Jump in and play with Central Square Theater’s resident performance ensemble, Youth Underground (YU)! Each year, YU serves an ensemble of economically and culturally diverse Cambridge & Greater Boston youth, ages 13-25, and provides opportunities for them to create and perform original theater that investigates social issues relevant to young people and our world.

In this workshop, co-led by YU youth and Teaching Artists, participants will learn about YU's approach to arts-based youth activism, get hands-on experience with some of YU’s activities and devising techniques, and see youth perform excerpts from their original work. The workshop will take place onsite at Central Square Theater, in the heart of Cambridge.

Urban Bush Women (UBW) burst onto the dance scene in 1984 with bold, innovative, demanding, and exciting works that brought under-told stories to life. Originally founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the company, now under the co-artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Spies, continues to weave contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora.

A centerpiece of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, This is Risk looks forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. This is Risk takes the audience through intentional storytelling to the next space of collective brilliance. This energetically charged evening includes iconic legacy works by founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Haint Blu, a transformative dance-theater work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis. Haint Blu is an ensemble dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic. Named for the color that Southern families paint their front porches to ward off bad spirits, Haint Blu uses performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest. It is an embodied look into familial lines and the movements, histories, and stories of our elders and ancestors. It reflects on what has been lost across generations and what can be recovered.