Fourth Annual Proscenium Live Free Festival Of New Work Comes to Portland

Portland Shakespeare Project and Proscenium Journal, in association with Artists Repertory Theatre, present the fourth annual Proscenium Live Festival of New Work with four nights of fresh plays. All performances are free and begin at 7:30pm on Artists Rep's Alder Stage.

Building on a three-year history of successful play development through Proscenium Live exposure, the 2018 Festival will offer three new, full-length plays by Anthony Hudson, E.M. Lewis and Patrick Wohlmut, performed in a staged reading format featuring some of Portland's most talented actors on Artists Rep's Alder Stage.

PLAYS:

August 3 @ 7:30pm Still Looking for Tiger Lily by Anthony Hudson. Directed by Michael Mendelson.

August 4 @ 7:30pm The Great Divide by E.M. Lewis. Directed by Jennifer Rowe.

August 5 @ 7:30pm Patchwork Dreams by Patrick Wohlmut. Directed by Matthew B. Zrebski.

August 6 @ 7:30pm Still Looking for Tiger Lily by Anthony Hudson. Directed by Michael Mendelson.

TICKETS: FREE - General admission seating, no reservations

PROSCENIUM LIVE FESTIVAL OF NEW WORK 2018 SCHEDULE

August 3 & August 6 @ 7:30pm

Still Looking for Tiger Lily by Anthony Hudson+

Directed by Michael Mendelson*^

In this follow-up to the acclaimed one-person-ish show, Still Looking for Tiger Lily follows a mixed, queer Native artist (Anthony Hudson) whose drag clown persona Carla Rossi - "the ghost of white privilege" - becomes untethered from her creator, launching into an ancestral odyssey full of racist butter mascots, shamanic kale smoothies, and Peter Pan's "Indian Princess" Tiger Lily.

CAST: Anthony Hudson (Anthony/Carla), Jimmy Garcia* (Therapist, Counselor, Dad, Captain Hook, Man), John San Nicolas*(Ted, Clark, Lost Boy), Danielle Weathers* (Tricia, Cackling Woman, Peter Pan, Lost Boy), Kisha Jarrett (Inga, Shirella, Voice of Sigourney Weaver, Grandmother, Lost Boy), Julana Torres* (Tiger Lily, Woman, Lady of the Land O'Lakes, Wendy)

Anthony Hudson (Grand Ronde) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer and filmmaker perhaps best known as Portland's premier drag clown Carla Rossi, an immortal trickster whose attempts at realness almost always result in fantastic failure. In 2018 Anthony was named a National Artist Fellow by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

+Part of Artists Repertory Theatre's Table|Room|Stage new play development program.

^Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society

*Member, Actors' Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage managers.

August 4 @ 7:30pm

The Great Divide by E.M. Lewis

Directed by Jennifer Rowe

(A fictional story inspired by real events.) On January 2, 2016, an armed militia group led by Ammon, Ryan, and Cliven Bundy seized control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. They wanted to protest what they felt was harsh sentencing of two ranchers who had set fires on federal lands. As these events unfolded, something else was happening in America: an election that turned into a long slugging match between liberal and conservative forces in the faces of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The Great Divide is about a young African American journalist by the name of Annie Harrison who is hired by a local newspaper a week before the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon begins, and has to try to figure out what's happening in this small, rural Oregon community... and the country. It is a play about a young woman finding her voice. It is a play about protest. It is a play about everything that is tearing us apart... and what brings us together. This is a story about America, in this divided moment.

CAST: Julet Lindo (Annie Harrison), Jared Mack (John Day), Francisco Garcia*(Ensemble), Justin Charles (Ensemble), Gary Powell (Ensemble), Roxanne Stathos (Ensemble), Gwendolyn Duffy (Ensemble), Aiyana Cunningham (Ensemble), Andrea White (Ensemble), Bobby Bermea*(Ensemble)

E.M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, teacher, and librettist. She is the author of Magellanica and many other award-winning plays. She received the Steinberg Award for Song of Extinction and the Primus Prize for Heads from the American Theater Critics Association, the Ted Schmitt Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for outstanding writing of a world premiere play, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Commission, and the 2016 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama. She was a finalist for the Shakespeare's Sister Fellowship in 2014. She has worked with theater companies and arts organizations across the country on her plays, including the Lark, the William Inge Center for the Arts, the Ashland New Plays Festival, Page 73, and many more.

*Member, Actors' Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage managers.

August 5 @ 7:30pm

Patchwork Dreams by Patrick Wohlmut

Directed by Matthew B. Zrebski

Penny was made from the bodies of the dead, married to modern cybernetic technology. She is meant to be a servant, strong, skillful, and safe. She was built to endure, and to be capable of adapting to any task. She is tireless, intelligent, and completely under human control. Penny was not made to think for herself. She was not meant to have feelings or to be her own person. She was not built to attain sentience. Penny is now alive... and neither she nor her creator has any idea what that means.

CAST: Crystal Ann Munoz*(Penny), Lolly Ward*(Beth), Robert Hamm*(Vic), John Corr (Mr. Memory), Steve Rathje (Stage Directions)

Patrick Wohlmut is a playwright and actor. He is the winner of a 2005 Drammy Award for Supporting Actor for Earth Stories, an adaptation of writings by Ursula K. Le Guin, and of a playwriting commission from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Portland Center Stage. That commissioned play, Continuum, was featured in the Made in Oregon series at PCS's JAW Festival in 2011, and was produced in 2012 by Playwrights West, of which he is a proud founding member.

*Member, Actors' Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage managers.

ABOUT PORTLAND SHAKESPEARE PROJECT

Portland Shakes is a nonprofit theatre company in residence at Artists Repertory Theatre dedicated to educating, enriching and entertaining audiences by producing classical works and contemporary works associated with classical material. Since its founding in 2010 by Michael Mendelson and Karen Rathje, more than 6,500 people have enjoyed the company's productions of William Shakespeare's As You Like It, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Turn of the Screw and most recently Pericles Wet by Ellen Margolis which was presented at Proscenium Live 2016. Portland Shakes has partnered with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play on! program with Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare in a modern verse translation by Ranjit Bolt (2018), and A Midsummer's Night Dream by William Shakespeare in a modern verse translation by Jeff Whitty (2017), both of which included a public performance at Artists Repertory Theatre. Portland Shakes hosts many audience enrichment and education events year-long. More information at portlandshakes.org

ABOUT PROSCENIUM JOURNAL

Proscenium is the first free literary journal dedicated to publishing plays. Proscenium publications are free of charge and readily accessible online, allowing playwrights to share their work with a large, web-based audience. Proscenium Journal's mission is to support emerging playwrights, make new plays easier to discover, and make theatre easily accessible to new and wider audiences.

Proscenium Journal: Supporting playwrights. Encouraging discovery. Making theatre accessible. More information at prosceniumjournal.com.

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