Theodora Skipitares
Underground
The Public Theater
September 13 & 20
(World Premiere)

Conceived, Designed and Directed by Theodora Skipitares
Score Composed by Robert Previte
Performed by
Preston Foerder
Cora Hook
Theodora Skipitares
Sara Provost

Narrators: Tom Costello and Mary Lou Wittmer
Scenes Written by Andrea Balis, Julie Mars, Garry Rich, Theodora Skipitares, and Sebastian Stuart, and excerpts from Ralph Ellison¹s The Invisible Man
Dramaturg: Andrea Balis
Lighting Design by Liz Lee
Technical Director: Michael Draper
Puppets by Theodora Skipitares, Holly Laws and Daniel Carello Musician: Jerome Harris
Voices on Tape by Sebastian Stuart, Mary Lou Witmmer, Anna Trainer and Kevin O¹Connor
Photographer: Valerie Osterwalder

Special thanks to Cynthia Jenner.

This program has been funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Composer Performance Fund and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

THEODORA SKIPITARES was trained as a sculptor and designer, and began creating solo autobiographical performances in the mid 1970s. In the 1980s, she began to combine historical subjects with small animated figures. These kinetic sculptures, or puppets, started out as a handful of characters and grew into a cast of 300 for her 1984 production, The Age of Invention. In 1987, Defenders of the Code, a musical, examined the history of eugenics. Empires and Appetites (1989), presented the history of food and famine. In 1991, Ms. Skipitares created her most ambitious project to date, The Radiant City, a music-theatre work based on the life of Robert Moses. Underground¹s composer, Robert Previte, has performed his music extensively, throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Pori, Frankfurt, Geneva, Toronto, Lisbon, Berlin and Helsinki Jazz Festivals. He will be performing in Japan this summer and will tour Europe again this fall. He is currently working on a new ballet.