Portland Center Stage, the city’s largest theater company since it was established in 1988 as Oregon Shakespeare Festival/Portland, is facing a large financial deficit and is launching a campaign, Save Portland Center Stage, to raise $9 million in the next 14 months, by the end of June 2026.
More urgently, the company says it needs to raise $2.5 million of its goal in less than four months, by Aug. 30, to launch its 2025-26 season or it will “cease operations.”
“Those are the words we chose to use,” said Marissa Wolf, Portland Center Stage’s artistic director. “We would have to figure out what it means. Does it look like a pause in operations? Does it look like a full shutdown? It’s such a brutal time. There’s no easy way to go. Because it’s artists’ livelihoods.”
Nationally and in Oregon, Center Stage is far from alone among arts groups facing financial difficulty since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Even as the pandemic has eased, many people who once regularly attended theater, dance and music events and visited museums have shifted their habits, often staying home and streaming shows on their televisions. More recently, the Trump Administration’s attacks on cultural funding and people’s fears of an economic slowdown have hurt both attendance and donations. Most cultural groups have yet to regain the levels of participation — and therefore ticket sales and donations — that they had enjoyed pre-Covid.
“We’ve seen what’s happened with companies across the country,” Wolf said. Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company, she noted, announced a one-year pause in productions in 2023, and “they have just in the past six months relaunched.” The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, she added, launched an emergency $2.5 million campaign, succeeded, and is preparing a full new season.
Center Stage, which became an independent theater company in 1994, broke down its $9 million goal in three ways:
- $2.5 million “to launch the 25/26 season by August 30 or the theater will cease operations.”
- $2.5 million “to eliminate the accumulated deficit and build an operating cash reserve by December 2025.”
- $4 million “of the continued support we receive in our annual operating gifts from individuals, foundations, corporations that PCS relies on every season, by June 2026.”
Portland Center Stage opened its 2024-25 season with the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and has enjoyed good reviews for it and later shows such as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Edward Albee’s American classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Light, and the current The Brothers Size. The season continues with the farce Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson and a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
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“We did have ambitious goals for this season,” Wolf said. “Sweeney did very well … and then the week of the [November national] election, we had a sharp turndown.” Some regular donors, she said, have told her they’re holding off on donations for now because of uncertainty over the nation’s political and economic future.
Contrary to President Trump’s war on DEI, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Center Stage has made a point of being broadly inclusive, telling stories that reflect the many views, races, genders, and personal realities of people in the United States. “That’s our currency here. Is putting humanity onstage,” Wolf said. “We’re not backing down from that.”
“We’ve had some people walk away” because of the company’s programming, she added. But while the kinds of stories the company tells may be causing a few viewers to disengage, she argues, they are also helping the company to build a new, perhaps younger and more racially and culturally diverse audience eager to see their own lives reflected and to hear about the lives of people not like them. “We do see people leaning into this work,” Wolf said. “We see people really wanting and appreciating it.”
Center Stage’s current season was budgeted for $8.9 million, and with some cuts during the season, “we anticipate landing below that both in expenses and revenue,” Wolf said, adding: “For ’25-26, we’re working on a budget that sits at $8 million, with a net surplus on the year of $300,000.”
Just a little more than a year ago, in March of 2024, things looked much rosier when Center Stage became one of three national theater companies to be awarded $1 million each by the Mellon Foundation. “I’m so grateful to the Mellon Foundation,” Wolf said, adding that the money helped cover costs for the 2023-24 season and the earlier parts of the current season.
But other things have hurt the company’s bottom line. Early in the pandemic Center Stage’s bank line of credit was cut off, taking away a good deal of financial flexibility. “We had a $750,000 line of credit,” Wolf said. “That was integral. And it was used very responsibly.”
The pandemic itself had a huge effect. The year 2020, Wolf said, was “poised to be record-setting. Then, boom.” And certain things keep Center Stage’s costs, like other large companies’ across the nation, higher than small companies’. Salary costs are higher, which is a good thing: Center Stage has contracts with five unions, representing performers and stagehands and others, and those higher salaries allow the workers to live a life in the arts.
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More recently, the evisceration of the National Endowment for the Arts and the resulting cancellation of promised grants has had its effect. Like many companies in Oregon and across the nation, Portland Center Stage lost some promised money, but only half as much as it might have: Of a $30,000 promised grant, Center Stage had already been reimbursed $15,000; the remaining $15,000 that was to be paid later was canceled. “The gutting of the art and the gagging of the theater,” Wolf said, is a huge problem.
And the company has no reserve fund, which leaves it in danger when unanticipated expenses occur. Building a reserve is part of the plan for the $9 million drive.
Center Stage began its current season with a $1.4 million deficit. “Acknowledging this challenging financial position upon entering the current season,” the company said in a statement released Thursday morning, “PCS cut $600,000 in expenses and has raised $1 million in extraordinary revenue funds so far, with the support of incredible philanthropists in our community.
“However, ticket revenue has been an ongoing challenge this season, and as we continue the work of growing our audience, PCS must build the operating cash we need to move forward with resilience and fortitude.”
The same release quoted Wolf: “We are doing everything in our power, while making sure to keep the heart of the work on stage, in education, and while keeping community programs thriving and thrilling. We’re cutting costs. We’re restructuring. We’re investing in smarter strategies and expanding partnerships. But we cannot do it alone. We need our community now more than ever. We know we matter to Portland, and we want to be around for generations to come.”
The Armory, near the south end of the Pearl District, provides some advantages. Center Stage moved into it in 2006, after the building’s $36 million transformation into a vibrant performance center, with the 590-seat U.S. Bank Main Stage and the smaller, flexible Ellyn Bye Studio, which can seat up to 199. The Armory’s 20-year mortgage is almost paid off. “Remarkably, we’re on the tail end of that,” Wolf said. “Less than $100,000 to go.”
The Ellyn Bye also helps the company’s bottom line by being rented out frequently to other companies to produce their own shows. Center Stage’s projected seven-show 2025-26 season would be entirely on The Armory’s Main Stage, with the studio available to other companies to rent.
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The 2025-26 lineup — Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust; Lauren Gunderson’s stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women; the Olivier Award-winning comedy The Play That Goes Wrong; the musical Lizard Boy; James Ijames’s Hamlet-inspired Fat Ham; the musical comedy Kristina Wong, #FoodBankInfluencer; and the return of Portland favorite singer/writer Storm Large in a new show, Storm Large Makes It Home — includes a pair of co-productions. Fat Ham will be co-produced with Portland Playhouse, and The Play That Goes Wrong is a co-production with Seattle Rep, to be directed by Dámaso Rodríguez, Seattle rep’s artistic director and former artistic director of Portland’s Artists Rep. Co-producing cuts costs for all companies involved.
The bottom line is, Center Stage needs more money, and is implementing a five-year strategic plan “to ensure long-term stability and health.” The company lists the plan’s measures:
- Generating an annual net surplus of $300,000-$500,000 to eliminate the deficit and build reserves.
- Opening our doors to local performing arts organizations and business partnerships to boost earned revenue.
- Collaborating with local businesses to strengthen mutual impact in the Pearl District.
- Launching the Save Portland Center Stage campaign to secure our future.
And Center Stage lists ways to give and support:
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