Third Rail Repertory Theatre Announces 2024-2025 Season

Third Rail Repertory Theatre has announced three Main Stage productions and a workshop of a new play for its 19th Season.

"It is easier than ever to disconnect, isolate, and distract ourselves," says managing artistic director Maureen Porter. "This season, we are sharing stories that explore the importance of found and chosen families; the meaningful connections that arise even when at first glance our paths are not aligned; the grace that comes in speaking and honoring experience across lifespans and generations; and the crucial interdependence and need for connection we share as humans."

 Third Rail returns favorite playwrights with Infinite Life by Annie Baker and A Case for the Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter—and an original piece developed locally: Precipice, conceived and performed by Damaris Webb, and written by Chris Gonzalez. Additionally, we will workshop Lava Alapai's Sunny's Gifts and Things, a prequel to Middletown Mall.
This season, we find what unites us in an increasingly disconnected world.

Third Rail Repertory Theatre 2024-2025 Season

Infinite Life

By Annie Baker
Directed by Rebecca Lingafelter*
Featuring Maureen Porter*
October 25 - November 12, 2024
Thursdays - Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 2:00 pm
Third Rail at CoHo Theatre (2257 NW Raleigh St.)

In a fasting clinic in Northern California, five women swap stories, philosophize, and humorously provoke each other while undergoing a course of treatment that promises to cure a variety of ailments from cancer to thyroid issues; infections to chronic pain. As their individual experiences thread together and pull apart, the play turns into a meditation on the complexities of pain and longing, the experience of living within a fragile corporeal form, and how true connection may help to transcend it.

A Case for the Existence of God

By Samuel D. Hunter
February 28 - March 16, 2025
Thursdays - Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 2:00 pm
Third Rail at CoHo Theatre (2257 NW Raleigh St.)

Keith and Ryan, two working dads who seemingly have little in common, meet in Keith's cubicle to discuss business. Despite different upbringings, identities, and lifestyles — and the primarily transactional nature of their relationship — the men connect over their experiences of fatherhood; growing up in a small, rural town; and the loneliness of lost opportunities and fragile circumstances. Tender and surprising, Samuel D. Hunter's A Case for the Existence of God shines a light on the ways in which disparate lives can commingle and create a deep and indelible imprint of empathy and connection.

Precipice: re-membering, forgetting, and claiming home
a new solo play

Conceived and Performed by Damaris Webb
Written by Chris Gonzalez
Directed by Olivia Mathews
May 16 - June 1, 2025
Thursdays - Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 2:00 pm
Third Rail at CoHo Theatre (2257 NW Raleigh St.)

Precipice is a magical-realist, fluid poem that tenderly holds place, house/home and mementos as doorways to connection, while deeply questioning materialistic notions of ownership. This one-woman show presses against the boundaries of media reports, geological truths, legacy, DNA reports, and the value of listening to the land as a third-generation Black Portlander and Oregonian. Who owns your idea of belonging? What is the legacy of the place you call home? As far as you can tell, is everyone free?

Sunny's Gifts and Things: A Workshop Production

By Lava Alapai

We are excited to continue our relationship with local playwright Lava Alapai through a workshop of her new play Sunny's Gifts and Things, a prequel to Middletown Mall—which we produced in our most recent season. Sunny's Gifts and Things follows five strangers seeking shelter from Hurricane Iwa in a small tourist shop in 1982 in Waikiki, Hawaii. Tinged with humor and pathos, it is a touching tribute to unexpected connections and reunions.

This workshop will see the further development of Alapai's script, with the intention of production in Third Rail's 2025/2026 Season. Although workshops will not be open to the public, Third Rail Members and community partners will have access to—and an active voice in—the development of this work.

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