One of the many exciting things I love about the work we do at is Portland Center Stage is the way in which the art on the stage triggers layer upon layer of ideas for conversation and engagement.

That might mean people hanging out in the lobby arguing over the “did-he/didn’t-he” of Doubt; or maybe a historian and a Native American poet engaged in dialogue around the complexities of regionalism and land or Gus Van Sant and Merry Prankster Ken Babbs sharing psychedelic memories of Ken Kesey as part of our world premiere Sometimes A Great Notion; or maybe Splendora of the radical queer performance collective Sissyboy abjuring the need for clothes as a nightcap following Cabaret and karaoke.  Whichever way you shake it, it’s fascinating when the work takes on a life of its own and inspires a seamless momentum (a veritable Astaire-Rogers double-helix dance of art and life), cutting right to the core of Portland Center Stage’s mission: inspiring the community by bringing stories to life in unexpected ways.

This coming season, in conjunction with our fall opener, Frank Loesser/Abe Burrows/Jo Swerling’s masterpiece Guys & Dolls, we get the conversation starting with a long look at the Broadway musical (partnering with Mittelman Jewish Community Center and with the Multnomah County Library) called Envisioning America: Jews and the Broadway Musical.

The series engages a question central to both the Jewish experience and the landscape of American culture in general: “how did one group of economically poor, immigrants produce, in just one generation, develop a cultural form that came to define an entire nation?” With its mass appeal, Broadway and the musical gave American Jews the center stage spotlight to tell their story and translate the process of becoming American into a remarkable, universal art-form.

Envisioning America is a great opportunity, through conversation and song, to learn about the genius of Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, good old Sigmund Romberg, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerry Herman, and Frank Loesser through such singular works as Guys and Dolls, Milk and Honey, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, Babes in Arms and South Pacific—and how they established a new identity as Americans and Jews on the Broadway stage.

ENVISIONING AMERICA: JEWS AND THE BROADWAY MUSICAL
Thursday, October 2, 7:00 pm at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center
6651 SW Capitol Highway, Portland, Phone: 503.244.0111

Sunday, October 5, 12:30 pm at Hillsdale Library, 1525 S.W. Sunset Boulevard, Portland (condensed program)

Sunday, October 19, 4:00 pm at Portland Center Stage, Gerding Theater at the Armory

Sunday, October 26, 12:30 pm at Central Library, 801 S.W. 10th Avenue, Portland (condensed program)

Featured speakers and performers to  include novelist, humorist, and screenwriter Marc Acito, composer-pianist Dave Frishberg and vocalist Rebecca Kilgore, Rabbi Alan Berg, and other local luminaries.

Programs are free and open to the public and open to the public, but please RSVP to Tim DuRoche, Community Outreach Manager: timd@pcs.org

The Envisioning America series is made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W.  Mellon Foundation, Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund, and the Oregon Community Foundation