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This page was last updated on: January 18, 2010
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For Tickets to the Broadway Season:
Call 503.241.1802 and ask for the "ASL Section"
Dates/Interpreters subject to change.
Portland Center Stage
Interpreted Performances
2009-2010 Season for Broadway Across America - Portland
Xanadu:Interpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance:Jan. 12-17Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 7:30pm
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 7:30pmLegally Blonde: Interpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance: Feb. 16-21Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 7:30pm
Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 7:30pmAugust: Osage CountyInterpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance: Oct 20-25Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:30pm
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:30pmCatsInterpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance:March 23-28Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 7:30pm
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 7:30pmDreamgirls Interpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance:April 6-11 Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7:30pm
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7:30pmCirqueDreams: IlluminationInterpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance:April 20-25TBA if interpreting will be necessary
TBA if interpreting will be necessaryThe Lion King: Interpreted Performance:
Interpreted Performance:June 16-July 11June 24 and July 8, 2010
June 24 and July 8, 20102009-2010 at Oregon Children's Theatre
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
October 31-November 22, 2009
Interpreted Performance: TBA
Sideways Stories from Wayside School
May 15-June 6, 2010
Interpreted Performance: TBA
The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
February 27 - March 21, 2010
Interpreted Performance: TBA
Giggle, Giggle, Quack
January 30-February 21, 2010
Interpreted Performance: TBA
Small Steps
April 24-May 16, 2010
Interpreted Performance: TBA
2009-2010 Portland Center Stage Season
Information regarding Interpreted Performances has not been published yet. Keep checking back for more information.
Ragtime
Book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty
Directed by Chris Coleman
(Main Stage)
Interpreted Performance: October 8, 2009
Interpreters: Zach Wineman, Jean A. Miller Intern: Krista Harmon
Sign Coach: KatyBeth Anthony
E.L. Doctorow’s sweeping novel comes vividly to life in this Tony Award-winning musical, set against the backdrop of the ragtime craze in New York City. In it, three disparate families intertwine: a wealthy white couple; a Jewish immigrant father and his motherless daughter; and an African American ragtime musician who teaches them all about the surprising interconnections of the human heart, the limitations of justice and the unsettling consequences of dreams permanently deferred. Historical figures like Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan and Emma Goldman also inhabit this stirring epic, but it is American popular music that carries the story, including marches, cakewalks and — of course – ragtime.
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Ben Franklin: Unplugged
Written and performed by Josh Kornbluth
In the Ellyn Bye Studio
Interpreted Performance: October 15, 2009
Interpreter: Tammera Richards
Sign Coach: Patrick Fischer
“This ‘Ben’ is healthy, hilarious and wise…a hilariously disarming, enchanting, and ingenious tale.”
— Rob Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
Gazing into the bathroom mirror one morning while shaving, Josh Kornbluth realizes that he looks remarkably like the guy on the $100 bill. Like any good Jewish son, he immediately calls his mother. From there he becomes obsessed with what it means to be a founding father, especially when your own father/son relationship (Ben had an illegitimate son named William who was a British loyalist during the Revolutionary War) is more than a bit strained. Part “History Detectives” and part embarrassingly hilarious autobiography, Kornbluth’s resulting investigation of the man behind the famous spectacles will take you from the hallowed halls of academia to Kornbluth’s richly comic interactions with his mother Bunny and Aunt Birdie, sharing along the way his discoveries about America’s history, family foibles, and the surprises beneath the surface of even our most familiar American tall tales
Special Holiday Offerings!!!
This year the holidays will feature TWO PCS favorite productions, both presented outside of the regular subscription packages.
A Christmas Carol
Adapted by Mead Hunter from the novella by Charles Dickens
Directed by Rose Riordan
(Main Stage)
Interpreted Performance: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Interpreters: Dot Hearn, Steve Nail
Sign Coach: James Rae
Already a Portland holiday tradition, this year Associate Artistic Director Rose Riordan will add her own unique stamp to Mead Hunter’s original adaptation, starting by casting of Portland’s favorite weird and wise old man, Ebbe Roe Smith, as Scrooge. This timeless tale of the gifts that become available when you cross the divide that separates neighbor from neighbor will retain all the sparkle and spookiness Portland has come to expect… but look for the director of The Receptionist and How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found to add a few intriguing new low lights to the rich texture of the production.
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The Santaland Diaries
By David Sedaris
Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello
(Ellyn Bye Studio)
Interpreted Performance: December 17, 2009
Interpreter: Tammera Richards Understudy: Dot Hearn
Understudy: Dot HearnSign Coach: Patrick Fischer
Based on the outlandish true chronicles of David Sedaris’ experience as Crumpet the Elf in Macy’s Santaland display, this hilarious cult classic riffs on a few of Sedaris’ truly odd encounters with his fellow man during the height of the holiday crunch. NPR humorist and best-selling author of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris has become one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers. This production will include two late night 10:00 pm performances on December 10th and 17th.
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Snow Falling on Cedars
adapted for the stage by Kevin McKeon
from the book by David Guterson
(Main Stage)
Interpreted Performance: January 28, 2010
Interpreters: Zach Wineman, Erin Trine
Sign Coach: James Rae
Adapted for the stage by Seattle’s Book-it Repertory Theatre (the people who brought us Pride and Prejudice), Northwestern author David Guterson’s haunting story takes place in 1954, on a Puget Sound island so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. The island’s white and Japanese-American communities have lived in quiet but uneasy peace, even through the dark days of WWII internment camps and widespread anti-Japanese war hysteria. But when Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with murder and it turns out that his wife’s spurned white lover Ishmael holds the information that could set him free, the island’s secret prejudices, jealousies and ancient grievances threaten to boil over into an act of injustice from which there can be no return.
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The Receptionist
By Adam Bock
In the Ellyn Bye Studio
Interpreted Performance: February 11, 2010
Interpreters: Felice Shays, Tina Buchanan
Sign Coach: Justin Coleman
“Not only is this play the beneficiary of stellar acting and direction, it’s also another deceptively mordant comedy. You might nickname this one ‘Torturously funny.’”
— Marty Hughley, The Oregonian
Beverly the receptionist is definitely a woman in charge—she’s the first in the door, she makes the coffee, she has all the pens. Her co-workers … not so much. Beverly holds their lives and schedules together Mr. Dart from the central office arrives unexpectedly and Beverly is left wondering just what sort of company she works for and what her role really is. This darkly comic exploration of a seemingly mundane environment, the office, reunites director Rose Riordan and playwright Adam Bock, author of The Thugs, produced at PCS in 2007. The Receptionist was the hit of Portland’s fringe scene at CoHo Theater in the fall of 2008, and PCS is thrilled to present this stellar work to an even larger audience.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps
adapted by Patrick Barlow
from the book by John Buchan
On the Main Stage
Interpreted Performance: March 11, 2010
Interpreters: Marie Groshans-Burkhart, Krista Harmon
Sign Coach: KatyBeth Anthony
Whodunit meets hilarious in this recklessly theatrical riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic 1935 masterpiece which in turn was based on John Buchan’s spy genre classic. In it a handsome hero (complete with stiff-upperlip, pencil moustache and British gung-ho attitude) encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents, and, of course, devastatingly beautiful women, all while trying to escape from an accidental entanglement with a deadly group of spies called the 39 Steps. A quick witted and acrobatic troupe of four actors will create dozens of locations and over 130 roles in this rollicking evening of winking wisecracks and wow-inducing stage wizardry.
The Chosen
adapted by Aaron Posner
from the Chaim Potok novel
(Ellyn Bye Studio)
Interpreted Performance: April 22, 2010
Interpreters: Steve Nail, Felice Shays
Sign Coach: James Rae
This award-winning adaptation from the award-winning novel is the coming-of-age story of two boys growing up in two very different Jewish communities—“five blocks and a world apart”—in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the 1940s. In it, Danny, the brilliant and curious son of a Hasidic rabbi, struggles with his longing to know more of the world and his father’s unwillingness to speak to him when they are not studying the Torah. After a heated fight at a baseball game, Danny befriends Reuven, an Orthodox Jew from a nearby neighborhood who becomes a friend and a partner in investigating both their shared Jewish heritage and their wildly divergent family environments and hopes for the future. When Danny’s father prohibits him from speaking to Reuven because of a political disagreement about a nascent Israeli state, both boys learn that the bonds of religion, friendship and community are both more brittle and more binding than they could have possibly imagined.
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Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure
Written and performed by Mike Schlitt
In the Ellyn Bye Studio
Interpreted Performance: May 6, 2010
Interpreter: Tammera Richards (understudy: Marie Groshans-Burkhart)
Sign Coach: Patrick Fischer
“Bollywood meets Waiting for Guffman.”
— Backstage West
“A feat of brilliance.”
— LA Weekly
Mike directs a Neil Simon play in India. Life crisis ensues. In 1999 Mike Schlitt accepted an offer to direct Neil Simon’s They’re Playing Our Song on a four-city tour across India. The sheer incongruity of it all — Mahatma Gandhi and “Doc” Simon singing and dancing their way through the Great Sub-Continent — was just too tantalizing to resist. Mike took the job, brought along a filmmaker to document the experience, and soon found himself in the throws of a devastating life crisis the likes of which he is still struggling to claw his way out of. Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure is an epic tale of clashing cultures and gastric distress. It’s a play about a film about a play, chronicling an artist’s wrong turn off the road to success and the strange, surreal and terrifying journey to find his way back
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
lyrics and music by William Finn
book by Rachel Sheinkin
(Main Stage)
Interpreted Performance: June 10, 2010
Interpreters: Felice Shays, Krista Harmon
Sign Coach: KatyBeth Anthony
Rounding out the season is a hilarious tale of overacheiver’s angst from the author of Falsettos and A New Brain. This unlikeliest of hit musicals draws the audience directly into the action, bringing 4 nerdtastic audience members onto the stage each night to compete alongside some of America’s unlikeliest kid heroes: a quirky yet charming mix of awkward outsiders, divided by their stereotypes (the hyper-achieving Asian kid, the over-precious daughter of gay dads, the goober snorting nerd, the underachieving hippie kid) and united by the discovery that a spelling bee may be the only place on the planet where they can both stand out and fit in.
Season subscriptions open for sale on February 23rd. Want to subscribe RIGHT NOW? Call the box office at 503.445.3700 and they’ll get you all set up.
Single tickets range from $24 to $64 with student rates available. The night of show Rush discount returns this year, with a slightly higher $15 ticket price.
Evening performances in both the Main Stage and the Studio begin at 7:30 pm, with weekday matinees at noon and weekend matinees at 2 pm.
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a grand, gripping new play which tells the story of the Westons, a large extended clan that comes together at their rural Oklahoma homestead when the alcoholic patriarch disappears. Forced to confront unspoken truths and astonishing secrets, the family must also contend with Violet, a pill-popping, deeply unsettled woman at the center of this storm. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a rare theatrical event—a large-scale work filled with unforgettable characters, a powerful tale told with unflinching honesty.
Academy® Award-winner Estelle Parsons stars as the family matriarch Violet, a role she is currently playing on Broadway where The New York Times raved, “Estelle Parsons gives a superb performance … sends chills down your spine. It may prove to be a crowning moment in an illustrious career.”
The New York Times cheers, “AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is flat-out, without qualification, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years,” and Time magazine named AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY the “#1 Show of the Year!”
PUT A BUNCH of smash hit songs, Tony® Award-nominee Douglas Carter Beane and the cutest couple in town into a Broadway musical comedy blender, and what do you get? “Heaven on Wheels” says The New York Times. Taking audiences back to 1980 California, this hilarious new musical follows the beautiful Kira, who travels to earth to inspire a struggling young artist named Sonny, as she helps this aspiring painter to find his voice, discover true love and build the world’s first roller disco (not necessarily in that order).
It’s here, and it’s “AN ELLE OF A SHOW” (Time magazine). The hilarious MGM film is now a smash hit musical, and now LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL is coming to you. Legally Blonde The Musical follows sorority star Elle Woods, an underestimated blonde who doesn’t take “no” for an answer. When her boyfriend dumps her for someone more “serious,” Elle puts down the credit card, hits the books, and sets out to go where no Delta Nu has gone before: Harvard Law. Along the way, Elle proves that being true to yourself never goes out of style. After turning Broadway and MTV hot pink, this “Feel-Good Song and Dance Juggernaut” (New York magazine) is “The Best New Musical Around!” (WOR).
CATCH THE DREAM! Direct from the world famous Apollo Theatre in New York City, a brand new, sensational stage production of DREAMGIRLS comes to Portland! Full of onstage joy and backstage drama, DREAMGIRLS tells the rags-to-riches story of a 1960s motown girl group, and the triumphs and tribulations that come with fame and fortune. With music by Academy® Award nominee Henry Krieger and lyrics and book by Tony® and Grammy®-winning Tom Eyen, DREAMGIRLS features the unforgettable hits: “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” “One Night Only,” and “Listen.” Broadway director and choreographer Robert Longbottom and co-choreographer Shane Sparks (TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance”), along with some of Broadway’s top designers, re-envision this Tony® and Academy® Award-winning musical so it sparkles like never before!
In the spirit of the enormously successful Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, the only show of its kind to ever perform on Broadway, comes the newest stage spectacle from Cirque Dreams, created and directed by Neil Goldberg. Cirque Dreams Illumination is a bustling city of incredible dreamers set in a landscape of towering buildings and infinite possibilities. Ablaze with lights and activities, objects and shapes transform into windows and stairways that lead beyond imagination.
This action-packed Cirque Dream is enhanced with over 100 inventive costumes and set in a fantastical cityscape of dimension and special effects. Cirque Dreams Illumination will surpass its “jaw dropping, family friendly spectacle” proclamation by the Los Angeles Times and exhilarate audiences of all ages.
There’s no better way to introduce your family to the wonders of live theater than with the magic, the mystery, the memory of CATS . What began as a musical about cats after Andrew Lloyd Webber picked up a book of poems in an airport bookshop has become one of the longest running shows in Broadway’s history. Winner of seven Tony® Awards including Best Musical, CATS features 20 of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s timeless melodies, including the hit song, “Memory.”
We are delighted to announce the triumphant return of Disney’s THE LION KING. Since the show sold-out in 2005, audiences have continued to request its return. Reserve seats with your order! Plus, purchase additional tickets now for friends & family for any performance.
Experience the phenomenon of Disney’s THE LION KING. Marvel at the breathtaking spectacle of animals brought to life by award-winning director Julie Taymor, whose visual images for this show you’ll remember forever. Thrill to the pulsating rhythms of the African Pridelands and an unforgettable score including Elton John and Tim Rice’s Oscar® -winning song “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” and “Circle of Life.” Let your imagination run wild at the Tony® Award-winning Broadway sensation Newsweek calls “a landmark event in entertainment.”
For information on interpreted performances, please call 503-228-9571
A golden ticket is Charlie Bucket’s passport into Willy Wonka’s wacky world of wondrous Wonka Bars. Charlie and Grandpa Joe take a daring adventure into a world of Oompa-Loompas, squirrels, chocolate rivers, and cotton candy dreams. Will Charlie resist Slugworth’s bribe to steal the secret of the everlasting gobstopper? Will Violet turn violet? Is Mike Teavee shrinking from view?
Join OCT as Willy Wonka searches for his successor. This timeless Roald Dahl story is a jam-packed, nutty, king-size stage experience. BEST FOR ALL AGES
They’re baaaaaack! Farmer Brown needs a vacation. Before putting his brother Bob in charge of the farm, he writes clear instructions for taking care of the animals. Duck does some creative editing and wild mayhem ensues. Bubble-bathing pigs, pizza-eating chickens, and cows at the movies highlight this barn-raising mooosical.
Written, composed, directed, and choreographed by the same great team that brought you Click, Clack Moo: Cows That Type. BEST FOR ALL AGES
You are the jury! Big, bad wolf? Or misunderstood carnivore? The Honorable Prudence Pig presides over Piggsylvania’s porky courtroom chaos. With the aid of the high-tech oink-o-meter, your votes will determine the fate of Alexander T. Wolf. A muck-raking reporter and swine-whining testimonies spin The 3 Little Pigs on its corkscrew tail. BEST FOR ALL AGES
After years of diggin’ holes, Armpit’s goal after being released from Camp Green Lake is to take small steps: 1) Graduate from high school; 2) Get a job; 3) Save some money; 4) Avoid situations that might be dangerous; 5) Lose the nickname Armpit. His Camp Green Lake buddy, X-Ray, has a money–making scheme that could derail all of these.
OCT is honored that Louis Sachar will adapt his sequel to Holes for its world premiere on our stage this season! BEST FOR AGES 10 AND UP.
Wind your way up the 30 stories of the weird and wacky Wayside School. In Mrs. Jewls’ classroom on the top floor, strange things are going on. Rondi, Dameon, and Leslie have turned into apples, pigtails talk, and the ghost on the 19th floor has a bone to pick with you! It’s an extraordinary school day at an out-of-the-ordinary school that you won’t want to miss. BEST FOR AGES ALL AGES.
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INTERPRETED DATES RELEASED:
