway

Our theatre troupe is recognized for its celebration of design and visual composition, the intriguing use of objects, puppetry & masks, and the ways in which we animate the objects onstage.

In The Inkwell Communiqués swaths of fabric, wood & paper are sculpted into elemental structures. Under Milk Wood included a symphony of percussive kitchen item. In Fools Fall Banraku puppetry changes one creature into another. In Our Vessel Is From Tyre the troupe promenades to a ballroom where an unexpected storm ensues, activated by an electric synthesizer on the body of Neptune. In Three Blooms doors and pianos fly in the air, and full-bodied puppets deconstruct before our eyes.

"funny & stylish" ... "transformative"

Masks have often played a key role in our work: the chorus of old citizens in Lysistrata Project and the commedia clowns in A Lovely Day transform themselves by donning noses & brows, and in Metamorphoses the faces of the holy ones are rendered in a bold masked sculpture.

"playful, meditative" ... "gorgeous, poignant"

We have been honored to work with master theatre designers, artisans and composers, and eagerly anticipate further collaborations of light, sound, fabric, objects and forms.

Design collaborations have included: maskmaker & puppeteer Jane Clugston, set designers Michael Olich, Kate Edmunds, Jeff Seats, Richard Olmstead, costume designers Sarah Gahagan, B. Modern, Richard Battle, props master Lydia Bushfield, lighting designer Kent Dorsey, graphic artists Dennis Ivan, Andy McCone, David Buttaro, puppeteers Wendy Tremont King, Peter Q. Parish. UTB was awarded the Bay Area Critics Circle Award in 2003 and has been singled-out by the press as a troupe with provocative design elements and epic productions.