Theater Preview: Portland Center Stage’s Community Focused 2025–26 Season
In May, Portland Center Stage announced it would be forced to close without immediate substantial fundraising. Now, after raising several million dollars, the theater company opens its season while pushing to hit a goal of raising $9 million before summer 2026.
It’s been a volatile few years for Portland’s performing arts sector, to say the least. A slow recovery from pandemic shutdowns has led into an unprecedented federal disinvestment in the arts. Cancelled National Endowment for the Arts grants threw nearly every local company into hot water. Amid budget deficits, Oregon Children’s Theater halted its programming on September 1, and Portland’5 Center for the Arts laid off a dozen of its workers in June. Like its peers, Portland Center Stage has been busy fundraising to keep more than its ghost light burning.
In May, PCS made a public call for a life raft, announcing it would need to raise $2.5 million to put on its 2025–26 season—a goal it blew past by over $1 million in four short months. “It’s incredible,” says Edwina Kane, PCS’s director of development, noting that a large chunk of the funds came from more than 2,500 individual donors. “This is a community that really supports the arts.”
Artistic director Marissa Wolf says the company has stripped itself to the studs to stay afloat, restructuring to cut over $600,000 in expenses. Still, fundraising is far from over. Wolf says the cumulative goal of $9 million, raised by June 2026, is the true line of stability, and that PCS hopes to hit $5 million before the end of 2025.
As promised, the ’25–26 season opened September 28 with a production of Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer-winning play Primary Trust. The season’s overarching theme, The Stories That Bind Us, presents as part love letter and part thank you note to the community that made it possible. “We built the season around making sure at the center of the audience’s experience is a place of connection during a profoundly scary and difficult time in our country and culture,” Wolf says.
Sept 28–Oct 26
Booth’s play, which follows a lonely bookstore worker’s path to rediscovery after losing his longtime job, is renowned for its heartfelt portrayal of friendship and fresh starts. Wolf says lead actor Larry Owens describes it is a “warm hug,” with hints of Gilmore Girls’ small-town feeling and the neighborly camaraderie of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Nov 16–Dec 21
Little Women has seen its fair share of theatrical and film adaptations, including two silent films, a musical, and an opera. But if you thought we ran out of ways to adapt Alcott’s autobiographical tale with Greta Gerwig’s 2019 spin, playwright Lauren Gunderson’s fresh take for the stage will have you thinking again. Alcott herself is at the center of Gunderson’s version, which uses verbatim non-dialogue narration from the book. This run is coproduced with Cincinnati Playhouse.
Jan 18–Feb 15
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, particularly for the group of unlucky thespians in this farcical play within a play. The cast and crew at Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society face one mishap after another on opening night of their show, Murder of Haversham Manor. Former artistic leader of Artists Repertory Theatre, Dámaso Rodríguez directs in coproduction with Seattle Rep, where Dámaso now serves as artistic director.
March 1–29
After its world premiere at Seattle Rep in 2015, Justin Huertas’s queer coming-of-age rock musical quickly became a cult sensation in the US and abroad. At the center of Lizard Boy is a young man named Trevor—a totally standard dude save for his superpowers and green scales, like those of a dragon. In the play, he sets out on a Grindr date, which unfolds like a superhero-esque adventure.
April 19–May 17
Another adaptation in the lineup, though Pulitzer-winning playwright James Ijames’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet pushes the bounds of adaptation. His take is a humorous yet “vicious critique of masculinity and violence” (The Guardian) with a queer Black man named Juicy as its beating heart. The setting? A Southern backyard barbecue where Juicy receives a visit from his vengeful father’s ghost.
May 26–June 7
Whip-smart comedian and playwright Kristina Wong serves up laughs and social commentary in this karaoke-fueled one woman show about American food insecurity, a coproduction with Boom Arts. In 2022, Wong’s Pulitzer-nominated play Sweatshop Overlord won over crowds in PCS’s Ellyn Bye Studio.
June 12–28
If there’s one thing Pink Martini vocalist and Rock Star contestant Storm Large excels at, it’s drawing a crowd to her high-octane performances. In 2009, Large’s autobiographical musical, Crazy Enough, became one of the Armory’s most sold-out shows. PCS closes out its season not with a play but with a rollicking one-woman show Large created with Portlanders in mind.
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