Portland Center Stage Announces it’s 2013-2014 Season

Portland Center Stage Announces the 2013-2014 Season

March 4, 2013 – PORTLAND, ORE. Spend an intimate evening with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, take a topsy-turvy look at the holidays with the comic geniuses from Chicago’s Second City, ride the twists and turns of Shakespeare’s most heart-wrenching tragedy and rock out with ax-wielding Lizzie Borden in Portland Center Stage’s 2013-2014 season. And it all begins with a heart-soaring musical theater classic.

Portland Center Stage is pleased to announce the 2013-2014 Season.
On the Main Stage
Fiddler on the Roof
Music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein
September 14 – October 27, 2013
Tradition and family: can they endure historic change?
Winner of nine Tony Awards and with a record-setting Broadway run, Fiddler has become an American classic. Tevye, the loquacious father of five daughters, fights to maintain his family and their traditions while outside influences encroach upon their lives. He must cope both with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters—as each one’s choice of husband moves further away from the customs of his faith—and with the edict of a tyrannical and unjust Tsar. With vibrant dances, beloved songs – “Sunrise, Sunset,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Tradition” – and profound heart, Fiddler has touched audiences for generations.

The Second City’s A Christmas Carol:
Twist Your Dickens
By Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort
November 16 – December 22, 2013
“The entire recent tradition of American satire can be summed up in three words: The Second City.”
A complete send-up of the holiday classic, fully festooned with the improvisational genius behind the legendary comedy troupe The Second City. Dickens’ famous Victorian characters may wonder what was in their egg nog as Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and those know-it-all ghosts find themselves hopelessly mixed up in zany holiday sketches with anachronistic characters, uproarious improvisation and an ever-changing stable of drop-in local celebrity guests.

Chinglish
By David Henry Hwang
January 11 – February 9, 2014
A smart comedy of cross-cultural missteps.
In Chinglish, an American businessman heads to Asia to score a lucrative contract for his family’s firm—but the deal isn’t the only thing getting lost in translation when he collides with a Communist minister, a bumbling consultant and a suspiciously sexy bureaucrat. The perils and fraught pleasures of Chinese-American business transactions become fascinating—and hilarious—drivers of this new comedy by Hwang, award-winning playwright of M. Butterfly and Golden Child.

A Small Fire
By Adam Bock
February 22 – March 23, 2014
“An unforgettable banquet,” the Village Voice
A Small Fire follows John and Emily Bridges, a long-married couple whose happy, middle-class lives are upended when Emily falls victim to a mysterious disease. As her senses are slowly stripped away – smell, taste, sight – she is suddenly completely dependent on the husband whose endless devotions she had always taken for granted. By the author of The Receptionist and The Thugs, PCS audiences will recognize the complete originality and deep humanity to be found in Bock’s characters.
“…raucous, funny and unexpectedly touching, as we are made intimate witnesses to a frank demonstration of how much of life, of love and of happiness remain within reach even when so much appears to be lost.” –The New York Times

Othello
By William Shakespeare
April 5 – May 11, 2014
A profound tragedy of the power of love and jealousy.
A highly esteemed general serving the state of Venice, Othello the Moor, secretly marries Desdemona, the daughter of a senator. As their marriage is revealed, jealousies around their love match and Othello’s rise to prominence are unleashed, marking destructive rifts in a tale that piles secret upon secret, and betrayal upon betrayal (both real and imagined). A society seething with intrigue sets the stage for the machinations of a bitter ensign, Iago, and the ultimate tragedy—when love does not trust, and power is prized above all things.

Lizzie: The Musical
By Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt
May 24 – June 29, 2014
Lizzie Borden took an ax…
A rock-show retelling of the bloody legend of America’s favorite ax-wielding double-murderess and Victorian hometown girl. Lizzie Borden, who has become fodder for jump rope rhymes and TV movies of the week, was a Massachusetts woman who was acquitted in 1892 of the ax murders of her father and stepmother, and lived the rest of her life as American’s first infamous tabloid star. But did she really do it? And if so, how?

In the Ellyn Bye Studio

The Mountaintop
By Katori Hall
August 31 – October 27, 2013
“I’ve been to the mountaintop…”
Winner Olivier Award for Best Play, 2010
April 4, 1968. Memphis. The Lorraine Motel. A time, and place, that is burned into the American psyche. But what about April 3? How did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spend his last night on Earth? Playwright Katori Hall creates a surrealistic fantasy in this breakout Broadway hit, about a chance encounter between King and a mysterious hotel maid who brings him a cup of coffee and prompts him to confront his life, his past, his legacy and the plight and future of his people.

Bo-Nita
By Elizabeth Heffron
February 1 – March 16, 2014
A world premiere from JAW 2012
Life’s not easy for Bo-Nita. It never is for a 13-year-old, but especially one who winds up with a dead, semi-ex-stepfather on her bedroom floor. With humor, pathos, and a dash of Midwest magic realism, Bo-Nita follows one mother and daughter’s journey through a working-class America of dwindling resources, and the lengths to which they must go to stay together and keep their beat alive.

The Last Five Years
Written and composed by Jason Robert Brown
April 26 – June 22, 2014
“I’ve been waiting for someone…I think I could be in love with someone.”
An emotionally powerful and intimate musical about two New Yorkers in their twenties who fall in love. The title is not only a reference to their relationship, but also a call to the structure of the play itself, with the element of time folding in on itself and echoing the sometimes disorienting quality of love. Cathy tells her story of the courtship backwards, while Jamie tells his story chronologically; will these two manage to hold on to their prize? The Last Five Years is a charming and bittersweet song cycle, and was a Drama Desk Award winner. It is our first musical offering in the Studio since Crazy Enough.

A special holiday offering:

The Santaland Diaries
By David Sedaris
Adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello
November 26 – December 29, 2013
Based on the true chronicles of David Sedaris’ experience as Crumpet the Elf in Macy’s Santaland display, this 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, and this production has become a Portland holiday tradition.

Portland Center Stage inspires our community by bringing stories to life in unexpected ways. Established in 1988 as a branch of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PCS became an independent theater in 1994 and has been under the leadership of Artistic Director Chris Coleman since May 2000. The company presents a blend of classic, contemporary and original productions in a conscious effort to appeal to the eclectic palate of theatergoers in Portland. PCS also offers a variety of education and outreach programs for curious minds from six to 106, including discussions, classes, workshops and partnerships with organizations throughout the Portland metro area.

THE GERDING THEATER AT THE ARMORY houses a 599-seat Main Stage and the 200-seat black box Ellyn Bye Studio. It was the first building on the National Register of Historic Places, and the first performing arts venue, to achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification. The Gerding Theater at the Armory opened to the public on Oct. 1, 2006. The capital campaign to fund the renovation of this hub for community artistic activity continues.