Profile Theatre Announces Lauren Yee Festival And 2024 Season Changes 

PROFILE THEATRE, has announced the Lauren Yee Festival of new works February 23-25. The weekend festival will consist of three enhanced staged readings of new plays from Lauren Yee and will take place at Imago Theatre.

These enhanced readings go beyond traditional staged reads to include sound cues and costuming. There will also be a discussion panel on the 24th that goes beyond the worlds of the plays and a closing celebration party on the 25th! 

The World Premiere production of Reggie Hoops, by Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz, originally scheduled for February 8-18, will be shifted to August 1-11, 2024 due to Diaz's latest work Hell's Kitchen opening on Broadway! In August, Diaz will return to Portland to be in residence with Profile for the world premiere of Reggie Hoops and will be their guest at an Artist Talk at the Heathman Hotel on the 4th. Profile is also thrilled to announce that Melissa Crespo (Native Gardens at PCS, Associate Artistic Director at Syracuse Stage) has accepted their invitation to direct the production. 

Artistic Director, Josh Hecht, says, “Playwright Kristoffer Diaz is busy, busy, busy prepping the Broadway transfer of his musical with Alicia Keys Hell's Kitchen, so while audiences will have to wait a few more months for his world premiere at Profile later this season, we're thrilled to showcase new plays by another of our Featured Writers, the extremely prolific Lauren Yee! These three plays will show the incredible range of Lauren's voice as she takes us from rural Pennsylvania to the crowded cities of India to an imagined Soviet Union at the dawn of ‘perestroika.' Like the best of Lauren's work, these plays will charm you, tickle you with their wild theatricality, and make you think deeply about colonialism, appropriation, pop culture and ‘America.'”

Profile Theatre's spring season also includes the world premiere of Our Orange Sky a Profile Theatre commission from playwright christopher oscar peña (AWE/STRUCK and HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN SON, both at Profile Theatre, and a writer/producer on TV's “Jane The Virgin,” “Insecure,” and “Promised Land”), directed by Evren Odcikin (the recent Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival), running June 6-16, 2024 at Imago Theatre. 

 

Lauren Yee Festival 

 

MOTHER RUSSIA 

 

directed by Rebby Foster 

Friday, February 23, 7:30pm 

Six months after the end of the Soviet Union, two young Russians, Euvgeny and Dmitri, find themselves lost in their strange new world of glasnost, perestroika and McDonald's. When they're assigned to track Katya (an alluring fallen pop-star), a love triangle, a case of mistaken identities, and some really bad spy tactics leave them completely dumbfounded by a whole new world full of choices. A brand new comedy about the curse of freedom. 

 

SONG OF SUMMER 

 

Directed by Josh Hecht 

Saturday, February 24, 7:30pm 

Much to his surprise, Robbie has the hit song of the summer! But when the unexpected stardom brings high-profile controversy, he heads home to reconnect with his childhood piano teacher. What he wanted to be a quiet reunion turns out to be a reckoning with past choices that had more consequences than he realized. Between an eccentric piano teacher, a controlling manager, and a brash former crush, home isn't the refuge Robbbie had in mind. A candid and stirring comedy about how going back can change how we go forward. 

 

SAMSARA 

 

Directed by Ajai Tripathi 

Cultural Consultant: Subashini Ganesan 

Sunday, February 25, 2pm 

Katie and Craig are having a baby… with a surrogate… who lives in India. A month before the baby's due date, Craig reluctantly travels to the subcontinent, where he meets Suraiya, the young, less-than-thrilled woman who is carrying their child. As all three “parents” anxiously wait for the baby to be born, flights of fancy attack them from all sides in the form of a smarmy Frenchman and a smart-mouthed fetus. An outlandish comedy about modern day colonialism and what to expect when you're expecting someone else's child. 

COST for Lauren Yee Festival: Tickets for each performance are $10. These events are free for Profile Theatre Members.

 

At only 37 years old, Lauren Yee is already one of the most produced and honored playwrights working today. A winner of the Doris Duke Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Steinberg, Horton Foote and Francesca Primus Prizes, and a finalist for the Edward Kennedy and Susan Smith Blackburn Awards, her plays have been commissioned and produced by the Goodman, Victory Gardens, La Jolla, Portland Center Stage, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT, Atlantic Theater Company, Denver Center and many others. 

Her voice is fresh, whimsical, highly theatrical and deeply poignant. Portland audiences will remember her play The Great Leap and An American Young Americans both at Portland Center Stage, and King of The Yees at Profile last season which Broadway World called, “wildly entertaining!” Lauren will serve as Executive Producer on the upcoming television series Afterparties, based on the best-seller by Anthony Veasna So. 

 

Reggie Hoops 

 

By Kristoffer Diaz 

Directed by Melissa Crespo 

August 1-11, 2024 

Reggie is one of the most promising executives in the NBA. But as a Black woman working in a male-dominated field, she's had to work twice as hard to get half as far. Now abruptly unemployed, she's adjusting to home life with a wife and kids she rarely saw while on the job. Between a mother with a secret past, an unemployed brother, and an audacious wife, Reggie is on edge. When an acquaintance from the past appears with an unbelievable job offer, Reggie finds her family has their own agendas in regards to her career. 

A new play about homelife, generational pressures and wanting to have it all from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist writer of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. 

ABOUT Reggie Hoops Playwright Kristoffer Diaz 

Other full-length titles from Diaz include The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Reggie Hoops, Hercules, and The Unfortunates. His work has been produced, commissioned, and developed at The Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Geffen Playhouse, ACT, Center Theatre Group, The Goodman, Second Stage, Victory Gardens, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among many others. Awards include the Guggenheim, Jerome, Van Lier, NYFA, and Gail Merrifield Papp Fellowships; New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award; Lucille Lortel, Equity Jeff, and OBIE Awards; and the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant, among others.

As a screenwriter, Kristoffer has developed original television pilots for HBO and FX, written for the first season of Netflix's “GLOW,” and adapted the musical “Rent” for FOX. Kristoffer teaches playwriting at New York University. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a member of its Board of Directors, and the current secretary of the Dramatists Guild Council 

Melissa Crespo (she/her/hers) is from Connecticut with Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chilean roots. She is a director of theater, opera, and film. She most enjoys developing and directing new work. She is also a producer, playwright, and educator. As a director, Melissa has directed at MCC Theater and The Atlantic Theater in New York, and regionally at Syracuse Stage, Portland Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Kansas City Rep, Hartford Stage Company, and many others. She developed work at New Dramatists, The Lark, The Playwright's Center, and theatres around the country & abroad. 

As a playwright, Melissa co-wrote Egress with Sarah Saltwick. Egress was produced as a workshop production at Cleveland Playhouse in 2019 and received the Roe Green Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting. Egress received a world premiere production in 2021 at Amphibian Stage, followed by another production at Salt Lake Acting Company in 2022.She is a Founding Editor of 3Views on Theater, an online theater journal conceived by The Lillys. 

Melissa has served as a Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, and Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre, and is an alum of the Drama League Director's Project. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and received her MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama. She is the current Associate Artistic Director of Syracuse Stage. 

Founded in 1997, Profile Theatre quickly established itself as a leading voice in Portland's cultural scene. In 2010, Profile was awarded the inaugural New National Theatre Company Award from the American Theatre Wing, designed to bring national attention to “the most inspiring and innovative theatre companies on our national landscape.” Profile has twice been recognized by Advance Gender Equity in the Arts for its leadership in the field. Josh Hecht became Artistic Director in 2017, evolving Profile's mission to pair two living writers for two-year seasons and bringing some of the most honored playwrights to Portland to develop and premiere new works. Since his arrival, Profile has commissioned three new plays, (Un)Conditional a community-invested piece by National Medal of Arts Awardee Ping Chong + Company; our orange sky by christopher oscar peña premiering later this season; and a new community-invested piece from Michael John Garces and Cornerstone Theatre Company created in collaboration with local BIPOC youth, to premiere in 2025 . 

Profile's special 2-year 25th Anniversary season kicked off in fall 2022 with the Pulitzer finalist play from Kristoffer Diaz, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, which Oregon ArtsWatch called “one of the most impressive productions of the season,” followed by Lauren Yee's “wildly

entertaining” King of the Yees (Broadway World), and Diaz's first produced play, Welcome to Arroyo's, as well as How to Make An American Son by christopher oscar peña which Willamette Week called, “originally delicious storytelling.” Profile also hosted the Playwright Convening which brought Diaz and peña to Portland for 10 days to workshop their new plays Reggie Hoops and our orange sky which will become main stage productions in summer of 2024. 

Profile's 2023-2024 season's main stage productions are all world premieres and commissions by Profile's 2022-2024 Featured Playwrights including the “riveting” fall 2023 World Premiere production of awe/struck by christopher oscar peña (ShoutOut PDX). 

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