Mission
The Upstart Crow is an ensemble community theatre company dedicated to staging the finest works of classical theatre and providing the community with affordable access to these works. We strive to produce works that speak to the contemporary experience from an historical perspective and give the audience the opportunity for self reflection that great works of drama provide. TUC Productions emphasize respect for the playwright’s intentions, the actor’s craft, and the audience’s intellect.
Membership
The Upstart Crow is an ensemble acting company. A dedicated core group of actors not only supplies stage talent, but backstage support as well. They are the directors and the designers, the stage crew and the ticket takers. They guide the artistic direction of the company. They are facile with table saw, paintbrush, and sewing machine. It is not glamorous, but it means that decisions are made by actors.
We cherish that.
Our actors are a eclectic group drawn from the Boulder community. A few currently hold degrees in theatre, but the majority of our actors are simply members of the community who have an intense desire for and commitment to the language of these plays. Students, doctors, store managers, engineers, writers, secretaries, even the occasional CEO are the heart of The Upstart Crow.
Passion
The Upstart Crow Theatre Company performs classical theatre with a true passion and love for the playwright’s words. It is our love of language, of the finely crafted phrase that touches the soul, that draws us to the works of the world’s greatest playwrights. It is this love that drives our philosophy of fidelity to the original text. We offer our audiences a luxury seldom seen today…an uncut play.
We go out of our way to present plays as they were written. We restore scenes that are traditionally cut. When available translations are inadequate, we do our own. We were the first theatre company in the world to produce the four-act version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the few theatre companies to perform the unabridged Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw, and we have defied theatre convention by presenting an uncut Hamlet.
We treasure the words that these playwrights have given us and we offer them, all of them, to our audiences.
We believe that a theatrical experience, like a good wine, improves with age. If you have seen a production once, we encourage you see it again as our guest. Enjoy it a second, or third time so that you can experience the details that you may have missed the first time.
The second Saturday we’ll have a special treat – a discussion of the play, the playwright, and we’ll answer your questions and invite your arguments. Come join us for something a little more than your typical theater performance.