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Cast

Nikki Coble
Cecily
Nikki’s regional credits include Sibyl Chase in Private Lives (Seattle Rep), Constanze in Amadeus (New Harmony Theatre), Margot in The Diary of Anne Frank (Delaware Theatre Company), Nora in Brighton Beach Memoirs (Virginia Stage, Syracuse Stage), Juliet in Romeo & Juliet and Emily in Our Town (Foothills Theatre). In London, she appeared as Ophelia in Hamlet (RADA Studio) and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale (George Bernard Shaw Theatre). On film, she appeared in Mona Lisa Smile and the upcoming Stags. Nikki produced her solo performance 5×7, Life in the Frame at the Trilogy Theatre in New York City. She received a B.F.A. from Syracuse University and holds an Acting Shakespeare Certificate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London. For Alexandria—always.

James Knight
Algernon
James is very happy to be making his first appearance at Portland Center Stage. He has performed at numerous regional theaters across the country, including The Old Globe, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Pioneer Theatre Co., Utah Shakespearean Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Heart of America Shakespeare, Southwest Shakespeare, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Two River Theatre Co. and others. In New York, James has worked for The Mint Theatre Co., Theatre for a New Audience and New York Classical Theatre Co. Most recently he toured with the Aquila Theatre Co., playing the Antipholii in The Comedy of Errors, Achilles in The Iliad and Marc Antony in Julius Caesar. James holds an M.F.A. from the University of Missouri Kansas City.

Kate MacCluggage
Gwendolen
Kate is excited to make her Portland debut! She most recently appeared as Brooke in Noises Off at the Denver Center Theater Company. Other regional credits include Olivia in Twelfth Night, Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard and Danielle in Aux Cops (Chautauqua Theater Company). New York theater includes Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention (Broadway), The Tempest (Pulse Ensemble) and the world premiere of Down Goes Rocky (Bad Plays Festival). She appeared in the film Natural Causes (official selection SXSW, IFFBoston, Sarasota, Woodstock and Denver film festivals), and on ABC’s All My Children. Kate has an M.F.A. from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, where favorite roles included Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Kate in Dancing at Lughnasa and the title role in Major Barbara. She also has a B.A. from Wesleyan University.

Sharonlee McLean
Miss Prism
The Importance of Being Earnest is Sharonlee’s 13th production at PCS—she was last seen in A Christmas Carol. Last season she was in A Feminine Ending and Steve Martin’s The Underpants. Her career started in San Francisco studying at the American Conservatory Theatre. She moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for close to 30 years in television, film and stage. On the soap opera Santa Barbara she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy. Sharonlee has been here in Portland on and off since 1994. Some of her film work here has been with such actors as Kate Hudson, Melissa Gilbert, Michael McKean and Annette O’Toole, not to mention incredible local actors. She has done four productions at Portland Repertory Theatre and seven shows at Artists Repertory Theatre, most recently playing Mrs. Lintott in The History Boys.

TODD VAN VORIS
Lane/Merriman
Todd is thrilled to return to PCS, where he has been seen as Brother Walker in Sometimes a Great Notion and as an ensemble member in 2007’s A Christmas Carol. Other local credits include Ivan in The Seafarer, Nicholas/Grandma in Holidazed, A Nasty/Interesting Man in Eurydice, Giles Mace in House and Garden, Orson Welles in Orson’s Shadow, Larry in Inspecting Carol, Trigorin in The Seagull and Felix in Humble Boy (Artists Rep); Robert in Betrayal (Imago Theatre); Bernard in Arcadia (Lakewood Theatre); Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata (Profile Theatre Project); Prologue in The Flu Season (Theatre Vertigo); Macbeth in Macbeth (Quintessence); Rushton in Dog Island Love (Backstage Theatre, Breckenridge, CO); Vershinin in The Three Sisters (H.E.R.E., NYC); and Richard in Exiles (Ontological/Hysteric Theatre, NYC). Todd attended NYU, where he studied acting at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. He is a proud member of the Artists Repertory Theatre acting company.

Jill Tanner
Lady Bracknell
Jill has played on Broadway in Dividing the Estate, Rose, My Fat Friend and Enchanted April. She was in the world premieres of Horton Foote’s Vernon Early and The Hartford Stage Company’s production of Enchanted April. She has played major roles in almost every theater in the country and was a company member at ACT in San Francisco, McCarter Theatre in Princeton and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Jill is delighted to be appearing at Portland Center Stage for the first time in this lovely production of The Importance of Being Earnest. In addition to stage work, Jill has recorded more than 100 books for the Library of Congress and Recorded Books.

Tim True
Chasuble
Tim was last seen at Portland Center Stage in A Christmas Carol (2007 and 2008) and Sometimes a Great Notion. Other PCS shows include The Pillowman, The Fantasticks, Pride and Prejudice, King Lear, O Lovely Glowworm, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and JAW 2003-06. Portland credits include Dead Funny, Number Three, The Lonesome West and Recent Tragic Events (Third Rail Repertory Theatre); and Night of the Iguana, The Laramie Project (Artists Repertory Theatre). Regional credits include A Streetcar Named Desire (Intiman); Love’s Labour’s Lost, Cymbeline, Macbeth (The Alabama Shakespeare Festival); Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VIII (Utah Shakespearean Festival); Henry IV pt. I, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Taming of the Shrew (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Television/film includes Guiding Light and All My Children.

Matthew Waterson
Jack
Matthew’s New York theater credits include Grasmere (59E59), High Noon (Sticky Prods), Our Gods Brother (Storm Theater) and Ross (Storm Theater). His UK theater credits include Grasmere (Edinburgh Fringe), and he has appeared on television on My Wife and Kids. He was trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

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Creative Team

Oscar Wilde
Playwright
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, the son of a prominent doctor and a literary mother. Oscar’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, first gained attention in 1846 when she began writing revolutionary poems under the pseudonym Speranza for a weekly Irish newspaper, The Nation. She went on to translate Wilhelm Meinhold’s gothic horror novel Sidonia the Sorceress, a book whose darker elements inspired some of Oscar’s later work. He attended Trinity and Oxford, where he excelled in classics but developed a reputation for his indifference to the rules and regulations (famously showing up three weeks after the start of term one semester). After Oxford, Oscar moved to London to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter. In 1881, Oscar published his first collection of poetry, called Poems, which received mixed reviews. In December 1881, Oscar sailed for New York to travel across the United States and deliver a series of lectures on aesthetics. In his first tour, Oscar gave more than 140 lectures in 260 days. Afterward, Oscar was commissioned by actress Mary Anderson to write a blank-verse tragedy, which she later rejected, leading him to resume lecturing on aesthetics in Britain.
On May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd. They had two children soon after: Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886. With a family to support, Oscar accepted a job revitalizing the Woman’s World magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889. The next six years were the most creative period of his life, with the publishing of two collections of children’s stories, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and The House of Pomegranates (1892), as well as his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar’s first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, opened in February 1892. Its financial and critical success prompted him to continue to write for the theater. His subsequent plays included A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, the third son of the Marquis of Queensberry. They became lovers and were inseparable until Wilde’s arrest four years later. In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie’s father for libel, as the Marquis had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar withdrew his case but was arrested and convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Constance took the children to Switzerland and reverted to an old family name, Holland. Upon his release, Oscar wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a response to the agony he experienced in prison. He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. When a recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in, and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900.

William Bloodgood
Scenic Designer
William returns to Portland Center Stage for his seventh production, having previously designed the scenery for The Cripple of Inishmann (2000), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2004), King Lear (2004), Misalliance (2007), The Beard of Avon and Twelfth Night (2008), and most recently, Doubt. William has designed for many regional theaters in the U.S. and abroad, including Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Birmingham Repertory Theatre in the U.K., Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Alley Theatre in Houston, Arizona Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Denver Center Theatre Company, Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, and especially for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he was responsible for the scenic design of 140 productions. He has complemented his work in theater with experience in interior design, space planning, display and graphics.

Jeff Cone
Costume Designer
Jeff, costume shop manager for Portland Center Stage, has designed Apollo, A Christmas Carol, Guys and Dolls, Doubt, The Little Dog Laughed, Sometimes a Great Notion, A Christmas Carol, The Underpants, Cabaret, Bad Dates, The Pillowman, Act a Lady, Misalliance, This Wonderful Life, I Am My Own Wife and West Side Story since PCS opened the Gerding Theater at the Armory. Other PCS credits include the world premieres of Celebrity Row and Another Fine Mess, as well as Underneath the Lintel, Things of Dry Hours, Anna in the Tropics, King Lear, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, True West, Flesh and Blood, A New Brain, Closer, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Bus Stop and Dirty Blonde. Jeff received Drammy Awards for Best Costume Design for both Act a Lady and Dirty Blonde. Highlights of his 20-year career include the world premiere of Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, with subsequent productions at Indiana Repertory Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Long Wharf Theatre; an expressionistic Charlotte’s Web and 10 annual productions of A Christmas Carol at the Alliance; and the coordination of costumes for Seattle Opera’s productions of Andrea Chénier and La Traviata.

Nancy Schertler
Lighting Designer
Nancy is pleased to be working once again at Portland Center Stage, where she created the lighting for last season’s rep of The Beard of Avon and Twelfth Night. Nancy has designed the Broadway productions of Fool Moon and Bill Irwin’s Largely/New York, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Off-Broadway productions include Hilda, The Regard Evening, Texts for Nothing, A Flea in Her Ear and Falsettoland. Nancy has collaborated on many new plays at regional theaters across the country, including The Gamester, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field and Levee James for ACT in San Francisco, The Sisters Matsumotto for Seattle Rep, A Christmas Carol at the Milwaukee Rep and Tom Walker, Lovers and Executioners and Shakespeare in Hollywood, among others, at Washington’s Arena Stage, where she is an affiliated artist. Opera credits include productions with Boston Lyric Opera, Portland Opera and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. She has collaborated on two operas commissioned by the University of Maryland: Clara, based of the life of Clara Schumann, and Later the Same Evening, an opera inspired by five paintings of Edward Hopper, a joint project of the National Gallery of Art and the University’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Casi Pacilio
Sound Designer
Casi is thrilled to work at the Gerding Theater at the Armory as the sound supervisor and resident sound designer. Her credits with PCS include A Christmas Carol, Guys and Dolls, Doubt, The Little Dog Laughed, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Beard of Avon, Twelfth Night, A Christmas Carol, Cabaret, Bad Dates, The Pillowman, Act a Lady, Misalliance, I Am My Own Wife, West Side Story and Celebrity Row. Other credits include Squonk Opera’s Bigsmorgasbord-WunderWerk (Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, touring); I Am My Own Wife, I Think I Like Girls, Burning Deck (La Jolla Playhouse); Hair (Live On Stage); and Playland, 10 Fingers and Lips Together, Teeth Apart (City Theatre). Her film credits include Creation of Destiny, Out of Our Time and Powerful Thang. Her recording credits include Squonk Opera, Abigail’s Attic and Jana Losey. She was the event production coordinator for Portland’s Village Building Convergence from 2004 to 2006.

Mary McDonald-Lewis
Dialect Coach
Mary is an accomplished actor, director and dialect coach. She is a 25-year SAG/AFTRA member who has starred in cartoons and voiced hundreds of commercials. She can be heard as the voice of General Motors’ OnStar, and seen on Portland’s stages. As theater director, her work is regularly staged in Portland. Her dialect coaching can be found on films for Hallmark Hall of Fame and Paramount Productions, and most recently in Twilight. On stage, she’s coached dialects ranging from Irish to Yiddish-influenced German to Appalachian to Welsh, and many more. Mary holds her M.F.A. in directing from the University of Portland.

Jamie Hill
Stage Manager
Jamie is excited to be in her seventh season at Portland Center Stage. Previous PCS shows include A Christmas Carol (2008 and 2007), Guys and Dolls, Doubt, A Feminine Ending, Cabaret, The Pillowman, Misalliance, I Am My Own Wife, West Side Story, Celebrity Row, The Fantasticks, Pride and Prejudice, My Fair Lady, King Lear, Fully Committed, 36 Views, Another Fine Mess, Man & Superman, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and True West. Other regional credits include Missouri Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz and Huron Playhouse. Locally, Jamie has also worked on JAW and with Third Rail Repertory Company. A huge thank you to the always-fantastic PCS stage management team.

Gina Elizabeth Lovecchio
Production Assistant
Gina is deliciously tickled to be working on The Importance of Being Earnest, and at PCS in particular. She also adores not being in charge this time around. Gina is a California native and a proud graduate of the technical program at Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. California credits include ACT, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, PCPA Theatrefest, Word for Word and TheatreFirst, among others. Since she landed in Portland she has worked with Integrity Productions, Portland Actors Ensemble and most recently was the resident stage manager for Miracle Theatre, where she learned she could stage manage a show without being fluent in the production’s primary language. For her next production, Gina will be back at the helm with La Petit Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood at Oregon Children’s Theatre. These Earnest folks have been quite lovely to work with—green carnations for everybody! As always, for Kevin—I’m sure you and Oscar are having a Wilde time.

Chris Coleman
Artistic Director
Chris Coleman joined Portland Center Stage as artistic director in May 2000. Before coming to Portland, he was artistic director at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, a company he co-founded in the basement of an old church in 1988. In the 12 years of his leadership, the Express grew from a shoestring operation to one of the most highly regarded small theaters in the country. This season, he directed Guys and Dolls. Last season, he directed Cabaret, The Beard of Avon and The Little Dog Laughed. He has directed at major theaters across the country, including Actor’s Theater of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, The Alliance Theatre, Dallas Theatre Center, Asolo Center for the Performing Arts, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and Center Stage in Baltimore. A native Atlantan, Chris holds a B.F.A. from Baylor University and an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon. Chris has long been a public advocate for the arts both locally and nationally. From 1998 – 2004 he served on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization for professional theaters; and he chairs the Creative Advocacy Network board. Since moving to Oregon, Chris has skied down Mt. Hood, rappelled in The Dalles, climbed a ropes course in Eastern Washington, biked through most neighborhoods of the city and hiked all over the state.