Portland Center Stage Announces Its 2022-23 Season

Calling all fans of Shakespeare, Jonathan Larson and “Moonlight.”

ChipMiller_Portland Center Stage at the Armory KANSAS CITY BLUES: Chip Miller misses their hometown but is excited about opportunities in Portland.
By Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Portland Center Stage has announced its 2022-23 season, and the lineup should satisfy both theater and film fanatics.

First up is the August premiere of tick...tick...BOOM!, the autobiographical musical from Jonathan Larson, the late creator of Rent. The play, which will be directed by the company’s artistic director, Marissa Wolf, is a big get, especially since it was recently adapted into an Oscar-nominated film directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and stars Andrew Garfield as Larson.

Another upcoming highlight is Choir Boy, which will debut in April 2023 and will be directed by Chip Miller, the company’s associate artistic director. It’s about Pharus, a gay student leading a gospel choir at an all-boys prep school that seeks to mentor “strong, ethical Black men.”

Choir Boy will be of particular interest to lovers of arthouse cinema: It’s written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who won an Oscar for co-adapting Moonlight (with living legend Barry Jenkins) from his semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.

The 2022-23 season will end next July with a Wolf-directed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but there’s plenty to savor before then, including It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play and the road-trip play Young Americans, written by Lauren Yee (Portland audiences will remember her play The Great Leap, which was recently staged as an Artists Rep-Portland Center Stage co-production).

Tickets and the full list of plays can be found here.

Related: Chip Miller’s Essential Seven

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