Theater

Stage & Studio: Vanport Mosaic turns 10!

The "memory activism" festival, established to tell stories of the lasting cultural effects of the 1948 Vanport Flood, continues with a rich tapestry of music and theater. Dmae Lo Roberts talks with the Mosaic's leaders and co-founders.

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Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon

Believe the HYPE: Bag&Baggage’s new youth performance group exemplifies a company that looks to theater’s future

The Hillsboro Youth Performance Ensemble offers youth hands-on experience in theater craft and management through a paid workforce development program.

A brilliant ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ at Portland Playhouse (even with its NEA grant pulled)

As its grant goes on the chopping block, August Wilson's American classic gets a transcendent performance in a tale of people wrestling with profound human questions.

Portland Center Stage launches $9 million emergency campaign

The city's biggest theater company aims to shore up its finances by June 2026 – and needs $2.5 million by the end of August to keep its doors open and begin its next season.

DramaWatch:  ‘The Other Place’; Portland Playhouse campaigns to aid Oregon arts groups; Fuse’s OUTwright Festival

Plus: More openings and continuing shows; Native Theater Project awards; a look ahead as theaters begin to announce their 2025-26 seasons.

‘The Storyteller’: Starlight and stories

Premiering at Artists Repertory Theatre, Sara Jean Accuardi’s play explores the complexities of life and of storytelling, which is both dangerous and delightful.

‘The Brothers Size’: Heartbreak, erasure, resilience and connection

Tarell Alvin McCraney's poetical play at Portland Center Stage embodies memories of prison and mystical characters from the Yoruba traditions of West Africa.

‘Groundhog Day’: Worth repeating

The lively and thoughtful stage musical, based on the 1993 movie, creates its own magic at Lakewood Theatre.

Star Power: How Rogue Theater found its voice at Ashland’s Grizzly Peak Winery

The company, which features many current and former Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors, draws a loyal and growing audience for contemporary plays in the heart of Shakespeare territory.

Stage & Studio: Sara Jean Accuardi on launching ‘The Storyteller’

In her new podcast, Dmae Lo Roberts talks with the playwright about her world premiere at Artists Rep and the play's inspiration in Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

A Grimm ‘Iron Jo’: Send in the puppets

... and the bucket, and a hero and a villain, and a few good songs and an ode to fairy tales and the Brothers Grimm in Elliot Lorenc's new stage spectacle at Bag&Baggage.

Fertile Ground: ‘Who’s Who’ across the decades

In Marshall Welch's promising play from Rogue Pack, two girls "meet" through notes left 70 years ago in a library copy of "Who's Who."

DramaWatch: Meaning and  music in ‘Another Dialogue’ and ‘Ballad of Iron Jo’

Music is key in productions from Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble and Bag&Baggage. Plus: "Joe Turner," "Storyteller," "Brothers Size," "Six" and other openings, continuing shows, Oregon Children's Theater's emergency fund drive and more theater news.

Fertile Ground wrap-up: Four shows from a vibrant festival

"Rogues," "545," "Unbound: A Bookish Musical," and "Camp Fire Stories" offered a rich array of theater at this year’s festival of new works.

Salomé’s spellbinding strangeness

Imago Theatre’s mesmerizing production embraces the wonderful weirdness of Oscar Wilde’s verse play … and then some.

The bouyant absurdity of ‘Melancholy Play’

A parachute keeps the comic action moving in Blinking Eye Theatre’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s oddly uplifting play about sadness.

Fertile Ground: Homegrown plays, west of the hills

This year's greater Portland festival of new works inspires creation of original theater pieces in Beaverton, Hillsboro and beyond.

‘You Can’t Be Serious’: Andrea Parson’s solo show inspired by her sister’s death comes to Astoria and Hillsboro

The choreographer will present her award-winning performance of dance and storytelling May 2 and 3 at Ten Fifteen Productions.

Catherine E. Coulson: ‘The Log Lady’ and so much more

The Ashland Independent Film Festival will honor the "Twin Peaks" star and one of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's most beloved artists with the Oregon premiere of the documentary “I Know Catherine, the Log Lady.”

A farewell to James Edmondson, longtime star at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Edmondson, who began his long OSF career in 1972 by playing Petruchio in "Taming of the Shrew," died at home in Ashland at age 86, days after the death of fellow festival veteran Denis Arndt.

‘Life of Pi:’ A shipwreck and a tiger’s tale

The Broadway in Portland show at Keller Auditorium sates our hunger for spectacle by offering a sumptuous feast of projections and puppetry.

Spark Plug: Taking risks, building trust

Loading its sets in and out of a coffee shop via U-Haul with each performance, the intimate theater collective brings new and homegrown theater works to Beaverton.

Drew Pisarra: How (and why) I updated Oscar Wilde’s ‘Salome’ for Imago Theatre

Wilde's wildly witty 1890s play, a scandal in its time, is rooted in 19th century melodrama. Pisarra's adaptation, opening April 11, keeps that in mind.

High times, low comedy: Theatre in the Grove’s ‘Reefer Madness: The Musical’ spoofs drug war hysteria

Campy modern musical adaptation of the notorious 1936 film brings illegal giggles to Forest Grove.

DramaWatch: Rain, shine, & Fertile Ground

Oregon theaters will flourish under an invigorating shower of shows this month, with big attractions like Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” at Imago, the touring “ Life of Pi,” and the annual Fertile Ground festival of new works, April 4-19.

Oregon theater giant Denis Arndt, 1939-2025

The Northwest actor, who spent 15 seasons as a star at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and co-founded Seattle's Intiman Theatre, leaves a sterling legacy.

‘Julius Caesar’ & ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’: Ashland reinvents the classics

With a women and nonbinary cast for "Caesar" and an "Earnest" transported to the Malay Peninsula, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival gives a fresh face to familiar tales.

Stage & Studio: Exploring personal diasporas at Fertile Ground

Dmae Lo Roberts talks in this podcast with Laotian-American theatermaker Samson Syharath and Indo-American writer/actor Jane Vogel Mantiri about their bicultural roots and their solo shows in Fertile Ground.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival strikes gold with a pair of plays about Black life

James Ijames' "Fat Ham" and August Wilson's "Jitney" kick off the Ashland festival's 90th season along with "Julius Caesar" and "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Fertile Ground: An early look at three new plays in this year’s festival

In Portland's festival of dozens of new works April 4-19, "Conciliation" reckons with the continuing effects of the Holocaust, "Rogues" mixes humor with an unflinching look at the realities of caregiving, and "Shelf Life" takes a musical look into one woman’s past.