Community Profile: Voices From The Real World

Episode 6: Josie Seid: Let Us Step Into These Human Skins

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“Josie Seid is one of the warmest, most generous, most gifted artists in the Portland metro area. Extraordinary actor, singer, director, poet and playwright, she shares some of her outstanding work and magnanimous spirit with us.”

ARTIST BIO
Currently living in Portland, OR, Josie Seid is a resident artist with Artists Repertory Theater. She’s an international creator of theater arts, who moves in several circles.  As proud member of the LineStorm Playwrights Collective, she is the author of Petite Dames, which was nominated for the Kilroy list in 2015 and was recently workshopped at Lewis and Clark’s Ray Warren Symposium on Race and Revolutionary Struggle. Other works include but are not limited to: Path of Glory, The Great God of the Dark Storm Cloud, Jordan’s Wisdom, Overdue, Stand by Me, and This is Message Number 13. Her short play, A Wing and a Prayer was recently featured in the nationwide Play At Home project. As an actor and musical theater performer, she’s been seen in shows on Portland area stages such as: An Octoroon with Artist’s Repertory Theater, Men on Boats with Third Rail, and Into the Woods with Broadway Rose. She is also an international arts envoy who as performed in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. Josie has also directed productions in Portland to include two world premieres: Hazardous Beauty with PassinArt and A Dark Sky Full of Stars with Vertigo. Her most recent film, Forget Me Not, America, in association with the ART Mercury company has taken Josie to new creative places and she is excited to imagine what’s next!

I attended the last dress rehearsal of Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, which was a full run-through without pause. In sitting in a theatre in which you are the only person not connected to the production, you notice so many things you might not normally think of, such as the difference the absence of an audience makes, especially when, for example, a funny line is spoken. Getting to look behind the scenes makes crystal clear how much theatre is a collaborative endeavor with hundreds of small parts coming together to make an amazing whole.

-Pancho Savery, Profile Community Council

Profile’s Community Council are people from the Portland area of varying ages, ethnicities and  backgrounds who are invited to view the backstage process from beginning to end and share their perspectives with our communities.

On Monday, November 13th we celebrated the end of this year-long program!  The emotional evening was a public performance of the veterans’ writing staged with professional actors on the Alder Stage.  

This reading was presented in conjunction with our rotating repertory production of Water By The Spoonful and The Happiest Song Plays Last, the final two plays in a trilogy of work centered around Elliot Ortiz, a veteran of the Iraq war.

From Artistic Director Josh Hecht

One of the things that most attracted me to Profile Theatre when I applied for the job of Artistic Director last year is the company’s long-standing commitment to real community engagement. My desire to lead a theater company stems from my belief that, at its best, theater can help us have conversations we might not otherwise have. A theater that was already putting significant human capital and programming resources into community dialogue felt like the right home for me.

One of my biggest priorities as I start my new tenure at the helm of Profile is continuing to broaden the communities we reach and serve, and continuing to deepen the two-way engagement with our city.

At the center of our 2017 Quiara Alegria Hudes season we will present all three plays in Hudes’ “Elliot” Trilogy: Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, Pulitzer Prize-winner Water By The Spoonful, and The Happiest Song Plays Last. The first follows three generations of a Puerto Rican-American family, all of whom have served in the US Armed Forces – the grandfather in Korea, the Father and mother in Vietnam, and Elliot who serves two tours in Iraq. The two subsequent plays follow Elliot’s re-introduction into civilian life and his struggle to find his place in the world.

What better an opportunity to engage with our own veterans community. There are currently nearly 22 million American combat vets, 2.5 million from the current engagements in the Middle East alone. Profile has created a one-of-a-kind collaboration with the Writers Guild Initiative, the professional trade organization of screenwriters and playwrights, to bring award-winning writers from across the country to Portland. Here they will work with local veterans and their families, mentoring them in a writing practice designed to help them reflect upon and share their experiences through the written word. We’ve also partnered with the American Legion Post 134 in NE Portland, various Veterans Resource Centers at colleges in the area, and the Wounded Warrior Project’s regional base in Seattle to identify local participants in these workshops.

The group gathered in February for two days of intensive writing workshops. They also saw our production of Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Throughout the year, we continued to meet one Saturday afternoon a month to create community, share work and continue our practice. Finally, in November, selections of their writing were presented with professional actors and director on Profile’s stage alongside our repertory productions of Water By The Spoonful and The Happiest Song Plays Last.

Our goal is manifold: To use the theater as a site of community-formation. To think of the theater, not just as an institution that can start conversations, but as a place the community goes to have those conversations. But also, to provide a place where various communities can see their own lives reflected back to them on the stage, so that we might know ourselves and each other as necessary parts of this great American tapestry.

If you are interested in learning more about our veterans’ collaborations this year, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. I hope to see you at the theater.

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Cast

Jimmy Garcia*
Pop

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 Miracle Theater, Stark Raving Theater and Portland Center Stage companies. 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 ART’s A Civil War Christmas and can next be found at Miracle Theater’s world premiere Oye Oya.

Anthony Green*
Grandpop

Tony holds a BFA in Acting and a Master of Theatre Studies in Production and Design from Southern Oregon University.  Most recently Tony was seen in Defunkt Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of Hir, Jewish Theatre Collaborative’s production of Davita’s Harp and Into the Beautiful North at Milagro Theatre.  Other Portland credits include American Night, O! Romeo!, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, BoomCrackleFly and the Drammy Award winning Oedipus El Rey at Milagro, Equus at Post5, Cymbeline with Anon It Moves, Antony and Cleopatra with Portland Actors Ensemble, King Lear, King John and Mary Stuart at NWCTC.

Anthony Lam
Elliot

Anthony is excited to be performing at Profile Theatre for the first time. He was last seen as Atómiko in Into the Beautiful North at Milagro Theater. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.F.A. in Theater Arts. He has done commercial work throughout the Northwest and recently played the tactical cop in the season premiere of Grimm. When he is not acting, he spends his time with his wife, chasing his three children all over the place.

Cristi Miles*
Ginny

Cristi is a performer, director and teacher based in Portland, OR.  Portland credits include: The Journey Play is the Whole thing, Enter THE NIGHT, The Three Sisters, Song of the Dodo and  R3 with PETE; Midsummer (a play with songs) with Third Rail Rep, Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Dying City with Portland Playhouse. She is co-artistic director of PETE, an Assistant Professor of the Theatre at George Fox University and trained at The Oregon Center for Alexander Technique (AmSAT certified teacher). Brandeis University, MFA.

Creative Team

Alice Reagan
Director

Alice is a New York-based freelance director.  Credits include Jackie by Elfriede Jelinek at Boom Arts, Or, by Liz Duffy Adams at Shakespeare & Company, Phaeton (a diggle of a fragment) by Mac Wellman at Classic Stage Company, Enter THE NIGHT by Maria Irene Fornes with Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble, The Miser by Molière with Brave New World Rep, Nomads by Julia Jarcho at Incubator Arts Project, I Came to Look for You on Tuesday by Chiori Miyagawa at La MaMa.  She is the recipient of two Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grants, the Princess Grace Award (Fabergé Theater Award) and Princess Grace Special Project Grant, and was a Drama League Directing Fellow.  Alice is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in Directing at Barnard College.  MFA: Columbia.  alicereagan.com.

Kaye Blankenship
Scenic Design

Kaye is a scenic, lighting, and props designer originally hailing from Sammamish, Washington. She earned her BA in theatre from Lewis & Clark College in 2012, and after a year working in New York, she is back in Portland and excited to work with Profile Theatre once again. Favorite past shows include: The Antigone Project (Profile), Annapurna (Third Rail), Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood LIVE (Mills Entertainment), A Winter’s Tale (Anon It Moves), Static (Third Rail), Ramona Quimby (OCT), Snowstorm (CoHo), In The Next Room (Profile Theatre), and Waxwing with String House Theatre, where she is also a founding company member.

Miranda K. Hardy
Lighting Design

Miranda is a Lighting Designer based in Portland.  Previously with Profile she lit Bright Half Life and Master Harold and the Boys.  She is an associate company member with Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble designing lights for R3 [Drammy Award], The Three Sisters, All Well, or, the whale, and Procedures For Saying No, designing scenery and lights for Song of the Dodo and Drowned Horse Tavern.  She has worked on shadow/animation spectacular The Letting Go and Kaddish For Bernie Madoff.  Miranda has worked in New York City, as well as nationally and internationally including four seasons as the resident Lighting Designer at Festival Di Due Mondi (Spoleto, IT).  M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts.

Jenny Ampersand
Costume Design

Jenny is a designer based in Portland OR.   Her costume work was last seen at Profile for Bright Half Life.  She is an associate artist with PETE (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble), Liminal, and The Late Now.  Other local credits include, costumes for Third Rail’s The Realistic Joneses, Oregon Children’s Theatre’s Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Liminal’s 7deadly Sins (Drammy Award), scenery for PETE’s Enter THE NIGHT, Shaking the Tree’s A Doll’s House, Phame’s Up the Fall, and puppets for Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s This Land-Woody Guthrie.  She received her BFA in Scenic and Costume Design from Cornish College of the Arts.

Phillip Johnson
Sound Design

Phillip is a theatrical artist based in Portland Oregon and the Technical Director of Ridgefield High School’s drama program. His recent productions include Hands Up (Red Door Project), Worse Than Tigers (ACT Theater/Red Stage), Contigo Pan y Cebolla (Milagro Theater), The Antigone Project, A Lady Onstage (Profile Theater), and The Importance of Being Earnest (Valley Repertory Theater).  When he isn’t designing or teaching Phil  is traveling the world spreading art education to impoverished areas. He most recently taught theater in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Phil Has a B.F.A. and M.A. from Ohio University. For updates, downloads and links to show soundtracks please visit PhilJohnsondesignstheworld.com.

D Westerholm*
Stage Manager

Profile Theatre: 2014 Tanya Barfield Season, 2013 Sam Shepard Season, 2014 Sarah Ruhl Season, The Road to Mecca. Other Portland stage management credits: Trevor, The Skin of Our Teeth (ASM), The Price (Artist’s Repertory Theatre); The Light in the Piazza (Portland Playhouse). Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Production Assistant: The Unfortunates (2013), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), Troilus and Cressida (2012), The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa (2012), Julius Caesar (2011), The African Company Presents Richard III (2011). BA in Theatre Management from Western Washington University, MFA in Stage Management from Columbia University. Active member of Actor’s Equity Association.

Esther McFaden
Production Assistant

Esther is making her Profile Theatre debut with Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Recent credits include A Christmas Carol (PA), To Kill a Mockingbird, Blues for Mister Charlie, The Heidi Chronicles, and Julius Caesar (SM Intern) at Trinity Repertory Company, and Trevor (PA) and The Skin of Our Teeth (PA) at Artists Repertory Theater. Other favorites include Upside Down, A Musical Tale After the Christ (SM) with the Upside Down Theatre Company, Godspell (SM) with YA4Ever, and Chicago (SM) with the Young Artists Ensemble. She is a graduate of Emerson College.

*Member Actors Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage manager.

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Dates of Run: June 15 – 25, 2017
Directed by: Rebecca Martinez
Featuring: Jimmy Garcia*, Chris Harder*, Alex Ramirez de Cruz, Julana Torres*

A desperate midnight phone call spurs a spontaneous road trip for a brilliant teen and her estranged mother. The reunited pair runs fast and furious from the secrets in their lives. So what if reality’s nipping at their heels? Colliding together, they find connection, forgiveness and a part of their identities that has been missing all along.

Creative Team: Kristeen Crosser (Lighting Design), Sarah Gahagan (Costume Design), Daniel Meeker (Scenic Design), Sharath Patel (Sound Design)
ASL interpreted performance June 23rd.

*Member Actors’ Equity Association, the professional union of actors and stage managers.

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Rehearsals are underway for the final play of the 2016 Tanya Barfield Season! Look at the team artists bringing Bright Half Life to the stage.

Get tickets to Bright Half Life HERE.

CAST

Chantal DeGroat
Vicki

Chantal  is honored to perform again in this Profile season. Working with this team of women has been transformative. Chantal performed a reading of Bright Half Life this summer with The Hansberry Project (Seattle). Training: Shakespeare & Co., Emerson College. She is a Third Rail Repertory company member. Credits: Seattle Rep (2017), Intiman, Third Rail Rep, Portland Center Stage, Artists Rep, Badass Theatre, Portland Playhouse, Clackamas Rep, NWCTC, Jewish Theatre Co. Educator/Actress: August Wilson Red Door Project, Portland Center Stage, & Exeter University (England). She is Artistic Director & activist of The Color of NOW. Representation: Arthouse Talent. www.chantaldegroat.com

Maureen Porter
Erica

Maureen  is a Company Member of Third Rail Repertory Theatre where roles include Arphra Behn in Or, Maureen in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Belinda in Noises Off, Marian in Sweet &; Sad and That Hopey Changey Thing, Lisa in The Wonderful World of Dissocia, Pam in The Gray Sisters, Eleanor in Dead Funny, and Mom in Number Three. Other local credits include Dark Ahab in Or, The Whale with Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble, The Taming of the Shrew at Portland Shakespeare Project, Crooked at CoHo Theatre, No Exit and Betrayal at Imago. This is Maureen’s debut at Profile.

CREATIVE TEAM

Rebecca Lingafelter
Director
Rebecca is a local director, performer and educator. Directing credits include Peter and the Starcatcher (Portland Playhouse), Procedures for Saying No (PETE) Realistic Joneses (Third Rail), Tongues (Profile), Elective Affinities (Boom Arts), 448 Psychosis and As You Like it (Lewis & Clark). She is a company member at Third Rail Repertory Theatre and co-artistic director of Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble (PETE). Upcoming projects include co-directing The Angry Brigade (Third Rail Rep). Rebecca is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Lewis & Clark College. Columbia University, MFA.

Peter Ksander
Scenic Design
Peter is a scenographer and media artist whose stage design work has been presented both nationally and internationally. In 2008 he won an Obie award for the scenic design of Untitled Mars (this title may change), and in 2014 he won a Bessie award for the design of This Was the End. He holds a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, is an Associate Professor at Reed College and is an associate company member with the Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble. This his first show with Profile.

Miranda K. Hardy
Lighting Design
Miranda is a Lighting Designer based in Portland.  Previously with Profile she lit Master Harold and the Boys.  She is an associate company member with PETE (Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble) designing lights for R3 [Drammy Award], The Three Sisters, All Well, or, the whale, and Procedures For Saying No, designing scenery and lights for Song of the Dodo and Drowned Horse Tavern.  She has worked with Laura Heit on her shadow/animation spectacular The Letting Go and Alicia Jo Rabin’s Kaddish For Bernie Madoff.  Miranda has worked extensively in New York City, as well as nationally and internationally including four seasons as the resident Lighting Designer at Festival Di Due Mondi (Spoleto, IT).  Miranda holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Jenny Ampersand
Costume Design
Jenny  is a designer based in Portland OR.  She is an associate artist with PETE (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble), Liminal, and The Late Now.  With PETE, she just completed The Journey Play Constellation.  Other local credits include, costumes for Third Rail’s The Realistic Joneses, Oregon Children’s Theatre’s Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Liminal’s 7deadly Sins (Drammy Award), scenery for PETE’s Enter THE NIGHT, Shaking the Tree’s A Doll’s House, Phame’s Up the Fall, and puppets for Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s This Land-Woody Guthrie.  She received her BFA in Scenic and Costume Design from Cornish College of the Arts.

Mark Valadez
Sound Design
Mark  is a sound designer who has made work in New York City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Budapest. He is a proud member of Third Rail Repertory Theater and an associate artist with Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble (PETE). Third Rail credits include: Midsummer; A Play with Songs, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Belleville, Or, The Realistic Joneses, Mr. Kolpert, The New Electric Ballroom, Annapurna, and The Nether; with PETE: R3, The Song of the Dodo, The Three Sisters, Enter the Night, Drowned Horse Tavern, All Well, [or, the whale], and Procedures for Saying No.

D WESTERHOLM
Stage Manager
With Profile Theatre: Blue Door, The Call; 2014 Sam Shepard Season; 2015 Sarah Ruhl Season, The Road to Mecca. Other Portland stage management credits: Trevor, The Skin of Our Teeth (ASM), The Price (Artists Repertory Theatre); The Light in the Piazza (Portland Playhouse). Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Production Assistant: The Unfortunates (2013), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), Troilus and Cressida (2012), The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa (2012), Julius Caesar (2011), The African Company Presents Richard III (2011). BA in Theatre Management from Western Washington University, MFA in Stage Management from Columbia University. Active member of Actor’s Equity Association.

Charlie Capps
Production Assistant
Charlie graduated high-school from Arts and Communication Magnet Academy in 2015. He has taken part in the Summer Musical Intensive program for the past two years, designing scenery and stage managing for Once Upon A Mattress (2015) and Into The Woods (2016.) Since graduating, he took an internship at Artists Repertory Theatre as a stage management and scene shop intern where he worked on productions such as Mothers and Sons, We are Proud To Present…, and Grand Concourse. He was a member of the PATA Spotlight Award winning crew for The Skin Of Our Teeth. Most recently he was production manager on The Gun Show at CoHo Productions.

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Profile Theatre is pleased to announce Josh Hecht as its new Artistic Director after a seven month national search. Josh will be relocating to Portland and take up leadership of theatre in February 2017. “I’ve spent my career guided by the belief that it is our writers who help us dream our culture forward,” says Josh. “I’m thrilled to join Profile Theatre, whose distinctive mission uses one playwright’s vision as a lens to help us better understand ourselves and our world. And I am inspired by Profile’s commitment to artistic excellence, robust community engagement and to presenting artists who reflect the diversity of our shared culture.”

“Profile Theatre was honored to have over 80 qualified applicants from around the world express interest in becoming our Artistic Director,” says Richard Bradspies, Profile Board member and head of the Artistic Director search committee. “We are especially excited to have Josh Hecht join us because he brings outstanding experience coupled with a shared vision and passion for the unique place Profile fills in the Portland arts scene.”

Josh comes to Profile after having previously served in senior staff positions at two important theaters in New York, MCC Theater and WET. While at MCC, he commissioned new work by Terrence McNally and John Guare, dramaturged Tony-nominated plays by Bryony Lavery and Neil LaBute, and created and ran the Playwrights Coalition, developing new plays by some of the most honored young playwrights of the last decade including Stephen Adly Guirgis, Lucy Thurber, David Adjmi, Adam Bock, Itamar Moses and many others. At WET he developed new work by some of our most prominent female playwrights including Anna Ziegler, Melissa James Gibson, and Kate Robin. He has consulted with the Lake George Theatre Lab and the Great Plains Theatre Conference, helping them expand their programming and community engagement initiatives.

As a freelance director, Josh’s work has received the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, Festival First awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Dublin Arts Festival, and has been nominated for the IRNE Award (Boston) and the GLAAD Award (New York). Productions have been seen at theaters around the country including the Guthrie Theater, the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, the Berkshire Theater Festival, the Kennedy Center, No Rules at Signature Theater Company in DC, and in New York at MCC Theater, the Cherry Lane, the Duke on 42nd Street, The Culture Project and the Obie-winning collective 13Playwrights, among others. He has continued to develop dozens of new plays at theaters and play development centers across the country.

As an educator, Josh has been on the faculty of the New School for Drama’s MFA Directing program,  Fordham University’s MFA Playwriting program and Purchase College, SUNY’s esteemed BFA Dramatic Writing program, in addition to guest stints at The Juilliard School, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Minnesota and others.

His writing has been seen at the Kennedy Center in a collaborative piece created with National Medal of Honor winner Ping Chong, at the Duke on 42nd Street, the Flynn Center in Burlington, VT and the Round House Theater, and has received the support of the Jerome Foundation.

Profile Board Chair Steve Young adds, “Along with other members of Profile’s Search committee, I was impressed by Josh’s credentials as an educator and award-winning director with broad and deep experience in American theatre—in NYC and across the US. I am also impressed by his communication, collaboration, and leadership skills and by his passionate belief in theatre’s responsibility to contribute to the civic life of our community.”

Josh will arrive at Profile Theatre to launch Profile’s 2017 Quiara Alegría Hudes Season. “I’ve been a fan of Quiara Alegría Hudes since seeing Elliot nearly a decade ago,” says Josh. “I find her plays profoundly optimistic in world-view, without ignoring the complicated, often painful  realities of our lives. They seem to suggest that human connection is the salve that can begin to heal even the biggest traumas.” He will direct the rotating repertory productions of Water by the Spoonful and The Happiest Song Plays Last running November 1-19, 2017.

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Adriana Baer first reached out to us at String House last year about collaborating on Antigone Project, and we (Alex Leigh Ramirez, Kaye Blankenship, and myself) were instantly hooked on the prospect of a project so crammed with amazing female artists working on such potent and timely stories. When she pitched us the script for Antigone Arkhe, however, the third piece in the festival written by Caridad Svich, I was admittedly daunted. Arkhe is arguably the most structurally experimental of these one-acts; the text alone is tricky to grasp in its poetic and fragmentary nature, but the added elements of tightly integrated projection, video, and sound also make it a logistically ambitious piece to implement on its own, let alone as part of a larger suite of work. A collaborative co-production made immediate sense as the best way to deliver it to an audience, and despite the obvious challenges I couldn’t help but get more hooked on the script the longer I sat with it. The ideas this piece contains about narrative ownership, female empowerment, and the politics of storytelling itself are just too interesting for a director like myself to pass up exploring. In the end we simply couldn’t say no.

To me, Arkhe is a story about a woman who has had her story stolen. Here she has been relegated in death to pieces of what she once was– shards of memory, artifacts of experience, and bits and pieces of hearsay. In her absence these pieces have been collected and commodified without her consent in order to reshape the story of what happened to her. The Archivist represents this act of appropriation. She has taken ownership of everything that once belonged to Antigone, primary of which is the trauma of her experience, and neatly packaged it all so that it can be delivered to us, the audience, in a palatable form. The journey of Antigone Arkhe, therefore, is that of Antigone’s attempt to reclaim what is rightfully hers.

String House is keenly interested in the practice of storytelling, and it is something we have focused on tightly in our previous theatrical work. However, examining this particular subject through the lens of race yields an even greater depth of field than what we’ve worked with before. As a mixed race artist working in the world today, I am avidly interested in how we as an artistic community tell the stories of people of color; as such, this piece raises fascinating questions for me. For instance, when are depictions of racial trauma on stage empowering, and when are they disempowering? At what point as art-makers do we cross the line from giving voice to a community’s experience into co-opting it for titillation, edification, or dramatic affect? In the terms of this particular story, whether or not the Archivist’s intentions are good or bad, right or wrong, what right does she have, at the end of the day, to Antigone’s story? All loaded questions. Difficult questions. Questions I am excited to drop into a room filled with other amazing female artists of color for some deep exploration.

– Emily Gregory, Co-founder of String House Theatre and Director of Antigone Arkhe

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Meet the amazing team of artists that are bringing Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts to the stage.

In addition to the artists listed below, String House Theatre is creating one of pieces in this show. Read all about that collaboration, HERE.

CAST

Lauren Modica
Lauren Modica is thrilled to perform with Profile Theatre. A Portland native, she has performed with Portland Center Stage (Twist Your Dickens, Our Town, JAW), Artists Repertory Theater (The Skin of Our Teeth), Defunkt (In the Forest She Grew Fangs, Undiscovered Country), PHAME, Action/Adventure, Willamette Shakespeare, PAE, and many others.

Chris Murray
Chris is an actor and producer in Portland who was last seen at Profile Theatre was The Sam Shepard Festival of One Acts. Previous shows at Profile include The Sisters Rosensweig, A Few Stout Individuals and Six Degrees of Separation.Locally, he has been seen at Portland Center Stage in Great Expectations, Our Town, Futura, Sometimes a Great Notion, and 10 years at the JAW festival. Artists Repertory Theatre (The Liar, Playboy of the Western World, Xmas Unplugged, I am Still (The Duchess of Malfi), Mr. Marmalade, Take Me Out), Third Rail Repertory Theatre (A Bright New Boise, Penelope, The Aliens, A Skull in Connemara) and several shows at CoHo Productions, Portland Playhouse and more. Chris has been in many feature films you’ve probably never heard of. A few TV shows you probably have, and was called a pinhead by Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor for his portrayal of Jesus in Everclear’s music video, Hater.

Cecily Overman
Cecily Overman has been active in Portland theatre for over ten years, both teaching and performing. Some of her favorite roles recently include: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth,  White Witch in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Mother in The Giver.  She has taught in the community for Artist Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Oregon Children’s Theatre, and Northwest Children’s Theater. Cecily is also committed to her work with PlayWrite Inc. where, as a coach, she helps youth on the edge find their voice through theater. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in both Psychology and Theatre from Whitman College.

Seth Rue
Seth is super excited to be working with Profile again, and especially on Antigone Project! He’s just returned from the Folger Theatre in DC for the world premiere of Aaron Posner’s District Merchants and you may have seen him in Blue Door last spring in a Drammy-nominated performance. Seth believes that illustrating rejection of oppressive and repressive patriarchy and defending the voiceless will always be one of the most urgent functions of art and he is grateful that these playwrights have done that so beautifully and accessibly. Check out their other works – you will be glad you did.

Andrea White
Andrea White is a Portland native. She moved to Los Angeles for a decade pursuing film and television. She had guest roles on Family Matters, NYPD Blue, and Living Single. She also played Jeannie in the 30th year revival of Hair. Since returning to Portland 10 years ago she has been seen in the following: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Radio Golf, Gem of the Ocean (Portland Playhouse); Lesson Before Dying, American Daughter (Profile Theatre);  The Udmurts (Defunkt Theater) and Love and Information (Theatre Vertigo) She is a two time Best Supporting Actress Drammy Award winner for her work in Two Sister’s and a Piano (Artists Rep) and Hell Cab (Theatre Vertigo). Andrea is also a former faculty member and Acting Instructor at the Portland Actors Conservatory.

CREATIVE TEAM
Dawn Monique Williams
Director
Dawn Monique Williams, drawn to heightened language and magic realism, is a resident artist at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where she’ll direct Merry Wives of Windsor in 2017. She’s directed a range of plays including the English language premiere of Gracia Morales’ NN12, Othello, Twelfth Night, In the Blood, Steel Magnolias, Children of Eden, The 25th Annual Spelling Bee, Little Shop of Horrors, Burial at Thebes, Medea, and La Ronde; international directing credits include Scapin the Cheat, Anna Bella Eema, and The Tempest. Most recently Dawn directed August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Stark. She was the 2013 Killian Directing Fellow at OSF, a TCG Leadership U awardee, and a 2011 Directing Fellow of the Drama League. She holds an MA in Dramatic Literature and an MFA in Directing.

Emily Gregory
Antigone Arkhe Director
Emily Gregory is a director, playwright, and the proud co-founder of String House, a new works laboratory and producing title for experimental, home-grown works of theatre.  Past work with String House includes Waxwing (playwright; 2012), …And the Great Refraction! (playwright/director; 2013), and Rosencrantz Are Guildenstern Are Dead (director, in collaboration with Anon It Moves; 2014).  Emily was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, but is now proud to call Portland, Oregon her home.  She is thrilled to begin a masters in Writing For Performance at Goldsmiths University of London this fall.

Kaye Blankenship
Scenic and Props Design
Kaye is a props, scenic, and lighting designer originally hailing from Sammamish, Washington. She earned her BA in theatre from Lewis & Clark College, and after a year working in New York, she is back in Portland and excited to work with Profile once again. Favorite past shows include: Annapurna (Third Rail), Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood LIVE (Mills Entertainment), A Winter’s Tale (Anon It Moves), Static (Third Rail Repertory Theatre), Ramona Quimby (Oregon Children’s Theatre), Snowstorm (CoHo), In The Next Room (Profile Theatre), and Waxwing with String House Theatre, where she is a founding member.

Jennifer Lin
Lighting Design
Jennifer Lin is a freelance lighting designer and stage technician who has been working in Portland theatre, dance and opera since 2008. She attended Portland State University from 2006-2008, and received The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s Achievement Award for her lighting design for PSU’s production of Electra.  Jennifer is a company member of Third Rail Repertory Theatre, and upcoming projects include Third Rail’s production of The Nether.

Sarah Ludeman
Costume Design
Sara is a local costume designer. Born and raised in Portland,  she graduated from PSU with her BA in History. In addition to her production work, she also assists with Profile’s Hand’s On Theatre program in the Portland Public Schools. Her credits include: Into the Beautiful North and American Night (Milagro Theatre), The Call and Passion Play (Profile Theatre), Peter and the Starcatcher (Portland Playhouse) and High School Musical (Enlightened Theatrics).

Phillip Johnson
Sound Design
Phillip is a theatrical artist based in Portland Oregon and the Technical Director of Ridgefield High school’s Drama program. His recent productions include Hands Up (Red Door Project), Worse Than Tigers (ACT Theater/Red Stage), Contigo Pan y Cebolla (Milagro Theater), A Lady Onstage (Profile Theater), and The Importance of Being Earnest (Valley Repertory Theater).  When he isn’t designing or teaching Phil is traveling the world spreading art education to impoverished areas. He most recently taught theater in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. He has a B.F.A. and M.A. from Ohio University. For updates, Downloads and links to show soundtracks please visit PhilJohnsondesignstheworld.com

Miranda Russ
Stage Manager
Miranda Swineford 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 New York Musical Theatre Festival; and more.  Having recently moved back to the West Coast, Miranda is absolutely thrilled to be working on her first production with Profile Theatre.

Karen Hill
Production Manager
Karen is thrilled to be working with Profile and such wonderful fellow artists.  Continuing to be a part of this theater community is joyful gift.  Karen also works with Artists Repertory Theater, Portland Shakespeare Project, and has previously worked at Oregon Children’s Theater, Third Rail, Portland Center Stage, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  One million thanks to Mike for supporting this crazy lifestyle.

Melissa Sondergeld
Production Assistant
Melissa is thrilled to be working with Profile Theater again, after working on Dead Man’s Cell Phone last season. She is a recent graduate of Warner Pacific College, with a degree in Music Education and Theater. She is currently working as a teacher at Mayer Christian Academy. Past productions include Encounter, As You Like It and The Spitfire Grill at WPC, Hello Dolly at Manestage Theater Company and Eurydice at Portland State.

Karen Hartman
Hang Ten
Karen Hartman held the Playwright Center’s 2014-15 McKnight Residency and Commission for a nationally recognized playwright. Current: Roz and Ray (Alley Theatre), The Book of Joseph (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Project Dawn (People’s Light & Theater Company), and a Yale Repertory Theater commission about the landmark Supreme Court case Ricci vs DeStefano. Her new dialogue for Mozart’s The Magic Flute appeared at Meany Center in Seattle, 2015. Goldie, Max, and Milk premiered at Florida Stage and the Phoenix Theater. Other works: Goliath, Gum, Leah’s Train, Going Gone; Girl Under Grain; Wild Kate, ALICE: Tales of a Curious Girl Troy Women; and MotherBone, score by Graham Reynolds. New York: Women’s Project, National Asian American Theatre Company, P73, the New York Fringe, and Summer Play Festival. Regional: Center Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, Dallas Theater Center, the Magic, and elsewhere. Publications: TCG, DPS, Playscripts, Backstage Books, and NoPassport Press. Awards: Sustainable Arts Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the N.E.A., the Helen Merrill Foundation, Daryl Roth “Creative Spirit” Award, Hodder Fellowship, Jerome Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship. Prose: New York Times and The Washington Post. An alumna of New Dramatists and longtime Brooklynite, Karen is now Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington School of Drama.

Tanya Barfield
Medallion
Tanya Barfield’s plays include: Bright Half Life (Women’s Project Theatre), The Call (Playwrights Horizons/Primary Stages), Blue Door (South Coast Rep, Playwrights Horizons), Feast (co-writer, Young Vic/Royal Court), Of Equal Measure (Center Theatre Group), Chat (New Dramatists’ Playtime Festival), The Quick (New York Stage & Film).  A recipient of a Lilly Award, the inaugural Lilly Award Commission and a Helen Merrill Award, Tanya is an alumna of Dramatists and a member of The Dramatist Guild Council. In 2016,  Profile Theatre is devoting their entire season to her work.  TV credits include: The One Percent and The Americans.

Caridad Svich
Antigone Arkhe
Caridad Svich received a 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre, a 2012 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award and NNPN rolling world premiere for Guapa, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the Isabel Allende novel. She has won the National Latino Playwriting Award (sponsored by Arizona Theatre Company) twice, including in the year 2013 for her play Spark. She has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama four times, including in the year 2012 for her play Magnificent Waste. Seven of her plays are published in Instructions for Breathing and Other Plays (Seagull Books and University of Chicago Press, 2014). Five of her plays radically re-imagining ancient Greek tragedies are published in Blasted Heavens (Eyecorner Press, University of Denmark, 2012). She has edited several book on theatre including Innovation in Five Acts (TCG, 2015), and Trans-Global Readings (Manchester University Press, 2004). She sustains a parallel career as a theatrical translator, chiefly of the dramatic work of Federico Garcia Lorca. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge,UK), and founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press.

Lynn Nottage
A Stone’s Throw
Lynn Nottage is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a screenwriter.  Her plays include Sweat, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lily Award, Drama Desk Nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy,  Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por’knockers and POOF!.
Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Steinberg “Mimi” Distinguished Playwright Award, the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Lilly Award, Helen Hayes Award, the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, PEN/Laura Pels Award, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, where she has been a faculty member since 2001.  She is also an Associate Professor at Columbia School of the Arts.

Chiori Miyagawa
Red Again
Chiori Miyagawa is a playwright based in New York City. She conceived Antigone Project in 2004—during Bush’s second presidential campaign—to pull together women’s political voices and share them with audiences. Chiori’s plays have been produced off-Broadway (Vineyard Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Women’s Project, Culture Project), at renowned performance houses in NYC (HERE Arts Center, Performance Space 122, Ohio Theater, La Mama) and regionally. This Lingering Life premiered in San Francisco in June 2014 at Z Space and was a finalist for Theater Bay Area Best Premiere of Play Award. A collection of seven of her plays, Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays, is published by Seagull Books; and another collection of five plays, America Dreaming and Other Plays is published by NoPassport Press. She is a recipient of many fellowships including a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, a McKnight Playwriting Fellowship, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency Fellowship, and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, a Usual Suspect of New York Theatre Workshop and Playwright in Residence at Bard College.

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For additional information, please contact Marketing and Communications Manager Natalie Genter-Gilmore at natalie@profiletheatre.org or call 503.242.0080.

Antigone Project Media Release

Click on the thumbnails below to download the Photos files.

Andrea White and Cecily Overman in “Hang Ten,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Seth Rue in “Hang Ten,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Lauren Modica in “Medallion,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Chris Murray in “Medallion,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Alex Leigh Ramirez in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea Whittle in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea Whittle in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea White in “A Stone’s Throw,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Seth Rue and Lauren Modica in “A Stone’s Throw,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Cecily Overman and Chris Murray in “Red Again,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Cecily Overman and Andrea White in “Red Again,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

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