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Bobby Bermea

Bobby Bermea is an award-winning actor, director, writer and producer. He is co-artistic director of Beirut Wedding, a founding member of Badass Theatre and a long-time member of both Sojourn Theatre and Actors Equity Association. Bermea has appeared in theaters from New York, NY, to Honolulu, HI. In Portland, he’s performed at Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland Playhouse, Profile Theatre, El Teatro Milagro, Sojourn Theatre, Cygnet Productions, Tygre’s Heart, and Life in Arts Productions, and has won three Drammy awards. As a director he’s worked at Beirut Wedding, BaseRoots Productions, Profile Theatre, Theatre Vertigo and Northwest Classical, and was a Drammy finalist. He’s the author of the plays Heart of the City, Mercy and Rocket Man. His writing has also appeared in bleacherreport.com and profootballspot.com.

Liv Rainey-Smith: Woodblock by woodblock, building toward a World Fantasy Award

October 27, 2025Bobby Bermea

The Portland artist talks about the allure of fantasy worlds, the ancient art of woodblock printing, and the long journey that has made her this year's winner of a prestigious international prize.

Bobby Bermea: After the humans die out, what do the robots do?

September 25, 2025Bobby Bermea

In William Thomas Berk’s new play "Anno Machina: An Apocalyptic Elegy," a surviving Human Service Unit is left to find its own emotions and meaning in life.

‘GRIOT’: Celebrating the keepers and creators from Senegal to Brazil and beyond

September 9, 2025Bobby Bermea

Rejoice! Diaspora Dance Theater's newest work, debuting Sept. 12-21 at Reed College, dives into the soul of the tradition-keeping griot from past to present and future.

E.M. Lewis’s ‘Apple Season’: Biting into a tale of many flavors

August 28, 2025Bobby Bermea

The Oregon playwright's newest, opening at 21ten Theatre, spins a small-town story of tart memories and emotional isolation on a family farm.

‘Small Town Forgotten’: A family, a town, a brutal killing and a true-crime podcast

July 24, 2025Bobby Bermea

Bobby Bermea talks with the Portland makers of a podcast that has spurred the cold-case revival of a small-town 1989 killing that is only now getting ready to go to trial.

‘Girl in the Creek’: Oh, the horror!

July 12, 2025Bobby Bermea

Oregon author and editor Wendy N. Wagner talks with Bobby Bermea about her new novel, a "true crime/climate horror phantasmagoria" that The Library Journal calls "a tightly written master class in horror."

‘I’m Into This Place’: Adriana Baer celebrates the culture of Clark County

July 6, 2025Bobby Bermea

Bobby Bermea talks with the longtime Portland theater leader about her new podcast focusing on the rich arts and cultural scene in her new home across the Columbia River.

Profile Theatre Playwright Festival: Making new plays in troubled times

June 25, 2025Bobby Bermea

Playwrights Jen Silverman and Mike Lew come to town to work on tales of Houdini and a fatal hazing, and the festival goes on despite the abrupt loss of NEA funding.

With her own theater company and a dream role, Meghan Daaboul’s a ‘Fool for Love’

June 4, 2025Bobby Bermea

Daaboul, founder of Tour de Force Productions, finally steps into the shoes of May in Sam Shepard's American classic of ill-fated love on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Transformations: Talking story and life with the stars of two new Mikki Gillette plays

May 29, 2025Bobby Bermea

Trans actors Juliet Mylan and Ethan Feider talk about the risks and rewards of queer theater and their roles for Salt & Sage in Gillette's "Tears and Glitter" and "Mimetic Desire."

The future of Portland theater? Seven young artists who are making a difference

February 25, 2025Bobby Bermea

Despite tough times, theater is NOT dead, Bobby Bermea declares, and talks with seven up-and-coming theater artists who are changing the game on Portland stages.

Vin Shambry: Peeling the ‘Pass Over’ onion

February 14, 2025Bobby Bermea

Antoinette Nwandu's play, a co-production of Corrib Theatre and Historic Alberta House, holds a fascinating conversation between Black American life and "Waiting for Godot."

Remember Sowelu? The experimental ensemble is back with three new plays

February 3, 2025Bobby Bermea

Bobby Bermea: After several years of shifting to award-winning independent films, the ensemble returns to the theater stage with a short run of one-act plays.

Bobby Bermea: Talking babies and surrogates and ‘Samsara’ with Lauren Yee

January 25, 2025Bobby Bermea

The prolific playwright, whose drama about an American couple and a surrogate mother in India is playing at Profile Theatre, talks about big dreams and "the prickly, messy places where cultures collide."

Bobby Bermea: Bruce meets Beckett

January 4, 2025Bobby Bermea

An aging man meets himself, 30 and 40 years earlier: Actor Bruce Burkhartsmeier and his telltale tape recorder take on the challenge and regrets of Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape."

‘No More Candy’: Mikki Gillette and Asae Dean, together again

October 11, 2024Bobby Bermea

Playwright Gillette and director Dean, who've developed a close working partnership over the years, dig deep into the story of a trans romance for their newest premiere.

Bobby Bermea: A theatrical ghost, rising

October 2, 2024Bobby Bermea

The Broken Planetarium gets ready to unleash "The Greenbrier Ghost." And like most things ghostly, this fresh work of music, theater, and free expression plays by its own rules.

Sam Hamilton and the art of moving the global time line

September 3, 2024Bobby Bermea

The experimental opera "Te Moana Meridian," premiering at PICA's TBA Fest, is also a push to decolonialize the Prime Meridian and shift it to international waters in the Pacific Ocean.

Shooting the breeze with Kristoffer Diaz about ‘Reggie Hoops’

July 29, 2024Bobby Bermea

Bobby Bermea talks with the Tony-nominated author of "Hell's Kitchen" about theater, writing, family, deadlines, underdogs, and Diaz's basketball story opening at Portland's Profile Theatre.

Bobby Bermea: PETE gets down to the Chekhov nitty-gritty

June 24, 2024Bobby Bermea

With its new adaptation "a seagull," the experimental theater troupe aims to sand off the romantic sheen and reclaim the intense verve and vitality of the Russian master's plays.

Bobby Bermea: All along the ‘Borderline’

May 3, 2024Bobby Bermea

12-year-old actors Eli Ingraffea and Mila Kashiwabara talk about the joys and challenges of starring in Milagro's new play about surviving along the Southwest border – complete with ghosts.

Bobby Bermea: Ken Yoshikawa, man on a mission

April 28, 2024Bobby Bermea

The Portland poet, actor and playwright, whose "From a Hole in the Ground" has just opened in a co-production from Corrib and Alberta House, is "interested in breaking the rules of reality.”

Bobby Bermea: Six picks from Fertile Ground

April 10, 2024Bobby Bermea

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.

Bobby Bermea: Devising the future at Hand2Mouth

March 7, 2024Bobby Bermea

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.

All Rise: A new playwright steps onstage

February 28, 2024Bobby Bermea

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.

Making films on Portland’s Desert Island

February 20, 2024Bobby Bermea

A bustling studio in close-in Southeast Portland is a magnet for makers of short films, music videos, commercials, and maybe even movies.

Bobby Bermea: A ‘Spear’ in the heart of racial reckoning

February 12, 2024Bobby Bermea

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."

Bobby Bermea: Many Hats hatches a brave new festival

January 24, 2024Bobby Bermea

Boosted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, "The Hatchery" will help launch new theater works that emphasize music and movement.

Bobby Bermea: ‘Die Hard’ – NOT a Christmas movie

December 20, 2023Bobby Bermea

Sure, it's an entertaining action flick. But its connections to Christmas are surface stuff. Go ahead: Watch it, and have fun. But when it comes to the spirit of the holiday, it doesn't fit the bill.

Bobby Bermea: Paul Susi’s odyssey to ‘An Iliad’

December 11, 2023Bobby Bermea

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.