People sign up to take a drama class for many reasons aside from the obvious: to find confidence, community, courage, to hook up, to heal… In Annie Baker’s play Circle Mirror Transformation now playing at Artists Repertory Theatre, five people bring their water bottles and their emotional baggage for a six week intensive theatre course at a community center, and discover all these things and more. ...more...
Arts America Blog
Fertile Ground Festival 2012
January 23, 2012 by
Fertile Ground, Portland’s festival of new local work, gets bigger every year since its launch in 2009. This year, the 10-day festival features 68 new events including world premiere theatre, dance, comedy, staged readings, visual art and film. With so many locally grown options to choose from, there’s no doubt your plate will be full this week. After opening weekend, here are my suggestions to make the most of the …more…
Angels in America at the Portland Playhouse
December 22, 2011 by
Portland Playhouse’s mission statement says they “hold theatre to be a space in which people of all social, economic, racial, sexual and political backgrounds can come together to celebrate the complexity of our shared human experience” so it is no surprise that their winter offering is Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner. ...more...
Holiday Theatre with a Twist in Portland
November 29, 2011 by
Seasonal theatre is notoriously nostalgic. All jingle bells and hot cocoa with extra marshmallows. Be honest, how many productions of the Nutcracker have you seen? But damnit if that Tchaikovsky doesn’t get you weepy-eyed and grinning every time anyway.
If you have a taste for something sugarplum sweet with a spin, Portland’s got it. In true “keep it weird” tradition, several Portland theaters are producing holiday classics with a twist to …more…
Gender Bending Theatre in Portland
November 10, 2011 by
There is still time to catch two gender-bending productions in Portland this month.
The first is Theatre Vertigo’s production of Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill at Theatre! Theater! This play follows the members of a family from Act I in patriarchal, colonial Africa in 1879 to the newly-liberated, “what-now?” 1980s in London. It explores racial, sexual, and personal politics with good humor, sharp wit, and lots of drag. Director Jon Kretzu and …more…
