Our Platform

Our Platform
(the wherefores)

Be it a stage floor, a ship's deck, the piano's keyboard,
desktop, work bench, porch, or paint easel,
we are compelled to make art happen upon these boards.

Randall Stuart constructed the platform Upon These Boards in San Francisco in 2001 as a container for a variety of theatrical creations, unique symposia, and literary salons. The platform floats (it's an artistic raft) and the work commenced at The Haas Lilienthal House (a historic Gold Rush-era mansion) with an immersive adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles - entitled Our Vessel Is Of Tyre - with the actors and audience promenading throughout the enchanting space. More projects followed.

The producing company was awarded the 2003 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for the Worldwide Theatrical Peace Event - The Lysistrata Project, in what was the largest rendition of Aristophanes' play offered in more than a thousand concurrent presentations within one day, here on the planet we call Earth. Upon These Boards' Lysistrata: Her Threefold Plan performed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for two sold-out performances featured a cast of one hundred local performers. This was followed by the epic tale The Inkwell Communiqués touring the Bay Area in various permutations with its call for world peace. Next came a series of symposia which included an exploration of T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets. Oregon audiences were treated to A Lovely Day (an adaptation of Ghelderode's Pantagleize), and a large-cast presentation of Irwin Shaw's antiwar play Bury The Dead which filled the historic auditorium at The Cooper Union Building in New York City and featured Kathleen Chalfant, Buck Henry, and Denis O'Hare.

In 2023 activities recommenced on the East Coast with the discourse Finding Orangetown a public address in Tappan, New York as part of the larger history-based project The Resplendent West. In 2024 both the Backstage Left and Squire projects launch, and the publication of the manuscript SQUIRE was launched with a live event in Ashland, Oregon.

the reason we gather
(the why's)

We continue to gather because the times call for it. It's as true of the storytellers at an ancient fire who cracked the first joke and got a laugh, as it is to the truth seekers who continue to offer meaningful work in prose, performance, and poems of protest. The human story is being written and requires our attention and artistry. We recognize one another: creatives who feel strongly connected and acknowledge the impulse to bring stories to life that will delight, inform, and educate. Our artistic souls call to one another, and so we convene.