Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

Here are some of Portland’s performing arts highlights for March and April (also see music highlights):

“The Whipping Man”
Feb. 26-March 24
Portland Center Stage, 117 N.W. 11th Ave.
The Civil War is suddenly in the national consciousness, thanks to “Lincoln”� and “Django Unchained,”� and this odd and very successful play by Matthew Lopez is set in the aftermath, when a Jewish Confederate returns home, just in time for Passover, to find the family mansion occupied by two former slaves, who were also raised Jewish.

“Blood Knot”
Feb. 27-March 17
Profile Theatre, 3430 S.E. Belmont St.

Profile Theatre (like the Signature Theatre in New York) chooses one playwright every year to build its season around, and this year’s is the great South African writer, Athol Fugard, whose descriptions of the moral tensions of living under apartheid are among the very best we have.

MOMIX
Feb. 27-March 2
White Bird, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway

Moses Pendleton, who was a co-founder of the dance acrobats of Pilobolus, formed MOMIX in 1981 to extend his experiments in movement and illusion. Here, the company will perform the kaleidoscopic “Botanica,”� with puppetry by Portland’s Michael Curry (“The Lion King”).

“Mother Teresa Is Dead”
March 14-April 7
Portland Playhouse, 602 N.E. Prescott St.

In British playwright Helen Edmundson’s play, an Englishwoman leaves her family to work on child poverty issues in India, creating inner tensions that others attempt to exploit. Portland Playhouse is a small neighborhood theater that packs a serious punch, and this play, starring Nikki Weaver and Gretchen Corbett, will likely extend that reputation.

“The Gin Game”
March 26-April 28
Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St.

D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer winner is deeply associated with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, who starred in the two-hander on Broadway in 1977. Here, those roles will be played by Allen Nause, the outgoing artistic director of the company, and Vana O’Brien, two decorated Portland actors with the depth to journey into Coburn’s script.

Spring Performances
March 28-30
Northwest Dance Project, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway

This Portland dance company has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years as its dancers have developed and taken on demanding choreography, often world premieres. Company artistic director Sarah Slipper and Patrick Delcroix supply the new dances in this concert, and the company brings back a favorite, Wen Wei Wang’s “Chi.”�

Paul Taylor Dance Company
April 4-6
White Bird, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway

During his lifetime, the great choreographer Paul Taylor has moved from being the enfant terrible of modern dance to one of its central institutions. The company arrives with a full repertoire to perform over three nights at the Newmark, the right scale for the nuances of Taylor’s work.

“Clybourne Park”
April 6-May 5
Portland Center Stage, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.

Bruce Norris’s play about race in a Chicago neighborhood takes off from Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun”� and then jumps forward to the present day. It hit the Olivier/Tony/Pulitzer award trifecta and receives a full Center Stage main-stage production, directed by company artistic director Chris Coleman.

“The Aliens”
April 12-May 4
Third Rail Rep, CoHo Productions, 2257 N.W. Raleigh St.

Annie Baker’s play about millennials finding their way shared an Obie Award with another of her plays, “Circle Mirror Transformation,” announcing her as a major writing talent. Third Rail Rep will produce the show in the coziest of confines, CoHo Productions, which should suit this gentle investigation.

“American Music Festival”
April 18-27
Oregon Ballet Theatre, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway

Portland’s biggest dance company moves from its usual home in Keller Auditorium to the more intimate Newmark Theatre with a program that includes two world premieres and another recent dance to music by John Adams. Choreographer Trey McIntyre, who has a long history with OBT, teams up with the indie band Fleet Foxes in one of those world premieres, while the other features Swedish dance maker Pontus Lidberg’s collaboration with Portland-born composer Ryan Francis. Matthew Neenan’s “At the Border”� set to Adams’ score rounds out the evening.

“Ten Chimneys”
April 23-May 26
Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St.

Artists Rep will give Jeffrey Hatcher’s play about theater people its West Coast premiere. The title comes from the name of the estate of Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt in Wisconsin, where the play is set and where rehearsals for “The Sea Gull”� and theater family love triangles intersect. The company’s new artistic director, Damaso Rodriquez, directs.

“The People’s Republic of Portland”
April 23-June 16
Portland Center Stage, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.

Satirist Lauren Weedman was commissioned by Center Stage to write about nothing other than Portland, and she’s been here researching off and on for more than a year. Expect her one-woman show to be funny and more than a little pointed.

Tags: dance, drama, play, plays, stage, Theater, theatre

////// By Oregon Arts Watch / / Add Comment (1)