We invite you to a dangerous realm. This place is haunted and happy, tragic and true. It’s cast with ordinary heroes and everyday villains, and set in duplexes and on street corners. This place is unique and common, foreign and familiar. The shadows and the successes are intimate, and vulnerable. Welcome to live storytelling. This is where it doesn’t matter …
On The Road
There is this word CODDIWOMPLE. It’s a verb and it means to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination. I love this word. It was a favorite of our long-time fan, Petter Moe, a Norwegian immigrant and ‘best dad’ to Talen Nikolai Moe, one of our On The Road storytellers. I love this word because it captures so …
The Fremont, Our New Home
As our 12th season approaches, Portland Story Theater is excited to be moving to a new venue: the beautiful, brand-new Fremont Theater! After two full seasons at the cavernous, 375-seat Alberta Abbey, we are stoked to be moving back to a smaller, more intimate space. Located at the corner of NE 24th and Fremont, just nine blocks from Portland Story …
Portland Story Theater’s 2016-2017 Season
Ever come to that crossroad in life where you just want everything to be more fun, more profound, just more? Are you haunted by that nagging question, “Is this all there is?” I know it’s not just me. I know we’re all searching for something… more. That’s where Portland Story Theater comes in. It fulfills the ‘more’ of life: a …
Humanizing Refugees
The year that I was 5, an apartment complex on my street in Tehran was bombed in the middle of the night. The blast was so powerful that all the glass in our building was instantly shattered. Up to that point, my entire existence had been spent in a war zone. My parents had a conference upstairs, and vowed to …
Videos are up: Kiss and Tell, Luck of the Irish
We had two awesome shows recently: celebrating love and romance with Kiss and Tell, our Valentine’s Day show, and our ode to Ireland and St. Paddy’s Day with Luck of the Irish. Both were evenings filled with sparkle, humor, and delight, with everything from traditional Irish dance to romantic serenades. And of course, there were lots of stories: tales of love, sex, …
Warren McPherson is a winner!
Everybody Loves A Winner We love Warren McPherson here at Portland Story Theater. He’s one of our favorite storytellers, a longtime supporter, and a (newly minted!) workshop facilitator. He handles our audio recordings and helps us get our stories up on SoundCloud and iTunes every month. Plus, he understands and loves what we do: telling real, true stories of everyday people. He has a true …
Creating Safe Space
On Saturday, April 9th, we are partnering with PlayWrite, Inc. to create an Urban Tellers® show that gives voice to real, true stories from a new perspective, drawn from PlayWrite’s new Youth Leadership Team. Some of the tellers are guides in the PlayWrite program, while others are young people, ranging from 15-25 years old, who have graduated from the PlayWrite …
2015 Year in Review
Thank you for a fabulous 2015! Everyone at Portland Story Theater is grateful for you — our listeners, our storytellers, our donors, our volunteers — everyone who believes that supporting this art form makes the world a better place, one real, true story at a time. It was a whirlwind year for Portland Story Theater, and we have a lot to celebrate! We had over 5,000 …
Why I Take Pictures for Portland Story Theater
She pauses; arms stretched upwards imitating the height of her lover. The audience is silent with bated breath, entranced. For a moment it seems her presence leaves the stage, for a moment she is standing before the man she has been speaking about. The man she has described so lovingly in her story. A moment in time. My finger presses …
Talking Scary Stories
As Portland Story Theater’s tellers put the final, terrifying touches on their stories for this weekend’s Halloween-inspired Spellbound show, founders Lynne Duddy and Lawrence Howard take some time out of their hectic week to reflect on what makes this a unique performance in their storytelling season. Does the storytelling process change when telling personal scary stories versus other stories of love or …
What’s Your Story?
“In a time where our daily digest arrives in snippets of information from friends, our interests, and news around the world, Portland Story Theater asks us simply to sit and believe.” CHRISTA MORLETTI McINTYRE, Oregon ArtsWatch. What’s your story? That’s the question each teller confronts when working with Portland Story Theater, a non-profit dedicated to the telling of personal stories …