March was a good month for the Portland Center Stage.
The engaging and musical “Quixote Nuevo” was on stage at the Armory for almost the whole month and then, as March drew to a close, the Portland theater company was named one of three companies nationwide to receive $1 million grants from the Mellon Foundation.
The promised money comes in the same month the Oregon Legislature passed funding for arts organizations including Portland Center Stage, and two foundations announced $40 million for the state’s arts organizations as well.
Like theater companies across the country, Portland Center Stage has struggled to build back its audience base in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding comes at a critical time.
“The money is instrumental,” said Portland Center Stage artistic director Marissa Wolf on Friday afternoon.
The Mellon Foundation grant is specifically to support Wolf’s vision, according to Stephanie Ybarra, Mellon Foundation Arts and Culture program officer.
“It’s no secret that the nonprofit theater sector is at an inflection point decades in the making with many leaders who have inherited our legacy institutions facing major headwinds,” Ybarra said.
“At this crucial moment in the evolution of the field,” she said, “Mellon recognizes Artistic Director Marissa Wolf’s courageous leadership in bringing values-driven transformation to Portland Center Stage, helping to build toward a just and thriving future.”
Read more: Oregon playwright brings his own story to ‘Quixote Nuevo’ at Portland Center Stage
Wolf has been the artistic director at Portland Center Stage since 2018, a tenure that has been defined by the pandemic.
As the pandemic recedes, arts organizations around the country have found themselves without pandemic-era funding and also without audiences at the same, pre-pandemic levels. According to Portland Center Stage, ticket sales remain below what they were before COVID.
“It’s been wild,” Wolf said, “hard, but I’m so happy we’re still here.”
Wolf called the money from Mellon “powerful,” both as a message about the theater’s mission and, in a more tangible way, as a means to keep the theater running.
“It sends a really vibrant and powerful signal that Portland Center Stage is living inside its values and serving our community in a way that is meaningful,” Wolf said. “It’s an infusion right into the heart of the theater company.”
Portland Center Stage, unlike some other arts organizations, is a cash-based institution, meaning it operates without an endowment or credit.
“Every dollar that comes in goes directly to the work on stage and the people that make it happen,” Wolf said.
The money from Mellon, as well as the money from the state, will support operations and the ongoing work of the theater over the next several years. “These large gifts are crucial to our ability to stay alive and thrive,” Wolf said.
She also hopes the big donations help inspire smaller donors, many of whom have already begun supporting the theater.
“Gifts like this really help the huge groundswell of smaller gifts,” Wolf said, noting that in 2023, Portland Center Stage had more than 2,000 new donors at lower levels, between $5 and $500.
Wolf is optimistic about the work coming out of Portland Center Stage in the coming months.
“I think we have a beautiful spring ahead of us,” she said.
That includes “Nassim,” an “exquisite” nearly one-person show that features a new, unrehearsed performer on stage every night, a translated “Coriolanus,” which Wolf called “very political and resonant” and the “epic” “Clyde’s,” set in a sandwich shop.
The theater also just announced the 2024-2025 season, nine plays including the popular musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” about a murderous barber, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” about the world of a Harlem braiding shop, and a Shakespeare favorite, “Twelfth Night, Or What You Will,” directed by Wolf.
“What excites me is continuing to lean into how we’re serving our community,” Wolf said, “how we’re centering joy.”
She said that allowing people to see themselves on stage, to see themselves laugh and cry, is “profound and deeply human.”
“One of the things theater can do is allow us to feel human,” she said.
– Lizzy Acker covers life and culture and writes the advice column Why Tho? Reach her at 503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com or @lizzzyacker
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