PCS Blog

Anna Karenina Now Playing at Book-It Repertory

Posted by Kinsley Suer | 28 February 2013 | Comments (0)

Kelley Curran and Michael Sharon in the PCS production of Anna Karenina.

Last April, audiences in Portland were treated to a stunning adaptation of Tolstoy's epic romance Anna Karenina. I'll bet that, reflecting back on it, a different part of the show stands out to everyone. For me, it was the costumes. Oh, those dresses! But did you know that the production here at Portland Center Stage was also the play's theatrical world premiere, the first time that Kevin McKeon's play was seen onstage, anywhere? (Of course, the exception would be that it was workshopped here at our JAW Festival the summer before.)

Now the play has moved on to a second production at Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theater, where it will run through this weekend. The successful production has received raves in Seattle, just as it did here in Portland.

Photos of the production of Anna Karenina at Book-It Repertory. Photos by Alan Alabastro.

The moral of this story is that investing in new works for the stage is an incredibly important piece of today's theater puzzle, that theaters across the country aspire to complete. Here at PCS we've made it a big part of our mission to seek out new scripts and promising playwrights, to participate in both our annual JAW Festival and our regular season lineup. Our biggest goal is to create a environment for new plays to be nurtured and eventually released "into the wild," then picked up by other theaters across the country.

This season alone we're presenting three world premiere productions: Dan O'Brien's The Body of an American, which was just announced as the co-winner of the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History; Lauren Weedman's The People's Republic of Portland, which was commissioned by PCS through the Innovative Minds Program of the generous law firm Perkins Coie; and the musical Somewhere in Time, which will be launched at PCS by a creative team partially based out of New York. We've also commissioned playwright Adam Bock through the Innovative Minds Program. His previous plays The Thugs and The Receptionist have received workshops and full productions here.

Through our investment in new work we hope to contribute to a thriving and exciting theater community, both here in Portland and across the United States. Long live theater!