On the Table is a performance project involving inter-city travel, public dialogue, video and participation within the performance itself. Sojourn Theatre, in partnership with Molalla's Arts Commission, The City of Portland, Northwest Film Center and numerous local and statewide organizations, is creating this original theatrical event as an opportunity to start conversations that bridge urban/rural Oregon and wrestle with issues of identity, resources, values, and governance. Exploring the histories and connectedness of community partner sites Portland and Molalla, it goes beyond metaphorical bridge-building to physically move audiences across geographic boundaries.
Act I occurs simultaneously in Portland and Molalla, with a cast of actors performing for a forty person audience in Portland, and a separate cast of actors performing for a forty person audience in Mollala. Act 1 is a funeral/memorial service that introduces two families, one in each community, in the year 1980. Act 2 puts both audiences on buses with the actors driving towards each other. Act 2 brings the stories of these two families and their communities from 1980 up to the present, so that when the buses arrive at a location halfway between Portland and Molalla, the story has reached the current moment of 2010. Act 3 brings actors and audience members together at the wedding uniting these two families a generation after we met them; Portlanders and Molallans meet, have to help find the story's conclusion and share a meal... of sorts. The evening ends with bus rides home.
Additional support for On the Table has been provided by: Molalla Arts Commission, Northwest Film Center and other community partners in Portland and Molalla; matching gifts from Bank of America and Portland General Electric; and individual donors. The project was developed at The Orchard Project in upstate New York, and at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.