Every Portland Center Stage production offers a variety of events to enrich the theatrical experience. For more information about the special events listed below, contact PCS at 503.445.3794 or info@pcs.org.
Prologues and Q&As || Final Fridays || Stone Soup: Engaging Culture, the Arts and Civic Collaboration ||Formative Stages || Yom HaShoah Commemoration
PCS and the Portland Area Theater Alliance present
FINAL FRIDAYS: Cafe Society 2.0
FIVE REASONS TO COME TO CAFÉ SOCIETY 2.0 AT PCS THIS FRIDAY:
1. It’s opening night of GREY GARDENS and you just can’t wait. . .meee-owwww.
2. Our special featured guest is ASCAP-award winning jazz pianist-composer Ezra Weiss (who penned the infectious and whimsical jazz-fueled Alice in Wonderland last winter at NW Childrens Theater)
3. You’ll get a sneak preview of visual artist Eugenia Pardue’s stunning white-on-white paintings on display in the public lobbies of the Gerding Theater, exhibited in conjunction with GREY GARDENS (courtesy the Heidi McBride Gallery)
4. If you come early you might score a highly precious, in-demand ticket for CRAZY ENOUGH.
5. Spring has sprung and the Pearl is alive with the sound of music, theater, love and life!
Portland Center Stage and the Portland Area Theatre Alliance invite you to join us this Friday, May 29, 5-7 pm, for Cafe Society 2.0 —our monthly social gathering featuring music, lively conversation and cocktails—your opportunity to mingle with mighty Portland art-makers, doers, schemers and dreamers, eavesdrop on the scene!
Café Society 2.0 is all-ages, free and open to the public. Drinks & refreshments available from the Armory Café. 5-7 pm in the Lobby, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh).
VISUAL ART SPOTLIGHT
Experience the rich spectrum of Portland’s thriving gallery scene–featuring a revolving exhibition of vibrant work from Portland Art Dealers Association galleries on the Lower Gallery and Ellyn Bye Studio lobby levels.
ON VIEW: Eugenia Pardue, May 29-July 26
The art of the city is at the Gerding Theater at the Armory, First Thursdays, Final Fridays, and everyday.
STONE SOUP:
ENGAGING CULTURE, THE ARTS & CIVIC COLLABORATION
WEDNESDAY APRIL 29 12:30—2 P.M.
Gerding Theater at the Armory—Mezzanine
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Portland Center Stage + University of Oregon’s Center for Community and Cultural Policy present STONE SOUP: ENGAGING CULTURE, THE ARTS & CIVIC COLLABORATION
A roundtable discussion featuring Barbara Schaffer Bacon (Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Initiative)
As co-director of Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy initiative, Barbara Schaffer Bacon has spent more than a decade mapping the potential of arts and culture to illuminate civic experience—exploring significant and timely opportunities to engage the public in dialogue around key civic issues and to stimulate a cross-fertilization of ideas and action, dually inspiring community-builders to consider arts and culture as an integral partner in their efforts.
Join Bacon and members of the Portland civic, educational and cultural community for an informal lunchtime discussion on her work and a wider look at how Portland organizations might discover bold opportunity in the face of our current economic crisis around community engagement and partnership.
Bring your ideas and join the discussion—cultural and economic recovery begins with conversation!
Formative Stages
Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind
Starting this coming Sunday, the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center and Portland Center Stage join forces to present Formative Stages: Theater and the Life of the Mind. Now in its second year, the series puts theater on the couch and the audience in the conversational driver’s seat with lively post-matinee show discussions on issues, themes and lessons gleaned from PCS plays.
An excellent opportunity to wrap your head around art and theater in an an all new way!
Flexing their considerable insights into human nature and the life of the mind, this stellar group of distinguished OPC practitioners delve into the curious nooks and crannies that theater inhabits–from humor and mannered whimsy to the insatiable lust for life to the menage-a-trois between power, justice and truth, to idiosyncratic family dynamics and taboo — revealing that the world on the stage is truly a glorious microcosm of life.
Sunday, April 19
Crazy Enough with Lee Shershow, MD
Sunday, May 3
Frost / Nixon with Scott Murray, MD
Sunday, June 14
Grey Gardens with Carol Stuart, PsyD
Discussions take place in the theater directly following the 2 pm matinees. Free with theater admission
Yom HaShoah Community Commemoration
Portland Center Stage is proud to play a role as a cosponsor in Yom HaShoah, an historic community-wide commemoration of the Holocaust being held in Portland, honoring the memory of those who perished and sharing the stories of survivors. The week-long series of events being held April 19—23 will bring together an extraordinary coalition of Jewish, Catholic, civic and arts organizations.
The event’s focus is on the work and message of internationally acclaimed modern artist and Holocaust survivor, Alice Lok Cahana, whose exhibition, “From Ashes to the Rainbow,” sums up the artist’s transformative message of hope. The eight week-long installation of Alice Lok Cahana’s paintings will be on view in the public spaces of the Gerding Theater at the Armory and at the Oregon Jewish Museum from April 1–May 24, 2009.
On Sunday, April 19 at 11:30 am, Portland Center Stage will host the Daniel J. & Elizabeth O. Cohn Lecture with a brunch reception, art preview, and conversation between Alice Lok Cahana and independent curator, Prudence Roberts, moderated by Oregon Jewish Museum director, Judith Margles.
On Monday, April 20 at 7:00 pm, Portland Center Stage will host the annual community Holocaust commemoration on the Main Stage at the Gerding Theater at the Armory. This is the feature of the week, taking place on the evening beginning International Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah), and will include six survivors of the Holocaust lighting individual candles of remembrance. The keynote address will be given by Archbishop John G. Vlazny of the Portland Catholic Archdiocese, followed by “Through My Mother’s Eyes,” a program of the poetry and remembrances of Alice Cahana presented by Rabbi Michael Cahana and Cantor Ida Rae Cahana with Yiddish art songs, accompanied by acclaimed pianist Janet Guggenheim. The Archbishop will be introduced by Rabbi Emanuel Rose, a leading expert on “Nostra Aetate,” the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and Catholic-Jewish relations.
On Thursday, April 23 at 7:00 pm in the Whitsell Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum, the NW Film Center’s Jewish Film Festival will present the Steven Spielberg-produced documentary, “The Last Days,” an Academy Award-winning film about five Hungarian Holocaust survivors, including the artist Alice Lok Cahana.
About Alice Lok Cahana
A survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Alice Cahana’s abstract representations of her experiences are in major museums and collections around the world, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC; Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel and the Holocaust Museum Houston. In 2006, Alice Cahana presented a significant piece of artwork to his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. The painting, “No Names” hangs today in the Vatican museum as the only piece of Holocaust artwork in the Vatican’s vast collection. Its powerful imagery of a field of numbers representing the stolen names and identities of the Nazi’s victims stands at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel, perhaps the most iconic location of the Catholic Church.
Portland’s commemoration of Yom HaShoah, a time of remembrance for those murdered during the Holocaust, began some 22 years ago. Originally through Sylvia Frankel and local survivors’ efforts, the observance of this memorial has become a yearly event. Each year the commemoration takes place in a local synagogue. This year the event has been hosted in a community forum, so as to encourage participation from the civic, arts and religious community.
Made possible with generous support from Archdiocese of Portland, Providence Hospital, Oregon Catholic Press, Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, Daniel J. & Elizabeth O. Cohn Fund at Congregation Beth Israel, University of Portland Oregon Jewish Museum, Mittleman Jewish Community Center, Portland Center Stage, Oregon Area Jewish Committee (OAJC), Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, Michael Weiner and Kathleen Davis-Weiner, and Helen and Jerry Stern. Produced in cooperation with Oregon Board of Rabbis, Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, Oregon Holocaust Survivors, Refugees and Families, and Café Europa.
Portland Center Stage’s Community Programs are made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund, and the Oregon Community Foundation.
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