21ten’s month-long summer residency performances ended Sunday, July 27, and I’m bummed out. It was thrilling to have a new experimental show to look forward to every weekend in July, especially when the final one, Ajai Tripathi’s The Rainbow Passage, was such a loving and luminous production.

Ted Rooney’s 40-seat Southeast Portland black box theater may be tiny, but its contributions to the Portland theater community are huge. After just three seasons, it has proven to be a place that offers professionally produced shows that are just as innovative and stimulating as those on bigger stages. What’s more, it can be relied on for dynamic performances from the likes of Diane Kondrat, Bruce Burkhartsmeier, Ashley Song, and Rocco Weyer.

Thanks to its residency program, now in its second year, 21ten is also becoming a place for audiences and artists alike to explore brand new stories … and bold ways of telling them.  

This July, the theater hosted four disparate performances through the program: The One, a comedic solo show from dancer and multidisciplinary performer Andrea Parson; La Mariposa, a devised performance ritual created by Sofia Leonila Marks and Isabel Strongheart McTighe; un/seen, a heartrending narrative and sound experience by erin rachel about a fictional pandemic; and Tripathi’s The Rainbow Passage, a multimedia drama about family, drug addiction and consciousness.

With movement being a key component of The One, Parson needed room to develop the show, and she used her 40 hours of residency rehearsal time at 21ten to work with director Jessica Wallenfels, who helped her take what was originally a 20-minute piece and develop it into an hour-long performance.

“Our process was really one of bringing the script to life and discovering the physicality of it,” Parson said in an email. “It was wonderful to be able to have a month-long focused block of time to create and make new discoveries in the work.”

Parson had been working on parts of the story for the last two years and was excited to have a place where she could put them all together. “I was very nervous about the script and wondering if it would all make sense and if certain parts would work, like dating an audience member on stage, or becoming a cat. I felt supported by my director and how she helped me to lean into the parts I felt uncertain about.”

Murri Lazaroff-Babin, who participated in the 2024 residency, likens the program to having “training wheels.” Thanks to the company’s established community, with a mailing list of audience members, Lazaroff-Babin says that he could spend less time worrying about selling tickets and instead focus on the work itself, his solo show Camp Fire Stories, which is about the 2018 fire that destroyed the community of Concow, where he grew up.

“[The program] provided me with two key ingredients for the piece’s development – time and a space, or maybe time in a space. And for free! Which is huge,” he said in an email.

Like Parson, Lazaroff-Babin said that before the residency he had a series of compositions that hadn’t completely jelled:

“It was also the first time Camp Fire had a director – Cristi Miles – who I trust very much and is one of the only people I could see directing it. She helped shape the piece, discover the beginnings of a through line, and allowed us to hone in on specific key questions we still had about the piece. The residency felt low-stakes enough (in a good way!) for Cristi and I to be satisfied with whatever we came up with by the time performances came around.”

According to AC Campbell, 21ten’s associate producer, Rooney came up with the idea for the summer program to help out artists who didn’t have the funds to stage a new show.

“The first year we offered a percentage of ticket sales in exchange for rehearsal and performance time at 21ten,” Campbell said in an email. “In 2025, we received a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Arts Access Fund, which enabled us to offer our artists a stipend for their work, and has supported 21ten to provide more resources to the resident artists overall.”

Sixteen people applied for the program in 2024, and this year that number grew to 28, with all of the selected works being original shows by local artists. To choose the shows, 21ten staff and board members reviewed applications and interviewed the artists.

“We select the projects based on factors such as how the performance would play to our intimate space, where the project is at in its development process, and how the project will contrast with the other residency productions,” says Campbell. “We aim to fill our Residency with a diverse range of work and artists!”

Done and done: This year the program offered a splendid variety of shows from local artists who come from different cultural backgrounds, including the all-Asian American Pacific Islander cast of The Rainbow Passage and Marks’ identity as a Mestiza and mixed Hondureña.

Beyond the performances, Campbell hopes audiences members will continue to seek out work by these artists. 

After last year’s residency, Lazaroff-Babin went on to perform a wondrously inventive version of Camp Fire at the 2025 Fertile Ground Festival and plans on getting the show on stages as much as possible, including Northern California, where the play takes place. Parson, too, is about to perform a version of The One at the San Francisco Fringe Festival on Aug. 8-10 and hopes to bring it back to Portland next year, which is good news for theater-goers who are invigorated by fresh material.

The residency performances may be over, but the work of these vibrant artists promises to live on.

The One, performed by Andrea Parson, directed by Jessica Wallenfels

Andrea Parson was born and raised in Hillsboro, Oregon, but her imagination and talent take her to a wonderfully wild place in this new show, which she performed July 3-7. 

Part contemporary dance, part clown, the one-hour performance, which is presented from the point of view of a contemporary 38-year-old single woman, probes societal preconceptions while also providing genuine laughs.

Thanks to a bazillion rom-coms, both in print and films, the struggle of female singletons is familiar territory. But Parson’s version includes comedic movement and a Catholic twist, comparing being single today with the medieval brides of Christ known as anchoresses, or women who agreed to devote themselves to Jesus by living alone in a small room attached to a church for the rest of their lives.

The July 5 performance I attended began with Parson, who wore a puffy-sleeved white dress and veil, appearing on the stairs between the theater seats. This might have seemed like a solemn ceremony if it weren’t for the fact that Parson’s character clearly wasn’t experiencing ecclesial bliss. Besides her bridal getup, she wore flesh-colored knee pads and white sneakers and kept turning to look at us with the pained smile of someone who’s thinking, Get me out of here!

Throughout the performance, Parson’s movements were also evocative, as when she lay face down on the floor with her arms extended as if she were being crucified. Beyond dancing, though, she also used her voice to good effect, such as when she mimicked the cartoonish way she talks to her mangy cat, Couts.

With Parson’s talent for inclusive humor, the audience gladly came along with her for this comedic journey. At one point, she invited a woman to come onstage and participate in a 36 Questions that Lead to Love date. In another bit, she asked the audience how they talk to their pets, inspiring one man to say, in the coaxing tone of a preschool parent, “Potty, let’s go potty. Good girl!”

“Is there a man in your life?” a recorded voice also asks at one point, perhaps representing the 90-something grandmother who, while suffering from memory loss, still always remembers to ask Parson about her single status. Other looping voices offer advice on how to snag a male partner: “Be up front, order salad, flirt, tell the truth.”

Although the show ended on an upbeat – or rather, a hilarious – note, Parson doesn’t offer a simplistic you-go-girl mentality. Instead, her performance honestly faced the fact that sometimes being single means many evenings at home with your cat and a bowl of quinoa – an insight that gave depth to the show’s many laughs.

La Mariposa: A Song from the Borderland performed by Sofía Leonila Marks, directed by Isabel Strongheart McTighe

While audience members weren’t called on to speak or come on stage during La Mariposa, they still played an essential role: to be an active witness.

In 21ten’s close quarters, the emotional power of Sofía Leonila Marks’s solo performance, which expressed joy, defiance and agony through dance, song and prayers, was magnified, hitting the audience like a beautiful, blazing furnace.

The show started in 21ten’s narrow lobby, where Marks stood in front of the curtained entrance to the theater itself. Wearing a full yellow skirt trimmed with white lace and red ribbon, she looked like a spiritual painting come to life, with her long hair tied on either side to the curtains so it splayed like tree roots. Her arms were also extended, and she held a basket in each hand, turning her into a living altar where audience members were encouraged to write prayers and other messages on slips of paper that could be left, like offerings, in the baskets.

Called a performance ritual about a girl who has forgotten her name, the show was created by Marks and Isabel Strongheart McTighe, who also directed. “You give me your hand,” Marks sang as she led everyone inside the theater, where the stage floor was covered with sand. Once people were seated, she knelt and used her hands to scoop a deep line in the sand, creating metaphorical borderlands where “us” is divided from “them.”

As part of the show, Marks opened her mouth wide to release a primal howl as an expression of that harm that comes from such physical and psychic othering. “This wound is ours,” and “Can you not hear me? Can you not see me?” she said. At one point, she also crawled toward the audience, making eye contact and daring us to see her anguish. This was not a troubling news story, but a living person within touching distance, who demanded that we acknowledge her humanity.

Providing a further link between audience and artist, the performance was ASL-interpreted by Ophelia McQuain Jenkins, whose whole body seemed to dance with the story. Although much of the performance is in Spanish, Marks also repeated many of the lines in English: “My finger tips became roots … I was everything and nothing all at once.”

When Marks lifted her face and openly sobbed, though, no translation was needed. The cries lasted far longer than they would have in a traditional performance, making it clear that Marks has called on us to experience this pain, in hopes that we can all transform it into joy, as she does when she twirls and dances with abandon.

As Marks says in the performance, “This is not the end.”

un/seen, created and performed by erin rachel

For her performance of un/seen, creator erin rachel softened the stage at 21ten with lamps that made the space look as if they were lit by candles.

Also on stage were pale carpets, a basket filled with blankets, and tan and dusty pink cushions. There was a softness, too, to her narration. Inviting people to sit on the cushions, her gentle voice reminded me of a kindergarten teacher calling her students to storytime. un/seen, though, is a compelling tale that taps into primal fears of people of all ages.

Centered on a fictional pandemic that steals the lives of perfectly healthy people in their 30s and 40s while they’re asleep, the story is filled with terrifying statistics. Early on, we’re told that 1,596 have been found dead, and the number keeps increasing. 

Yet rachel, who based her play on one of her own short stories, uses vivid, human details that transport the narrative beyond these cold numbers. One character, for example, remembers the squash and coriander dish her mother used to make; later, grieving for her sister, she lies under a blanket that was crocheted by her grandmother. Meanwhile, we’re told her boyfriend sits on the edge of the bed with his hand on her ankle.

Accompanying the story is sound, which is always changing, sometimes resembling the light tones of bird song, and others more like the funereal chords of an organ, such as when we learn about the 59,125 people found dead around the world. Although the story covers a long time period, following three generations of women whose lives are affected by the illness, each character is conjured through words and sound so specifically that they feel like an intimate friend.

There’s no doubt that rachel is a mesmerizing storyteller, although some may be triggered by this fictional story, considering that our society has barely begun to process the trauma of our own COVID pandemic.

To help the audience sort out the strong feelings that the story may inspire, she has included a second part of the performance that features listening to ambient sound. She also had paper and colored pencils on hand for those who wanted to write or draw while they listened, providing a lovely potential for reflection and community. Perhaps others felt differently, but I wondered whether, in future performances, it could be a powerful experience if the theater seats were arranged in a circle, drawing audience members even closer to the story and the sound, as well as to each other.

rachel, who also created the warmhearted musical Unbound: A Bookish Musical, which was part of the 2025 Fertile Ground Festival, clearly has something to much to say about kindness, healing and community, and her voice is one I hope we hear more from.

The Rainbow Passage, written and directed by Ajai Tripathi

Is it magic, sci-fi, or simply art when a play goes beyond being entertaining or intellectually engaging so that watching it is a transcendent experience? That’s what the July 27 performance of Ajai Tripathi’s The Rainbow Passage was for me, and I sensed other audience members felt the same.

The story, which is based on Tripathi’s award-winning screenplay, revolves around Sang (Parth Ruparel) and his family, who are giving round-the-clock care for his catatonic twin sister Sushma (Mini Sharma Ogle), a professor of radio astronomy whose consciousness is trapped on the horizon line of a black hole. Thanks to a radio that Sushma built when she was a kid, Sang discovers he can access his sister’s memories, and hopes to use them to release her consciousness from the tedium and terror of her current limbo.  

For those who aren’t into science fiction, have no fear: For me, The Rainbow Passage is a story about familial bonds, along with the bitterness of sibling rivalry and the deep wounds of an adult child who feels they can never measure up in a parent’s eyes – all told with a combination of superb acting and projected photos of Sang and Sushma’s memories.

Folded smoothly into the live performance, the projections are never a jarring break from the story. Instead, they let us delve deeper into the family’s history. The black and white photos, which were taken by Lawrence Siulagi, who also portrays Sushma’s loving but careworn husband, Kumar, keep showing us new perspectives, and yet each one stays on the screen long enough for us to take in the emotions they reveal, such as the joy on Sushma and Kumar’s faces when they fall in love; and the anguish of Sang, who is a recovering drug addict.

Accompanying the images are the recorded voices of the characters. In one memory, we hear their laughter at a family celebration that turns into a free-for-all of rubbing cake into one another’s faces. Here and elsewhere, younger sibling Sai (Ari Aquilla-Saund) adds a note of humor as the most financially successful member of the family, who’s always tapping away on their phone and reminding everyone how busy and important they are.

In the scenes where Sang is getting high, we also hear the pulse of nightclub music, and when the family is in Sushma’s room, a projected image shows the equipment that’s keeping her alive, accompanied by the sound of its constant hum.

The Rainbow Passage shows an exhausted family in terrible pain. At the same time, though, the love these characters feel for each other is palpable. In this light, the play portrays an emotion that’s one of the chief splendors of life on Earth.