Profile’s mission is to produce a season of world-class productions and community engagement activities centered around season-long Featured Writers whose visions broaden our perspective on our world and deepen our collective compassion.

Profile Theatre is one of Oregon’s oldest continually producing companies and the only theatre on the west coast dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the playwright’s voice. Founded in 1997, Profile’s Featured Writers have won 14 Pulitzer Prizes (plus 7 finalists), 20 Tony Awards (plus 11 nominations), 25 Drama Desk Awards, 26 Obie Awards and 4 MacArthur “Genius” Awards.

Every two years we select 2-3 early- and mid-career writers of national prominence to feature in two-year cycles, producing older plays, newer plays and world premieres and commissions. We do this because we believe that playwrights help us see and understand the world around us so we can dream into being the world we need. Since 2016, we have exclusively centered BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, wom*n and Jewish writers and artists because we believe that by centering the stories of the global majority, we in our small way help to create a more just and equitable society.

We believe theatre is a convening ground through which communities explore the urgent questions of our time and come to know themselves and each other better.

Each year we serve up to 5,000 audience and community members through five four signature programs:

  • Our Main Stage Season of large-scale professional productions 
  • The innovative In Dialogue programs of lectures, panel discussions, lobby displays, pre-show performances and concert stagings 
  • Our Community Profile program, which uses the practice of writing to create authentic networks of mutual support and resilience in a dedicated affinity space for a community important to the Featured Writer
  • Our unique Playwright’s Residency, which embeds the Featured Writer in our Portland theatre to develop new work, lead workshops and engage with our community of patrons and artists. 
  • Through New Play Development we commission and foster the development of new works by our Featured Writers who are some of the nation’s most in-demand as well as up-and-coming writers. Through this program, local artists and audiences are able to collaborate with some of the nation’s most in-demand as well as up-and-coming playwrights to create compelling and relevant new works.

Profile Theatre Values:

  • Compassion and Love – We engage with our community to deepen understanding of our world and foster compassion for each other, strengthening our social fabric.
  • Artistic Excellence and Free Expression – We engage audiences to have a deep experience with a leading writer’s work by presenting productions of exemplary artistic merit and quality.
  • Connection and Belonging – We create diverse and high-impact community engagement programming for adults and students that fosters a sense of belonging.
  • Sustainability and Economic Opportunity – We support artists both artistically and financially by putting our resources back into our local economy.

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Access:

In 2015, Profile Theatre sought to begin dismantling white supremacy in theatre by addressing the root causes of inequity. At that time, we identified Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Access (EDIA) as top priorities, and since then Profile has worked to make a safe space for individuals with different racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities. You can read more about our efforts over the last ten years to Dismantle White Supremacy at Profile Theatre here.

History:

Profile Theatre was founded in 1997 by Jane Unger to shine a light on our country’s most important playwrights out of a belief that our best writers help us see the world in new and deeper ways. Each year Profile would feature a single writer for multiple productions, readings and workshops, spending much of its first fifteen years exploring the work of some of the 20th Century’s leading dramatists and bringing many of them to Portland to develop work. Under her vision, Profile quickly established itself as one of the most well-respected theaters in our community.

Profile’s second Artistic Director, Adriana Baer, led the theater from 2012-2015. Adriana was interested in exploring the writers we would come to think of as the “21st Century Canon,” contemporary writers investigating the most pressing concerns of our time. Under her vision, Profile launched its Diversity and Inclusion Initiative, centering writers of the global majority in our seasons.

Josh Hecht became Artistic Director in 2017. Under his leadership, Profile has shifted the model slightly: we now intentionally curate 2  leading writers for 2-year seasons, using the visions of multiple leading dramatists to explore key issues of our time. His commitment to new work and robust community engagement has led to four new play commissions (a first in the company’s history) and five world premieres; an expanded play-development residency for our Featured Writers that imbeds the writer in the lifeblood of our community over the course of their seasons; and our signature Community Profile Program that uses the practice of writing and storytelling to create networks of mutual support for specific communities in a dedicated affinity space. Over the past eight years, Community Profile has built lasting relationships among military vets and their families; people living with chronic illness or caring for someone who does; the LGBTQIA+ community; Black Womxn; Community Health Workers; BIPOC LGBTQIA+ Youth, many experiencing housing insecurity; arriving communities and first/second generation Americans; Trans/NB/2S individuals; and AANHPI community members. 

In 2010 Profile Theatre was awarded an 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.” More recently, Profile has twice been recognized by Advanced Gender Equity in the Arts (AGE) for its leadership in equity, diversity and inclusion and multiple NEA awards. Below is a snapshot of Profile’s growth over the last few years:

2018: received an $85,000 Creative Heights grant to commission National Medal of Arts Awardee Ping Chong + Co to develop a new community-invested oral-history project.

2018: “The Secretaries” named The Best Production of the Year by Willamette Week.

2020: Portland Monthly names Profile Theatre “The Essential Theatre of the Year.”

2021: Willamette Week names “The Mineola Twins” the Best Production Live or Virtual of 2021.

2021: Profile partners with Portland Opera, Portland State University and DanceWire to create Old Moody Stages, a temporary open air performance venue inside the historic Barge Building at Zidell Yards, presenting the works of dozens of local arts organizations over a ten-week festival.

2023: Profile produces the world premiere of a new play by one of its Featured Writers: awe/struck by two-time Sundance Fellow christopher oscar peña.

2024: Profile develops and premieres a new play Tony-nominee and Pulitzer finalist Kristoffer Diaz, along with its first Main Stage commission, Our Orange Sky by peña. 

2025: Profile begins developing plays by Guggenheim Fellows Jen Silverman and Mike Lew and starts developing its second community-invested piece with Michael John Garces, Bruce Lemon and artists from Cornerstone Theatre in LA.