UMass Boston

The University Hall Theatre opened in Fall 2016 with Bat Boy: The Musical and has since housed 15 mainstage productions, two musical theater cabarets, four runs of world premiere plays by UMass Boston student playwrights, and seven spring dance concerts.

Dark for two semesters due to COVID, it burst back as a cultural center on campus with plays like Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, The Government Inspector, and last spring’s Radium Girls. Theater makers invite audiences to be transported to other worlds, connect with characters, and take a ride through heightened realities of heartbreak, laughter, song, triumph, and empathy. Theater artists want you to be swept up by the story, not having to think about all it takes to make that story unfold:

1. The Scene Shop has an arsenal of power tools to make the imaginary a reality. A typical set is composed of 1,200 feet of common pine, 208 feet of 2x4s, 1150 feet of luan (a light hardwood), and 20 or more gallons of paint. The audience might believe they’re looking at ancient marble columns, an opulent mansion, or a cinder block and plaster urban high school, but it’s all wood, nails, paint, ingenuity, artistry, craftsmanship, and weeks of work by students, mentors, and designers.
2. There are approximately 60 people involved in every production, including 8 to 20 actors and 40 to 50 more not on stage are who are essential to every production. Directors and designers, stagehands, stage managers, props and costume crews, and dozens of students hammer, build, paint, sew, wire, and execute thousands of other tasks to make the world the characters live in.
3. It takes a minimum of 40 work hours to construct a single costume for the stage. Whether creating the lush 19th century gowns of Pride and Prejudice or the simpler garb of a monk in Shakespeare’s vision of Vernona in Romeo and Juliet, students in our costume shop keep 11 sewing machines whirring and go through more than 1,400 yards of thread in a single production.
4. There are 160 lighting fixtures illuminating the stage in a single production. Twenty-eight feet above the audience, student techs walk a wire grid to hang and focus 156 LED lights that can change colors throughout the show. But lights aren’t just above—ports and pathways allow for lighting anywhere, for an unlimited number of configurations.
5. The number of ways the theater space itself can change is nearly infinite. Audience members, seeing a second production, routinely pause and wonder if they are in the same room. The floor is made of panels and platforms that can be raised or lowered to alter the physical shape of the stage and seating arrangement. Students create thrusts, old-fashioned prosceniums, theater-in-the round, multilevel play spaces, immersive experiences, anything. Every play is different, and the theater is transformed for every production to best serve the story.

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