2005 Production History
Divine hear the soundtrack of Divine
Portland Center Stage invited us to create a site-specific piece at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts as a part of their JAW/West Summer New Plays Festival. Collaborating with composer Rody Oretga (our third project with him this year),we created DIVINE, a 15 minute movement piece about Faith, staged on a 4 story set of balconies in the Center’s main rotunda. The text of the piece consisted of recorded interviews with Sojourn Summer Theatre Institute participants woven into Rody’s beautiful score. The participants were 30 adults from around the world who came to our weeklong training, that happened to coincide with DIVINE. Half of them joined company members in Divine’s cast, bringing the number of performers in the spectacle to 22. Hundreds of Portland theatergoers and artists from around the nation attended the one performance. With the night sky seen through an enormous skylight as the backdrop, the piece was a lovely. The response was strong.
Alice in OR photos
The Bus Project, is a leading progressive organization committed to voter registration and political participation in Oregon. They asked us to create a performance piece for their annual benefit, held at an industrial space in SouthEast Portland. We agreed to make a spectacle-based, circus influenced version of Alice in Wonderland; Wonderland became Oregon’s political landscape, and Alice’s innocence the belief that change is possible. It was a call to escape detachment, cynicism, and apathy. Working with Sy Parrish and her collaborators, there was bungee, hanging cages, multi-media, and trapeze. The piece was performed once, for almost 1000 people.
The Visit by Frederick Durrenmatt
Sojourn Theatre presents a new version of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's modern classic, The Visit, which will open on Friday, February 25th at Marshall High School, 3905 SE 91st Avenue. Low-price preview performances are February 23rd and 24th. The Visit is a tale of community, conscience, and choice-the story of a town struggling with its own history. Founding Artistic Director Michael Rohd directs the production, having developed a new version in collaboration with Sojourn's ensemble and guest artist/performer Gretchen Corbett. It has been transformed into a highly visual/physical re-telling of the original with a shifting take on narrative authority, and interruptions that reflect the world we live in today. The style combines naturalism, movement theatre, circus, storytelling, and heavy use of pre-recorded sound developed with guest artist Rody Ortega.
Sojourn's production of The Visit aims to offer a unique performance experience-it weds the spectacle of Sojourn's physical, visual, often collage-based work to an existing text that is rooted in a more classically linear narrative. In 2003, Sojourn's production of 7 Great Loves was noted nationally for its "journey" aspect. The Visit will continue Sojourn's exploration of this approach. The play's three-act structure remains, but in Sojourn's production, each act takes place in a different part of Marshall High School as audience members move through the halls and spaces making the familiar unfamiliar, and vice versa.
Sojourn's mission expresses a dual commitment to community engagement and to developing "original work and bold adaptations of classic scripts and stories." With The Visit, the company explores how the story of a single community's struggle with issues of complicity and responsibility resonate today, in Portland, Oregon. A powerful woman returns to her childhood home with vengeance on her mind. A town trapped in poverty given the opportunity to escape. A choice. "What would you give to have everything you want…?"
The Visit is supported in part by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Sojourn Lab
A place for experimentation; for beginning; a space to discover...
The Black Box - Lewis & Clark College
Fir Acres Theatre
Lost from Rebecca Martinez
Three stories, one destination.
Portrait of a Marriage from Kimberly Howard
We know what we know and we stay quiet on everything else.
The War Project: a prologue from Jono Eiland & Michael Rohd
An inquiry into this year's major company project...
Witness Our Schools (2003-2005)
Witness Our Schools was a 2 & 1/2 year documentary theatre and community dialogue project exploring public education in Oregon. Over 500 interviews, a 65 minute highly physical show, a statewide tour, our town hall dialogue events, and a special performance at the Capitol for the State Legislature - all became a part of the state’s challenging conversation around equitable, fundable policy.
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