Adriana Baer will succeed Profile Theatre Artistic Director and founder Jane Unger, who is stepping down after fifteen years with the company. Following Unger’s announcement of her departure last fall, the organization’s board and staff undertook an extensive, carefully-planned search for a new artistic leader.

Baer was selected from a field of candidates that applied from throughout the United States and Europe.  “It is a testament to the contribution Profile has made to the American theatre community that we received applications from so many qualified applicants,” said Profile Board Chair Mary Simeone. “The Board of Directors is thrilled to welcome Adriana as the new Artistic Director of Profile Theatre. Her affinity for our unique mission was obvious from the first interview and she already has shared compelling ideas as to how to build on that mission to bring our programming to an even wider audience. She will no doubt be a major asset to both our theatre and the theatre community of Portland as a whole.”

Adriana Baer is the former Associate Artistic Director of San Francisco’s The Cutting Ball Theater where she directed productions including Woyzeck (Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Direction), The Maids, and No Exit and produced, among others, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Macbeth, The Hidden Classics Reading Series and Risk is This… New Experimental Plays Festival.  During her tenure at The Cutting Ball, the company received four “Best of San Francisco” awards, including one for No Exit.

Her New York directing credits include Romeo and Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Seagull, The Hairy Ape (Columbia Stages), Stage Door (Atlantic Theater Company Conservatory) and new play premieres including Killing Time co-conceived with Phil Callen and Kevin Dutcher, Tender was the Night by Jeffrey James Keyes and The Suicide of the Glutton by Jason Platt. New play development workshops and festivals include work at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, Primary Stages and the Lark Play Development Center.

Additionally, Adriana has worked with The Public Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, SF Circus Center/Pickle Circus, Boston Children’s Chorus and Theatre Communications Group. Associate and assistant directing work includes Opera Boston, American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, The Acting Company (Staff Repertory Director 2012 National Tour) and Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Adriana is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

Baer’s tenure will formally begin this summer.  She and Unger are currently working together to craft Profile’s 16^th Season, featuring the works of renowned South African playwright Athol Fugard.

Profile Theatre has announced Athol Fugard as featured playwright of the 2012-13 season.

Athol Fugard has worked in the theatre as a playwright, director, and actor in South Africa, England, and the United States for over fifty years. As a playwright, his works have received critically acclaimed runs on Broadway, in London, and at The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. He has been seen on stage in South Africa, London, Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theatre in the U.S.  In June 2011 he received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.

Film credits include The Road to Mecca, Gandhi, The Killing Fields, Meetings With Remarkable Men, Marigolds In August, Boesman and Lena, and The Guest.  His novel Tsotsi, was adapted into a film which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (2006).

Plays currently scheduled for the 2012-13 Athol Fugard season include:

Main Stage Productions
“Master Harold”…and the Boys (Oct. 3-Oct. 28)
The Road to Mecca (Jan. 9-Feb. 3)
Blood Knot (Feb. 27-Mar.24)
My Children! My Africa! (May 8-Jun. 2)

Staged Readings
Valley Song (Nov. 28-Dec. 2)
A Lesson from Aloes (Feb. 13-Feb. 17)
A contemporary South African play, title TBA (Jun. 5-Jun. 9)

Schedule subject to change. Shows and dates noted here reflect changes made since the Season Announcement event April 23rd.

Click here to download a 2012-13 Season Subscription form for mailing. Online subscription sales available soon.

Romulus Linney’s A Lesson Before Dying, his powerful stage adaptation of Earnest J. Gaines’ 1993 novel, plays through March 25th. Portland director and actor Kevin E. Jones joined Profile Theatre for the first time to direct the production, and spoke with Profile about the experience. Check out the in-depth interview in Behind the Scenes.

Profile Theatre looks ahead to a vital transition in 2012-13 with Profile founder and Artistic Director Jane Unger planning to turn over leadership of the theater to a new artistic head by season’s end. As Profile currently celebrates its 15^th anniversary season, the search for Unger’s replacement is underway.

Jane Unger

Unger has said, “I’m missing being able to focus my energies on directing, which I really love doing. My heart is in the rehearsal room. And I think Profile is strong enough that it can survive. … It can handle this kind of change — and I honestly couldn’t have said that five years ago or even three years ago. I’m personally ready, and I think the organization is professionally ready.”

Read The Oregonian’s Portland’s Profile Theatre and Jane Unger: A Profile of Tenacity for more on Unger and Profile Theatre.

Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart, running September 28-October 23, kicks off Profile’s retrospective season of 14 playwrights. Directed by Jane Unger, Lips features a stellar cast of Portland favorites including Susannah Mars, Leif Norby, Darius Pierce and Karen Wennstrom.

McNally, who has worked closely with Artistic Director Unger in the past, is “thrilled that Profile has chosen to open this special season with Lips Together, a play described by the NY Times as “a work with real teeth and penetrating passion”.

Click here to learn more and purchase tickets.

Click here to learn more about Profile’s 2011-12 season line-up.

Portland’s annual Drammy Awards were presented Monday, June 13^th, and Profile was proud to receive recognition for this past season’s production of Lee Blessing’s Thief River.

Director Pat Patton was awarded Outstanding Director
for Thief River.

And the Thief River cast – Tobias Andersen, Todd Hermanson, Andy Lee-Hillstrom, Shelly Lipkin, Jason Maniccia and Jack Morrison – received an Outstanding Ensemble nod.

We congratulate them all on this terrific honor.

By recognizing and rewarding the outstanding work of Portland-area actors, directors, designers, writers and creative collaborators of the previous theatre season with this anticipated event each year, the Drammy Committee’s mission is to increase public awareness of the broad scope of quality live theatre in our community. Awards are given for excellence in a wide range of categories, and this year’s 32^nd annual event at the Crystal Ballroom was a testament to Portland’s thriving theatre scene.

Season subscriptions are now available for Profile Theatre’s 15th Anniversary season.

Profile will celebrate fourteen fabulous years during the 2011-12 season with a retrospective of all fourteen playwrights previously featured on the Profile stage. See the full line up.

Exciting changes for the season include:

• preferred seating in our Center Section for main productions, and
• “choose how to use” mix and match subscription ticket packages.

Profile subscribers also still have the flexibility of choosing show dates now with a subscription purchase, or recognizing subscription savings with our Flexpass plan which provides the option to select dates at a later time. Learn more.

For fourteen years, Artistic Director Jane Unger and Profile Theatre have fulfilled the unique mission of featuring a single playwright each season – bringing the works of such preeminent playwrights to Portland and the Profile stage as Lanford Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Terrence McNally, Romulus Linney, Edward Albee, John Guare, this season’s Lee Blessing and many others. We look forward to honoring each of these playwrights who have contributed so significantly both to American theater and the Profile experience, and we invite you to be a part of this next historic season with us.

Click here to purchase 2011-12 season subscription tickets.

Profile Theatre mourns the loss of Lanford Wilson, one of this country’s greatest playwrights, who died on March 24, 2011 at the age of 73.

'Redwood Curtain' 2005-06

Profile was proud to feature Lanford Wilson’s many works in its 2005-2006 Season. Along with his contribution to that season, Lanford worked closely with Profile to revive and present his Obie Award-winning Sympathetic Magic through participation in a week-long development workshop. Along with director Marshall Mason and members of the Circle Repertory Theatre, he also shared insights with the Portland theatre community in a symposium presented at Portland State University in conjunction with Profile Theatre. “Lanford was not only an extraordinary talent,” says Jane Unger, Profile Theatre Artistic Director, “but a generous friend to Profile and he will be greatly missed.”

For Unger, who presents a single playwright each season, showcasing Wilson was an easy decision and a ready complement to the Profile mission. Because of the poetry and the stark realism that infused his writing, he was often compared both to Tennessee Williams and to Anton Chekhov. He and Marshall Mason were the founding fathers of Circle Repertory Theatre which set a new high bar for Off-Broadway theatre in the 1970’s and 1980’s – the gold standard to which all Off-Broadway work was held. Lanford Wilson wrote roles that helped shape the careers of actors such as Jeff Daniels, Swoozie Kurtz, Christopher Reeve, William Hurt, Judd Hirsch, Laurie Metcalf, Kevin Bacon, among many others.

'Burn This' 2005-06

In addition to Sympathetic Magic, among the plays presented at Profile during the 2005-06 season were Burn This, Redwood Curtain, and Tally’s Folly, each representative of Wilson’s unique range and talent.

Unger announced on March 14th that Profile will once again be presenting a Lanford Wilson play as part of the theatre’s 15th Anniversary Retrospective Season. Fifth of July is planned as part of the 2011-12 lineup. “We will do so, now, with cherished memories of a great playwright,” says Unger.