Profile’s Community Council is a group of unique individuals whom we invite to join us behind the scenes over the course of our seasons. Each member brings a unique perspective and voice to the conversation around our featured playwrights.  Council members are invited to rehearsals, production meetings and various other aspects of Profile programming, and then are invited to share their thoughts and reactions with us and with their own particular community.

Meet the 2018-19 Community Council!

Tony Funchess
Santos Herrera

Michelle Fadem Kashinsky is thrilled to be a part of  Profile’s Community Council.  She is the Casting Director for Profile’s upcoming production of The Secretaries.  She is Production Managing Hand2Mouth’s 2017-2018 season.  She spent 12 years at Radio City Music Hall helping produce the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes. She has a MFA/BFA from NYU (Tisch).  She is a playwright and children’s book writer and proud members of The Dramatists Guild and SCBWI.

Margaret McKay
Mariel Sierra
Carmen Suarez
Dana Walls

Click here to see what our 2017 Community Council members shared.

Profile’s Community Profile program identifies a specific portion of our Portland community that we think will be particularly impacted by our featured writer.  We then assemble a cohort of participants to engage in a full year of community-building and artistic practice together. 

For the past three years, we’ve partnered with the Writers Guild Initiative, an independent, non-profit organization that is associated with the Writers Guild of America, East, to bring award- winning writers to Portland to mentor participants in a writing practice that helps them reflect, share, encourage resiliency, ease isolation and form much-needed community. In addition, we hold community conversations, take meals together and see the plays in the Profile Theatre season.

To learn about our 2017 Community Profile program Our City’s Veterans, click here. To Learn about our 2018-19 Community Profile Program for those living with chronic illness and their loved ones, click here.

Welcome To 2019-20

COMMUNITY PROFILE

Are you LGBTQIA+ and have a story you want to tell about…

Living with HIV?

The struggle to live your life on your own terms?

Overcoming obstacles just to stand in your power? 

Are you looking to develop your own creative voice with other LGBTQIA+ people?

If your answer is yes, we welcome you to COMMUNITY PROFILE 2019-20

An LGBTQ affinity space geared towards Queer and HIV positive people for a full year of community-building through monthly writing workshops with award winning writers and exceptional teachers, cultivating their own creative voices and using writing as a springboard for conversation and fellowship.

Community Profile launched with a Writing Weekend on November 2 at The Q Center. The cohort will continue to meet monthly on Saturday’s until a final writing weekend in June. 

We believe that by coming together to share stories with others who have similar life experiences, we can ease isolation, release negative emotions and frustrations, experience positive emotions more regularly and create networks of mutual support that one recent participant called “a life-changer.”

This costs our participants nothing but their time and generosity of spirit and they can participate for as much or as little as they can fit into their schedule. For that, Profile provides food, tickets to our shows, writing instruction and, most importantly, a space for fellowship and community. 

We hope to provide a place where the queer communities can see their own lives reflected back to them. You’ll meet people like you, young and old, who are also there to share their stories and listen to yours and together find a little bit of wisdom, support and love. 

All you need to do is show up! We’ll provide the place, the teachers, a little food and the inspiration. You provide the story and the community.

Program and Workshop Dates:

WEEKEND PROGRAM– November 2 and 3 — 11am – 5pm
December 7 – 11am-2pm
January 4 – 11am -2pm
February 1 – 11am -2pm
March 7 – 11am -2pm
April 4 -11am – 2pm
May 2 – 11am- 2pm
WEEKEND PROGRAM — June 6 and 7 — 11am -5pm

All programs and workshops will take place at our generous community partner: The Q Center, 4115 N. Mississippi

At this time all Community Profile workshops are taking place online.

If you or someone you know would enjoy and benefit from participating in this exciting program, please contact Bobby Bermea, Director of Community Engagement at Profile Theatre at bobbyb@profiletheatre.org or at 503-242-0080.

Thank you to our sponsor who enables us to offer this program at no cost to participants: 

Community Profile is made possible by our generous community partners:

For additional information, please contact Media Relations Consultant Consultant Natalie Genter-Gilmore at natalie@profiletheatre.org. To download photos click on thumbnails below.

Media Release 

Photos Water by the Spoonful

Duffy Epstein, Julana Torres and Akari Anderson in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Crystal Ann Muñoz in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Julana Torres  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Akari Anderson  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Bobby Bermea  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Duffy Epstein  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam and Crystal Ann Muñoz in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Wasim No’Mani and Anthony Lam  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Julana Torres and Duffy Epstein  in Water by the Spoonful. Photo by David Kinder.

Photos The Happiest Song Plays Last

Anthony Lam and Dre Slaman in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Jimmy Garcia and Crystal Ann Muñoz in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam and Wasim No’Mani  in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Jimmy Garcia  in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam and Crystal Ann Muñoz in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Crystal Ann Muñoz in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam, Dre Slaman and Crystal Ann Muñoz in The Happiest Song Plays Last. Photo by David Kinder.

Promotional Photos

Anthony Lam. Photo by David Kinder.

Anthony Lam. Photo by David Kinder.

Events for Water by the Spoonful

Friday, November 3rd:
Opening Night Toast | Post-Show
Join us immediately following the opening performance of Water by the Spoonful for a toast to the launch of the Rep Production.  Wine provided by 2017 Wine Sponsor Wildwood/Mahonia.
Alder Lobby

Sunday, November 5th:
Jamie Rea: Changeover Observation | Post-Show
Production Manager Jamie Rea will describe the scenic changeover from Water by the Spoonful to The Happiest Song Plays Last as it is happening in front of you, and will answer questions about the collaborative design process for this project.
Alder Stage

Wednesday, November 8th:
Ian O’Loughlin: Brains, minds, and the science of addiction  | 6:55pm
Addiction lies at the intersection of brain chemistry, human behaviors, environments, and cultural forces.  It is hard to imagine a more complex and multidisciplinary phenomenon to study, but a number of recent and striking studies in cognitive science, social psychology, and neuroanatomy have provided us with tools that can help us to understand its nature, showing how the individual who faces addiction is situated in a complex tangle of habits, neurotransmitters, external cues, and social structures.  Recognizing the addict as cognitively situated in this way may help us to confront and engage with the forces of addiction as they are encountered in the world.

Ian O’Loughlin earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of cognitive science at the University of Iowa, and is now a faculty member in the philosophy department at Pacific University, where he teaches courses on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, language and logic, and artificial intelligence.  He has presented and published work on the cognitive science of memory, learning and education, self-knowledge, and implicit cognitive bias.
Mezzanine

Friday, November 10th:
Sean Davis: Art Heals the Soul | 6:55pm
Sean Davis, army veteran and military consultant for Profile on all three plays of the Elliot Trilogy, engages in a short talk about how art brings community together and how that is, “more important now than ever before in my lifetime.”

Sean Davis is the author of The Wax Bullet War, a Purple Heart Iraq War veteran, and the winner of the Legionnaire of the Year Award from the American Legion in 2015 and the recipient of the Emily Gottfried Emerging Leader, Human Rights  award for 2016. His stories, essays, and articles have appeared in the Lidia Yuknavitch’s TED Talk Book The Misfit Manifesto, Forest Avenue Press anthologyCity of Weird, Sixty Minutes, Story Corps, Flaunt Magazine, The Big Smoke, Human the movie, and much more.
Mezzanine

Saturday, November 11th:
Jamie Rea: Changeover Observation | Post-Show
Production Manager Jamie Rea will describe the scenic changeover from Water by the Spoonful to The Happiest Song Plays Last as it is happening in front of you, and will answer questions about the collaborative design process for this project.
Alder Stage

Thursday, November 16th:
Adrian Baxter*| 6:55pm
Saxophonist Adrian Baxter will tune our ears to the harmonies and dissonances of jazz – a central stylistic and structural theme in Water by the Spoonful – by performing three improvisations inspired by the five stages of loss.

Adrian P. Baxter learned the entrance requirements for the classical performance program at U of O from Carl Woideck, author of “Charlie Parker: His Music and Life”, during his first year of college at Lane Community College. He then attended the University of Oregon. He dropped out of college to join “The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies”, unable to attend school with a heavy touring schedule, and remained with the band through their “Big City Muscle Car”, and “Kids on the Street” albums which were re-compiled with new material in what would later become the platinum “Zuit Suit Riot” Album. He returned to school, played in local bands, worked part time as a bartender, studied theory and jazz performance under Steve Owen, arranging under Garry Versace, and earned a Bachelor of Music (BM) in Jazz Studies. Now based in Portland, OR, transcribing, arranging, and performing with several local artists, and teaching for M.U.S.E.. He has also enjoyed performing with Les McCann, Tito Puente Jr., Melcochita, Yolanda Del Rio, Ramsey Embick, Mel Brown, Andre St. James, Dr. Freddy Vilches, Mariachi Viva Mexico, and many local Portland artists.
Alder Lobby

Saturday, November 18th:
Mat Chat with the cast of  Water by the Spoonful | Post-show
Alder Stage

Events for The Happiest Song Plays Last

Saturday, November 4th:
Opening Night Reception | Post-Show
Join us immediately following the performance for nibbles, drinks and music.  Catering provided by 2017 Season Partner Pambiche.
Morrison Lobby

Sunday, November 5th:
The Day’s Mail by Quiara Alegría Hudes* | 6:55pm
Enjoy a reading of this short piece by our featured playwright, directed by Ashlin Hatch who is serving as the Assistant Director on both of the Rep productions.
Mezzanine

Thursday, November 9th:
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner: Art and Activism* | 6:55pm
Quiara Alegría Hudes unites music and poetry to stage her unique vision of communities in transition. Daniel recently interviewed Quiara about her musical training and theatrical influences; in this talk, he’ll discuss the dramatic and political roles that Bach, jazz, and Puerto Rican folk music play in the Elliot trilogy.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner holds the Ronni Lacroute Chair in Shakespeare Studies at Linfield College, where he teaches courses in literary history, drama, and gender studies. A Portland native, he received his B.A. in History from Yale and his Ph.D. in English from Harvard. His articles on Shakespeare and contemporary culture have recently appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, and The New York Times. A frequent speaker at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he is the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project and a consulting scholar for Age and Gender Equity in the Arts.
Mezzanine

Saturday, November 11th:
Dr. Lindsay Benstead: Understanding the Arab Spring* | 6:55pm
Lindsay Benstead will discuss common myths surrounding the Arab spring, which shook the Arab world beginning with Tunisia in December 2010. Among these myths are that the seeds of change began only in the 2000s, or that the “Arab spring” has failed.

Lindsay J. Benstead is Associate Professor of Political Science at Portland State University, Contributing Scholar in the Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program at Rice University, and Affiliated Scholar in the Program on Governance and Local Development (GLD) at the University of Gothenburg and Yale University. She has conducted surveys in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan and contributes to the Transitional Governance Project. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and served as doctoral fellow at Yale University, post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, and Kuwait Visiting Professor at SciencesPo in Paris.
Mezzanine

Sunday, November 12th:
Mat Chat with the cast of  The Happiest Song Plays Last | Post-show
Alder Stage

Friday, November 17th:
The Day’s Mail by Quiara Alegría Hudes* | 6:55pm
Enjoy a reading of this short piece by our featured playwright, directed by Ashlin Hatch who is serving as the Assistant Director on both of the Rep productions.
Mezzanine

Saturday, November 18th:
Dr. Erin Spottswood: How Technology Fulfills Our Need for Communication and Connection | 6:55pm
Dr. Spotswood’s research interests focus on 1) how subtle cues embedded in online environments influence interpersonal communication dynamics, and 2) how the concepts of identity and face are crucial to understanding these dynamics on social media sites. Subtle features of online environments can play an important and at times unconscious role in social dynamics, from perceptions of the self and other to interpersonal behaviors and social norms. The goal of her research program is to examine how online environments reinforce or challenge traditional theories on interpersonal dynamics to advance our understanding of how communication technology transforms interpersonal perceptions and communication behavior.
Mezzanine

For my first full season at Profile, I am doing something extra ambitious: a special double season featuring two of our most celebrated, most important national playwrights in conversation for a full eighteen months. Two writers at the peak of their powers, whose work over the last twenty-five years will seem shockingly urgent and relevant and taken together, will connect us with Americans of every shape, size, creed and color and remind us of the tapestry in which we live.
-Profile Artistic Director, Josh Hecht

READ THE OREGONIAN’S SEASON PREVIEW HERE

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS HERE

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Directed by Jane Unger

In her solo show 2.5 Minute Ride, Lisa Kron invites her audience (and her girlfriend Peg) on the Kron family “vacation” to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. You see, in spite of near-blindness, diabetes and a heart condition, Lisa’s 74-year-old father insists on yearly trips to the world capital of roller coasters. But this isn’t the only journey Lisa takes with her ailing father. She also accompanies Walter to Auschwitz, where his parents were killed, and where she understands more clearly the joys and sorrows of her father’s heart. With wit and compassion, Lisa creates a complex and searingly funny meditation on how human beings make sense of tragedy, grief, and everyday life.

Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

Wonderfully evocative and often seriously funny, [Kron] sets off emotional vibrations that just won’t stop. -New York Times

DETAILS

Directed by Dawn Monique Williams

Pretty Patty Johnson is thrilled to join the secretarial pool at the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon under the iron-fisted leadership of sultry office manager Susan Curtis. But she soon begins to feel that all is not right—the enforced diet of Slim-Fast shakes, the strange clicking language between the girls, the monthly disappearance of a lumberjack. By the time Patty discovers murder is part of these office killers’ skill set, it’s too late to turn back! In the guise of satiric exploitation-horror, The Secretaries takes an unflinching look at the warping cultural expectations of femininity and the ways women themselves are often the enforcers of sexism.

Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

‘The Secretaries’ is like a mashup of ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Portlandia’ –Chicago Tribune

DETAILS

Directed by Bobby Bermea

In August 1991 simmering tensions in the racially polarized Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Crown Heights exploded into riots after an African-American boy was killed by a car in a rabbi’s motorcade and a Jewish student was slain in retaliation. Pulitzer Prize-finalist Fires in the Mirror is dramatist Anna Deavere Smith’s stunning exploration of the events and emotions leading up to and following the Crown Heights conflict. Through her portrayals of more than two dozen adversaries, victims, and eyewitnesses, using verbatim excerpts from their observations derived from interviews she conducted, Smith provides a brilliant, Rashoman-like documentary portrait of contemporary ethnic turmoil.

Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

Quite simply the most compelling and sophisticated view of urban racial and class conflict that one could hope to encounter. –New York Times

DETAILS

Directed by Josh Hecht

It’s Thanksgiving of 2000 and the presidential election still has not been decided. Ellen insists that her friends and family don’t understand how bad the situation really is. But no one—not her loving partner, Danny, nor the passionate Amy, nor the brutally pragmatic and world-weary Judy— can make Ellen see the blind spot at the center of her own politics and emotional life. A funny, passionate, and ultimately searing play that illuminates assumptions that lie at the heart of the American character—and the blind spots that mask us from ourselves.

Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

Smart, moving and undeniably sexy. –San Francisco Chronicle

DETAILS

Commissioned by Profile Theatre from National Medal of Arts Awardee Ping Chong and Company, (UN)Conditional is our first In Dialogue Production, drawn from the experiences of our Community Profile program – a year-long writing workshop for people living with chronic conditions.

DETAILS

Directed by Josh Hecht

In Repertory with Let Me Down Easy performing at the Portland Playhouse

May 9th – June 15th, 2019

In the opening moments of this Tony-nominated Best Play on Broadway, Lisa Kron assures us this play is not about her mother and her. But, of course, it is about her mother, and her mother’s extraordinary ability to heal a changing neighborhood, despite her inability to heal herself. In this self-professed solo show with people in it, Kron asks the provocative question: Do we create our own illness? The answers she gets are much more complicated than she bargained for as the play spins dangerously out of control into riotously funny and unexpected territory.

Click here for ASL interpreted description.

This glorious and funny new play opens doors of insight and emotion that no other play in New York is opening. I fell in love with ‘Well.’ –New York Times

TICKETS

Directed by Josh Hecht

In Repertory with Well  performing at the Portland Playhouse

May 16th – June 16th, 2019

In this theater piece constructed from verbatim interview transcripts, Anna Deavere Smith examines the miracle of human resilience through the lens of the national debate on health care. Drawn from in-person interviews, Smith creates an indelible gallery of 20 individuals, known and unknown—from a rodeo bull rider and a World Heavyweight boxing champion to a New Orleans doctor during Hurricane Katrina, as well as former Texas Governor Ann Richards, cyclist Lance Armstrong, film critic Joel Siegel, and supermodel Lauren Hutton. A work of emotional brilliance and political substance from one of the treasures of the American theater. Originally created as a one-person show, the Profile Theatre production will feature the same six-person cast performing Lisa Kron’s Well.

Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

Vitally important, wide-ranging and ultimately very moving. -Los Angeles Times

TICKETS

Lisa Kron

Lisa Kron has been writing and performing theater since coming to New York from Michigan in 1984. Her work has been widely produced in New York, regionally, and internationally. Her play Fun Home, a musical written with composer Jeanine Tesori and based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, earned her 2 Tony Awards in 2015, for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score (with Jeanine Tesori); the show also won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Other plays include The Ver**zon Play; In The Wake which received Lortel and GLAAD Media Award nominations, was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, named a “Best Play of 2010” by TimeOut and Backstage; Well, was named a “Best Play of 2004” by the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Newark Star Ledger, Backstage, and the Advocate. 2.5 Minute Ride which received OBIE, L.A. Drama-Logue, New York Press, and GLAAD Media Awards; 101 Humiliating Stories, which received a Drama Desk nomination.

Lisa is a founding member of the legendary OBIE and Bessie Award-winning collaborative theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers whose plays, Oedipus at Palm Springs, Brave Smiles, Brides of the Moon and The Secretaries have all been produced by their theatrical home, New York Theater Workshop, and have been performed widely throughout the country both by the Brothers and by other companies.

Lisa has received playwriting fellowships from the Lortel and Guggenheim Foundations, Sundance Theater Lab, the Lark Play Development Center, and the MacDowell Colony, the Cal Arts/Alpert Award, a Helen Merrill Award, the Kleban Prize, and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. She was a resident playwright at the American Voices New Play Initiative at Arena Stage.

As an actor. Lisa has acted in her own plays and the plays of the Five Lesbian Brothers, and also been seen in such productions as the Foundry’s Good Person of Szechwan at LaMama, The Normal Heart at the Public Theater, Spain at M.C.C., and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, at NYTW.

 Anna Deavere Smith

Actress, playwright, and teacher, Anna Deavere Smith is said to have created a new form of theater. Her latest play, Notes From the Field, explores issues of justice and opportunity in America through the lens of education. She is recipient of two Tony nominations and three Obie awards. She was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for her play Fires in the Mirror. She has created over 15 one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews, including Twilight: Los Angeles, about the Los Angeles race riots of 1992 and Let Me Down Easy, which focused on healthcare in the United States. Television work includes The West Wing, Nurse Jackie, and Black – ish. Films include The American President, Rachel Getting Married and Philadelphia. Books include Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me. She received the National Humanities Medal, presented to her by President Obama in 2013. She was the 2015 Jefferson Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a MacArthur Fellow, recipient of a George Polk Award in Journalism, a Ridenhour Courage Prize, and The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. She is University Professor at New York University, where she also directs the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue.

Profile is thrilled to announce our inaugural 24 Hour Playfest – a wild, exciting and vibrant way to celebrate our mainstage playwright and come together as a creative community!

On the evening of Sunday, June 18th over 30 local theatre artists, including directors, playwrights and performers will gather on the set of 26 Miles. They’ll be divided into 6 teams and given a prompt from the show. The playwrights will write into the night, delivering their new short plays to their collaborators by 9am the next morning. That afternoon, throughout the Artists Rep building, the teams will meet together to rehearse and polish their pieces. That night we share them with you in a not-to-be-missed one-night-only performance.

Join us Monday night and see what Portland’s freshest creative minds come up with!

Monday, June 19th 7:30pm
Morrison Stage

Tickets: $15
Purchase here.

For additional information, please contact Marketing Consultant Natalie Genter-Gilmore at natalie@profiletheatre.org. To download photos click on thumbnails below.

Media Release

Alex Ramirez de Cruz.  Photo by David Kinder.

Julana Torres and Alex Ramirez de Cruz. Photo by David Kinder.

Julana Torres and Chris Harder. Photo by David Kinder

Jimmy Garcia and Julana Torres. Photo by David Kinder.

Julana Torres. Photo by David Kinder.

Alex Ramirez de Cruz. Photo by David Kinder.

Chris Harder, Alex Ramirez de Cruz, Julana Torres and Jimmy Garcia. Photo by David Kinder.

Alex Ramirez de Cruz and Julana Torres. Photo by David Kinder.

Alex Ramirez de Cruz
Olivia
Alex is a Portland area actor, deviser and theatre-maker. Some of her favorite credits include: Tomás and the Library Lady (Oregon Children’s Theatre), DB (COHO Theatre), The Oregon Trail (Portland Center Stage), TeatroSOLO: Deseo (Boom Arts Theatre), Passion Play (Shaking The Tree & Profile Theatre), Dance For a Dollar, (Miracle Theatre) and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Portland Playhouse). She is dedicated to creating original devised theatre and is a proud member of String House, an independent producing title and new works laboratory, nominated for two Drammy Awards for “Best Devised Production.”

Julana Torres
Beatriz
Julana is a Portland local with an extensive career in music, dance, and theatre. She is ecstatic to be performing for the first time with Profile Theatre. Most recently Julana originated the role of Doña Teresa in Óye Oyá at Milagro Theatre  and Grandma in Artists Repertory’s world premiere musical Cuba Libre. Other musical theater credits include Fame (Carmen), West Side Story (Carmelita), Peter Pan (Tiger Lily 2), and South Pacific (Ensemble). Julana also established the full time dance program for Franklin High School, and was the creator of successful arts showcase for youth Arts Alive. She can also be seen performing as the lead singer for popular latin jazz orchestra The Bobby Torres Ensemble.

Jimmy Garcia
Manuel
After studying at Southern Oregon University and performing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Jimmy is happy to be back in Portland where he began his acting career years ago on the stages of Milagro Theater, Stark Raving Theater and Portland Center Stage. In Southern Oregon, he performed a variety of roles working with such esteemed directors as Bill Rauch, Libby Appel and Pat Patton to name a few. He has most recently performed in Milagro’s world premiere Òye Oya, ART’s A Civil War Christmas, Profile Theater’s Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue, and can next be seen in Profile’s The Happiest Song Plays Last.

Chris Harder
Aaron
Chris is honored to work with Profile Theatre. Credits include: Marjorie Prime, The Skin of Our Teeth, We Are Proud…, Intimate Apparel, Ten Chimneys, The History Boys, Chasing Empires Soul (Artists Rep), Cyrano, Othello, The Receptionist, Antigone, JAW (PCS), Head. Hands. Feet. (Shaking The Tree), Mother Teresa is Dead, Angels in America, Twelfth Night (Portland Playhouse), The Turn of the Screw (Portland Shakespeare Project), The Snowstorm (Many Hats/CoHo), The Yellow Wallpaper, Fool For Love (CoHo), Shining City (Third Rail.) Chris was a member of Sowelu Theatre Ensemble for seven seasons, he teaches acting at Portland Actors Conservatory and at Artists Rep.

Rebecca Martinez
Director
Rebecca  is a Brooklyn-based director and choreographer with deep roots in Portland. Rebecca is an ensemble member of Sojourn Theatre, a Co-Curator of Working Theater’s Directors Salon, a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, INTAR’s Unit52, the 2015-16 SDCF Observership Class, the Latinx Theatre Commons Steering Committee, and an Associate Member of SDC. Awards include four Portland Theater Drammy Awards (7 Great Loves and The War Project: 9 Acts of Determination – Sojourn Theatre; The Brother/Sister Plays – Portland Playhouse) and the Lilla Jewel Award for Women Artists. Rebecca is an artist with the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and a 2017 Drama League Directing Fellow.

Daniel Meeker
Scenic Design
tba

Sarah Gahagan
Costume Design
Sarah is a costume and set designer for theatre, dance, festivals and stop-motion animation film as well as being adjunct theatre instructor and resident costume designer at Portland Community College. She has done theatre design and collaboration work with many of Oregon’s beloved arts organizations including: Artist Repertory Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre, Profile Theatre, Miracle Theatre Group, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and Michal Curry Design. Sarah has received Drammy Awards for her costume design work on Eurydice, James and The Giant Peach, Trojan Women, El Quijote, and A Year With Frog and Toad.

Kristeen Crosser
Lighting Design
Kristeen is excited to be working with Profile again. Some of her favorite Profile credits include lighting design for Buried Child and Thief River and scenic design for My Children My Africa and Master Harold and the Boys. She received her BA from Centre College in Danville, KY and received her MFA in lighting design from Wayne State University, Hilberry Company in Detroit, MI.  She has designed lighting and/or scenery for several area and regional theatres including Artists Rep’s Eurydice, Foxfinder and The Understudy, Miracle Theatre’s Mariela in the Desert and Oedipus El Rey. Oregon Children’s Theatre’s Goosebumps the Musical and Bad Kitty. Third Rail Repertory Theatre’s The New Electric Ballroom and Northwest Children’s Theatre’s Snow White.

Sharath Patel
Sound Design
Sharath was raised between Appalachia and India while spending the following years studying across Europe and New England. He spent nearly a decade as a lead sound designer in New York City. Recent design highlights include As You Like It (CalShakes Oakland); The Royale (ACTheatre Seattle); Free Outgoing (East West Players Los Angeles); Grand Concourse (Artists Rep). Regional/International credits include designs in New York City, D.C., Boston, Norfolk, Raleigh, Aspen, India, France, England, Germany, Romania, Yale, Reed, Harvard, Fordham, Columbia, Willamette, Ohio, Portland State, and Butler University. Sharath holds a MFA in Sound Design from the Yale School of Drama and currently is a Resident Artist at Artists Repertory Theatre. www.sharathpatel.com

Sarah Andrews
Props Master
Sarah earned her BFA in Acting in 2014, since this she has worked and lived in Portland. She has worked with many theatre companies including Tears of Joy, Staged!, Post 5 Theatre, Milagro, Lakewood, Oregon Children’s Theatre and defunkt theatre. She also works in community-based projects such as Buskers In The Burg in Ellensburg, WA and the Summer Solstice in Seattle. She also volunteers with theatre projects in Oregon prisons. She wrote, produced and directed an original adaptation of “Life is a Dream” and the children’s show “Pearl and the Five-Headed Dragon.”  She has also taught workshops on puppetry at the Kennedy Center Theatre Festival. Currently, she is producing Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno.

Miranda Russ
Stage Manager
Miranda has a BA in Drama, with Honors in Stage Management, from University of California, Irvine and an MFA in Stage Management from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her professional credits include: Gigi on Broadway; Othello at Classic Stage Company; Birds of Paradise at New York International Fringe Festival; Summer Valley Fair at the New York Musical Theatre Festival; and more. Having recently relocated back to the West Coast, Miranda is enjoying working with the amazing Portland theatre community, with companies such as Profile Theatre, Artists Repertory Theatre, and Third Rail Repertory Theatre.

Madilynn Garcia
Production Manager
Madilynn is a native Texan and thrilled to be working at Profile this season. Some of her past production management work includes Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue at Profile Theatre, The Nether at Third Rail, as well as work at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The ZACH, and UT Austin. Madilynn also serves on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for The United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) where she coordinates the Gateway Program, which seeks to promote underrepresented, emerging artists in the area of production

Esther McFadden
Production Assistant
Esther is glad to be back with Profile after opening the season with Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue (PA). Recent credits include The Talented Ones (PA), Trevor (PA), and The Skin of Our Teeth (PA) with Artists Repertory Theatre, The Angry Brigade (SM) with Third Rail Repertory Theatre, Upside Down: A Musical Tale After the Christ (SM) with The Upside Down Theater Company, and A Christmas Carol (PA), Julius Caesar, The Heidi Chronicles,To Kill A Mockingbird, and Blues for Mister Charlie (SM Intern) with Trinity Repertory Company. She is a graduate of Emerson College with a BFA in Stage and Production Management and BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing.