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These days, Portland theater, and the city?s arts scene in general, isn?t so stripped down. But it is much more glittery, if not literally than metaphorically. Look around and you?ll see it: the sparkle of widespread creative activity, the shine of technical and artistic quality.
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There?s an argument to be made that in theater, in music -- most definitely in food, if you want to extend the definition of the creative culture -- and perhaps in other areas as well, this is Portland?s golden age. Sure, the city?s artsy eccentricities can grow ripe for lampooning, as the TV spoof ?Portlandia? has proved. But such attention would be nonsensical (or at least much more embarrassing) if there wasn?t more going on here than adult kickball leagues and mustache-growing contests, if many of the eccentrics weren?t really artists.
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A certain shoestring flamboyance, as Mulligan?s recollections of leaner times suggest, is nothing new here. But the size, scope and solidity of the arts in Portland is something that?s grown over the past quarter century.
That progression is marked in a host of ongoing anniversaries: Several months ago, the Portland Center for the Performing Arts celebrated its 25th birthday. Portland Center Stage and Oregon Children?s Theatre both are in the midst of 25th-anniversary seasons. (Currently hitting the 15-year mark are the dance troupe BodyVox and the dance presenting company White Bird. The Time-Based Art Festival, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art?s annual extravaganza of experiments, turned 10 in Sept.)
That 1987 and ?88 marked a pivotal time in Portland arts was clear even then. More than a decade of planning and haggling was coming to fruition. The idea for a set of new performance spaces began taking place around 1976 due to dissatisfaction with Civic Auditorium (now called Keller Auditorium and still not a very satisfying venue). In 1981, voters passed a $19 million bond issue. Next came political squabbles, cost overruns (from $25 million to $41 million by the time it opened) and a scramble to find money for operating costs. But eventually the Civic was joined by the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (a refurbished 1928 movie palace) and a new multi-use building next door.
?Ten or 20 years from now, few will remember all the effort, dreaming, planning and yes, the bickering, mistakes and accusations that marked the creation of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts,? The Oregonian?s Joan Laatz wrote in August, 1987, when the multi-use New Theater Building (now named Antoinette Hatfield Hall) opened.
Meanwhile, city officials had been looking for an anchor tenant to take up residence in the center?s the 900-seat space now known as the Newmark Theatre. A study commissioned by the Fred Meyer Trust concluded that not even the city?s top existing theater company, Portland Rep, was up to the task, financially and organizationally. Cynthia Fuhrman, a veteran theater marketing exec, recalls that Portland was the largest city in the country that didn?t have a company in the League of Resident Theatres, the association of major regional theaters. After being courted on and off for years, Ashland?s Oregon Shakespeare Festival signed on, and its new satellite operation, dubbed Portland Center Stage, stepped into the lights in Nov. 1988.
After seeing the new company in the new building, Time magazine said that Portland at last could ``stake a claim to sophistication and social significance.''
More so than social stature, the goal was for the PCPA to both bring more touring talents to town and give local troupes a comfortable home that would help them grow their audiences, and for PCS to provide a model of quality, stability and professionalism that might lift the community as a whole. The fear was that higher production costs in the new facilities would make things tougher for most local arts companies, and that the venerable OSF brand would be more of a competitor than a complement.
?There was so much buzz about OSF coming up,? recalls Beth Harper, who?d soon launch what?s now called Portland Actors Conservatory. ?I was in a show at New Rose and everyone felt like, ?The big guys are coming and we?ve never got that kind of attention.??
?One of the things that still rings true,? Harper adds, ?is the big boys are still the big boys and the small ones are still the small ones.?
Though perhaps not. Yes, Center Stage, which split from OSF to become an independent company in 1994, remains atop the theatrical food chain. What were the largest or most active homegrown companies back in the late ?80s -- Portland Rep, New Rose, Storefront Portland Civic Theater -- long ago folded. (As Mulligan recalls, ?It took about five years for the dust to settle -- unfortunately the dust was some fine companies.?) And as it did then, the city now has numerous tiny companies, the kind that stage a few shows a year in rented or makeshift spaces.
Numerous factors are involved, not just the anchoring effects of PCPA and PCS, but the theater scene now has a broader range of companies. Artists Repertory Theatre, once a scrappy little operation in rented space at the downtown YWCA, grew to become the city?s No. 2 company, with a $2.4 million budget and its own twin-auditorium home. Down the scale in budget, but punching above their weight artistically, Third Rail Rep, Portland Playhouse and Profile Theatre form a strong middle tier.
However persistent the funding challenges of the dance world, a similar vertical growth, if you will, can be found. In the late ?80s, Portland had both Ballet Oregon and Pacific Ballet Theatre; for contemporary dance, Portland State University housed a concert series for touring groups and a top-notch resident company. Now, Oregon Ballet Theatre (the result of a merger of the aforementioned ballet troupes) survives, White Bird does concert presenting at a higher level, BodyVox, Northwest Dance Project and Polaris Dance Theatre each have performance spaces and expanding reputations.
?I think the arts scene was like a young teenager then and has grown up a lot,? says Regional Arts & Culture Council executive director Eloise Damrosch, who moved to Portland in ?87. ?Our reputation as a place to visit has really skyrocketed. I?m struck when I open up the A&E and see all the options. There?s a lot more happening, and such a range.?
Quantity isn?t the only thing that?s changed.
?Back then, there was this grittier, shoestring quality that imbued almost every company,? Mulligan says. ?The dedication to art was inspiring...But when I look back at that earlier renaissance of the ?80s, the truth was the talent pool of the city needed to step up.?
Jim Fullan, who has worked in marketing at Portland Opera and the Oregon Symphony, says the city has developed a ?radically different sense of our place.? Back then, he says, Portland had such an inferiority complex regarding Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles that it distrusted artistic ambition. ?The public would punish you for getting too big for your britches. The prevailing attitude was, ?It?s good enough for us. We like it.? Now, that?s totally gone. It?s almost the opposite. If you?re not aspiring to be world-class, you?re not on the boat. The arts -- in tandem with food, beer and wine -- have raised us up.?
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The building of the PCPA hasn?t solved all of the performance-space issues for local companies (there?s a big, problematic gap between the 900-seat Newmark and the Schnitzer and Keller, which seat close to 3,000). And it?s notable that Center Stage had to move to a home of its own, a renovated 19th-century armory in the Pearl District, to begin fulfilling its potential as a truly vibrant hub for the theater scene. But those two big moves have, over time, proved transformative for the culture of the city.
Many other developments have helped shape the Portland of today. Some observers point to the fundraising success of John and Lucy Buchanan at the Portland Art Museum 1994 to 2005. ?They actually made a case that a great city needs great art,? says BodyVox co-founder Jamey Hampton. ?And that put a gauntlet down.?
Leadership changes in 2003 at Portland Opera, Oregon Ballet Theatre and the Oregon Symphony also marked a crucial transition. Hampton points to Tom Manley, president of Pacific Northwest College of Art as ?probably the best leader of an arts organization the city has. ?PNCA has grown to be a leading creative and economic force in the Pearl District...and it?s in the process of remaking how that neighborhood looks. It?s not splashy, like when Pink Martini plays New Year?s Eve at the Schnitz. It?s quiet, but it?s really foundational.?
Through it all, the essential challenges remain much the same: make good work, expand audiences, cultivate donors. Many arts leaders point to a change in the business model, away from a focus on big-money patrons and toward building long-term relationships with supporters of all sorts, nurturing them along the path from first-time ticket buyer to subscriber to contributor and so on. Others point out that the city is awash in heavily subsidized art -- but that the artists themselves provide the subsidy comes from the artists themselves, in the form of the second jobs, lack of health care, or multiple roommates that allow them to subsist as artists.
All together, what?s changed and what?s stayed the same add up to an arts scene that, while still facing major challenges, has grown bigger, wider and better integrated into the world around it.
?I don?t think it happens in isolation,? Fuhrman says. ?It?s about the growth of the city as a whole.?
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2013/01/reflecting_on_a_quarter-centur.html
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