In the world of theater, moving forward is necessary for survival. This might be true for most industries, but in the nickel-and-dime business of theater, it becomes necessary for companies tonot only to expect change but to embrace it; to utilize it as a resource and act upon it as an opportunity.

In 2025, Theatre Diaspora, Oregon’s only theater company that focuses on artists and stories from Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities (AANHPI), found itself at that crossroads, where moving forward was an imperative for sustainability — and they decided to start stepping. 

For Theatre Diaspora, 2025 has been a year of dynamic and multi-pronged action. They’ve adopted a new producing schedule to give their seasons more structure. They’re taking a fresh approach to expanding the community outreach and engagement that has always been a hallmark of Theatre Diaspora’s ethos, including extensive collaboration with, among other things, other theater companies around the city. They launched an exciting new initiative to include their audience in the visioning of their future. 

If that sounds like a lot, it is. And holding that breadth of vision while simultaneously clarifying their focus is why Theatre Diaspora has made its most significant move: altering the form of the company itself, shifting to a shared leadership model, dividing administrative responsibilities between Diaspora stalwart, original member and managing director for the past several years Samson Syharath, and educator, author, director and dramaturg Justine Nakase.

Diaspora has been around for more than a decade and was founded by the inexhaustible Dmae Lo Roberts, who gave the company its name, with original members Syharath, Heath Hyun, Chisao Hata, Wynee Hu, and Larry Toda. Roberts — an award-winning radio host, actor, writer, producer/host of the podcast Stage and Studio, and whatever-else-she-puts-her-mind-to — stewarded Diaspora for years under the umbrella of her production company MediaRites. Eventually, it became time for Theatre Diaspora to become its own 501(c)3, and with Roberts’ guidance and support over the next couple of years, Syharath shifted into the managing director position.

When this early tectonic shift in the history of Theatre Diaspora was going on, there was, of course, also the crack in the world that was COVID. While across the country larger theatrical institutions were collapsing and going under, established regional theaters found themselves likewise scrambling to find funding and rebuild audiences lost to the lockdown and streaming services. Fledgling companies like Theatre Diaspora struggled to find footing and a direction. Syharath needed support, and board president Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly had an idea. 

Enter, Justine Nakase. 

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Nakase, like Duffly, is both an educator and a theater practitioner. Initially, she served as secretary and treasurer on Theatre Diaspora’s board. Duffly and Syharath had both been impressed by Nakase’s energy and imagination regarding the future of Diaspora, and Duffly encouraged the two of them to get together and talk about the possibility of sharing leadership of the company. The coffee date that ensued sounds like the kind of quiet event that years later, Theatre Diaspora followers will still talk about — the small moments that alter the trajectory of an organization. 

“She was so professional and so knowledgeable,” says Syharath, “I knew I wanted to work with her in some capacity. We talked about how having only one person in leadership is a hindrance, and we decided to open it up and start a co-leadership model.”

“Samson being in place and knowing the work that he’s been doing was reassuring that it wouldn’t be just me running a theater company,” says Nakase. “His experience and knowledge in terms of professional practices is invaluable.” 

Further, their plan was to try something a bit more organic than the usual regional-theater hierarchical framework. “Rather than following along more traditional lines of artistic director and executive director,” concurs Nakase, “we’re sharing those administrative responsibilities on more of a project-by-project basis.”

In the un-nuanced version, Nakase will be spearheading the literary management and artistic programming, and Syharath will be overseeing the community outreach and engagement. But in this vision of Theatre Diaspora, the two aspects aren’t separate. “The political work and the community work,” says Nakase, “are part of the artmaking.” 

As impactful as that coffee date was, the board retreat where Theatre Diaspora hashed out their plans for how they would move forward into the new year and beyond. “We talked about, ‘Who are we?’” says Duffly, “’What is Theatre Diaspora? What’s our structure? What does our season look like? What do we want to be doing in the next five years?” 

One of the primary ideas that came out of that retreat was that Theatre Diaspora wanted to open up the company to the community. They felt that, inadvertently, they were too closed off. They wanted the community of Theatre Diaspora — artists, audiences, donors, plumbers, whoever was interested in the stories that they had to tell — to participate actively in the work they do. The question became, how to let the community know their input was wanted, and then put it into action? 

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“Justine had this really cool idea,” says Duffly, “to have a people’s choice process. We put a call out to our list. Pitch us ideas. Did you write a play? Is there a role you want to do? Do you want to direct something? Anybody can submit a project.”

The only qualification was that the writer had to be part of the AANHPI community. Out of all the submissions, the leadership body selected four projects. 

What ensued was the company’s first annual pitch party. The Theatre Diaspora community gathered at Artists Repertory Theatre, and the person who submitted a selected project pitched it, and had actors read or perform ten-minute excerpts. Then, the room voted on the one project they wanted to see brought to fruition as a full production. The endeavor was such a success that Diaspora will continue to use it as part of their season selection process moving forward. This year, the play that the Diaspora faithful chose for the final reading of the year was Min Kahng’s The Last Tram. 

The plan is to have two or three enhanced staged readings every season, and one full mainstage production. Next July that full production — the first since the excellent The Brothers Paranormal in 2019 — will be Carla Ching’s The Two Kids that Blow Shit Up, directed by Lava Alapai and featuring Barbie Wu. 

Two Kids is a relative new work, first produced a decade ago. And although new work undoubtedly will be a focus of Theatre Diaspora, Nakase has no intention of losing sight of the canon of works by AANHPI playwrights that have come before. 

“So often, particularly in minority communities,” says Nakase, “folks respond to the idea of the new voice, but then the new voice gets dropped away and the idea of restaging or revisiting those works doesn’t happen. There are so many names in that first, second and even third wave of AANHPI playwrights that have a premier, that have a moment, and then are just never looked at again by theaters who are looking for the next hot thing.”

Some of these names are more familiar to the general theatergoing public, like David Henry Hwang. Others might be less well known, but no less intriguing and exciting: names like Lane Nishikawa, Karen Tei Yamashita and Philip Kan Gotanda, who had a reading with Diaspora years ago. “We’re losing a lineage of playwrighting,” continues Nakase, “and a literal history of stories and memories. We want to balance this idea of development of new voices with the reclaiming of, what are our legacies, and not letting those be lost.”

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Since the early days of Theatre Diaspora, community engagement has been a defining principle of the company. For much of that time, that outreach centered on post-show discussions. While not losing that, Syharath is focusing on expanding the concept of what that engagement and outreach for Theatre Diaspora looks like. 

“This coming year,” he explains, “we’ve got collaborations coming up with Profile Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre and Portland Revels. This is going to be a big year for us in terms of opening up our audiences and who is engaging with us. Different medias as well. Profile is opening [Mike Lew’s] Tiger Style in January. We’re working with them on their affinity nights as well as some pre-show entertainment.

“We’re also working with their Community Profile writing program for an AAPI affinity group writers’ group. We’re bringing in multiple well-known Asian playwrights from across the country, either digitally or in person, to teach workshops and foster an educative workspace for local AAPI writers. In April we’ll have our collaborative project with Portland Revels. It centers Asian American experiences. We’re working with a local playwright, Jhus Custodio, and it’s a musical, which is really exciting.”  

Theatre Diaspora’s Ten-Minute Tapestry: AAPI Writer’s Showcase, traditionally a part of the Fertile Ground Festival, is now moving to Artists Rep and will happen during the Rep’s February 2026 run of Racecar Racecar Racecar. The pitch party was hosted at Artists Rep, and The Two Kids that Blow Shit Up will also be performed there. “Rather than charging us a fee for the use of their space,” says Nakase, “what we’re doing is, we are funding associate designers and choreographers on ART shows. Those are opportunities for AANHPI artists in town. The idea of reciprocity instead of fees.” 

The spark for this collaborative mindset was also struck during that seminal board retreat that shaped so many things. One of the questions Theatre Diaspora had to answer was, was Diaspora still necessary? 

“That was a big thought,” says Syharath. “Now that larger theater companies are doing Asian American work, are we needed?” It’s the kind of question, frankly, that only communities outside of the dominant cultural paradigm ever have to answer. White theaters don’t ask if they’re necessary because there are other theater companies doing work by white playwrights. 

If the response to the question “Are we still necessary?” was simply that Theatre Diaspora had decided it’s best not to leave their theatrical heritage in the hands of mainstream regional theater, that would be understandable. But Syharath had a decidedly more generous and profound response. “For us,” he says, “the answer was yes. We don’t have to do it alone. Collaboration is something we thrive on in the theater community.”

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When you talk to Syharath, to Nakase, to board chair Duffly, the the overarching impression you come away with is that there is a lot to look forward to for Theatre Diaspora, and their plan is that the rest of the greater Portland area will see the same thing and take part. 

“The energy that Samson and I have together is really mobilizing, and we’re getting busy,” says Nakase, “which is an exciting thing to be.”