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Ready for the sprint? Portland’s foremost festival of new works returns with 65 projects over 10 days April 12-21. Plus: Carol Triffle goes Neanderthal at Imago, NYC kudos for PDX, more.
As Portland’s sprawling 10-day festival of new performance prepares to hit the stage running, the creators of half a dozen fresh shows talk about what they’re doing and why.
The brilliantly brittle comic author of “Beyond Therapy” and “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” who has died at 75, left a lasting mark on Oregon’s theater scene beginning in the 1980s.
Greater Portland’s festival of new performance returns after a long dry spell to showcase and generate new sprouts of Oregon-grown theater.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival kicks off its ’24 season. Plus: new onstage in Portland, from “Perfect Arrangement” to “Sh-Boom!” to “Frog and Toad” and “Ashland” (the play, not the town).
Nassim Soleimanpour’s play, written by a native Farsi speaker, deals with the difficulties of understanding a different language and invites chance into the game with a new, unrehearsed actor in each performance.
A host of clowns and colorful performers prepare a pair of shows to support the international aid group. Plus: Shakespeare north & south, “Yohen,” “Nassim,” Laurie Anderson, “Resurrection,” and more.
News & Notes: Portland’s biggest theater company is one of three nationally to win $1 million grants from the Mellon Foundation. Plus: Center Stage’s new season; new faces at the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Cultural Trust.
The veteran playwright, screenwriter, and opera librettist, whose play “Yohen” is about to open in Portland, talks on a new podcast about his career and the rise of Asian-American theater.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival shifts into its ’24 season with “Macbeth” and three other shows. Plus: Openings, last chances, a Steep & Thorny party, a pre-peek at Fertile Ground.
Octavio Solis’s contemporary spin on “Don Quixote” reimagines the wise man/mad man hero in a tale that tumbles brightly and searingly across the Mexican/Texan border.
Recent productions “North” and Red Door Project’s “The Evolve Experience” highlight the Beaverton arts center’s socially responsive programming.
On March 14, tours and an open house will celebrate the 37th anniversary of the hotel that lifelong friends Goody Cable and Sally Ford took from flophouse to world famous.
A busy week onstage also brings “The How and the Why,” a youth devised show from Hand2Mouth, Eleanor Roosevelt, holdovers including “Sanctuary City,” plus “Spear” and other last chances.
The Portland theater company’s Youth Devising Residency program teaches young people stage skills and more. The show they created, “What Brings You Here?,” is at PSU March 7-9.
Bobby Bermea: Promising writer and recent high school grad Evan McCreary gets a weekend of readings at IFCC with talent and a little help from his older friends.
The Oregon playwright’s contemporary twist on Cervantes’ classic tale has tilted at a few shifting windmills of its own on its long journey to Portland Center Stage.
An Irish playwright and a Dublin director bring a contemporary play to Corrib Theatre about racial attitudes and the steps that white people “must take to clean up the mess they have made.”
The actor, son of Oscar winner William Hurt, co-stars at 21ten theater in “A Number,” Caryl Churchill’s play about a father/son relationship. But he’s carving his own path.
Heidi Schreck’s bracing play at Portland Center Stage dives smartly and entertainingly into the serious issues of the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. Constitution.
Portland Center Stage sinks its teeth into “What the Constitution Means to Me”; The Old Church’s “Moon Series” goes musical; Chapel Theatre hosts 10 new works; a Wilde “Earnest” & more.
Boosted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, “The Hatchery” will help launch new theater works that emphasize music and movement.
Seeds for the career of the acclaimed playwright, whose “What the Constitution Means To Me” opens this week at Portland Center Stage, were planted and nurtured in Oregon.
A taut, terrific staging of Caryl Churchill’s speculative drama kicks off Portland theater’s “second season.” Plus: OSF Ashland stars on a new stage; how companies weathered the weather.
As Oregon Children’s Theatre prepares a dual opening of “Goodnight Moon” and “The Lightning Thief,” Dmae Lo Roberts talks in her newest podcast with company Artistic Director Jenn Hartman Luck.
From a Cirque du Soleil hit to updates on Don Quixote and Maxim Gorky to an opera about Malcolm X and more, Seattle’s stages are bringing some heat to the chilly season.
Brett Campbell looks back on his year in the seats and declares the lively works-in-progress festival his most memorable theater experience of 2023.
A fond farewell (and hopes for next year) as the show nears its end. Plus: Dickens and other Christmas quickies, “Dracula” and more last chances, national notes.
Since arriving in town in 2016, Grant has made his mark in an array of roles on stage and film. Now he’s Portland Playhouse’s producing director, and director of this year’s hit “A Christmas Carol.”
Director Isabel McTighe and creator/star Elsa Dougherty make sure nothing bad will ever happen. Plus: Portland Revels’ “Emerald Odyssey,” openings, last chances.
The Portland actor and friends are staging a one-night performance of a modern adaptation of Homer’s classic Greek tale before taking it back on the road – including to prisons.
Seattle’s theater companies are hoping a sleigh full of holiday shows will bring in audiences and help overcome a slow bounceback from the pandemic and a soaring cost of living.
Imago’s playful costumed critters return for a welcome holiday run, this time with some zebras joining the menagerie. Plus Fuse’s “Great White,” Bridgetown’s “Orphan Boy,” a national look at OSF’s leadership switch, last chances & more.
Review: In Kate Hamill’s toothsome update “Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really” at Portland Center Stage, the tables are deliciously turned.
The year ends with holiday opportunities to shop local, view art, hear music, or see a play.
Ajai Tripathi’s new play “Great White Gets Off,” seeded during the pandemic, looks at racial and power dynamics and the way they play into a romantic relationship.
Portland Center Stage sinks its teeth into a “Dracula” with feminist flair. Plus: It’s open (holiday) season with a musical “Wonderful Life,” a visit to Whoville, a comic Christmas tea.
Dmae Lo Roberts talks in her new podcast with Jerry Foster, leader of the Black theater company PassinArt, about staging Langston Hughes’ gospel musical version of the Nativity story.
Bobby Bermea: The talented actor Lester Purry, who’s created a bond with Portland Playhouse, is back in town and creating his own kind of skinflint in the Playhouse’s “A Christmas Carol.”
21ten’s “Taking Care of Animals” is a big show in a small space. Plus: a snowflurry of holiday shows, from Scrooge to Rudolph to “Black Nativity” and more.
The Portland theater company leaps into the Off-Broadway spotlight with “Make Me Gorgeous!,” a bravura one-man show about trans trailblazer Kenneth Marlowe.
Four humans huddle in a farmhouse against a storm as the wild beasts roam outside in “Taking Care of Animals.” Plus some grand celebrity impersonation, openings, and last chances.
Profile’s world premiere of christopher oscar peña’s story of a young woman’s perilous arrival in the United States defies expectations.
The 45-year-old community theater emerges from the pandemic shutdown with its first full-scale musical since 2019 and a new focus on fundraising and drawing fresh, young faces.
Actor and ArtsWatch columnist Bermea looks at the Portland theater company’s troubles and remembers the good times as he tries to sort out what’s gone wrong.
Profile keeps rolling with its trio of plays by christopher oscar peña, this one about the aftermath of a spasm of violence. Plus openings, last chances, and a billboard campaign.
The Guild, founded in 1958 to support a legendary company that began in the 1920s, is closing and passing its assets to other theaters. Plus: This week’s openings and last chances.
After postponing its season and laying off its artistic leader, the company concentrates on getting its building open. Plus: this week’s new shows and last chances.
Third Rail Rep bellies up to the Irish writer’s “Two Pints.” Plus: A Lebanese solo show, an annotated “Merchant of Venice,” openings and last chances.
The puppeteers of Kettlehead Studios, the instrumentalists of Musica Universalis, an adventurous director and a skilled actress create a myth-driven seasonal show.
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