Profile Theatre Hosts Lauren Yee Festival in February

Profile Theatre has announced the Lauren Yee Festival of new works, taking place 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.

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.

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