PETE’s Next Play Is a Musical About Washing Down Your Cake With Cherry Pepsi (Among Other Things)

Few Portland theater companies push boundaries quite like Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble, whose delightful antics have included placing plastic containers of babka under the audience’s seats and transforming a goofy gothic odyssey into a sincere meditation on grief.

Still, the company’s next effort promises to be even wilder than usual. I’m In Control Which Means Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen to Me will introduce audiences to a musical world built on a radical maxim: “Indulge your darkest impulse. Sing so loud you crack. Wash down your cake with Cherry Pepsi. Never explain yourself.”

I’m In Control Which Means Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen to Me stars creator and performer Elsa Dougherty in what is being described as “an alt-rock expressionist, concert-play” with a four-piece band (knowing PETE, the play will probably be even stranger and more delightful than it sounds).

Opening at CoHo Productions on Dec. 14, I’m In Control, directed by Isabel McTighe, is part of the PETE Presents program, which supports new works. The artists the program supports are typically graduates of PETE’s Institute for Contemporary Performance, which trains students 20 hours a week in Suzuki, clowning, Alexander Technique, and more over the course of 10 months.

Despite the post-pandemic turmoil in Portland’s theater community, PETE is coming to the end of a creatively vibrant year, which included its dark, rapturous, and literally and figuratively heartfelt musical cabaret production Cardiac Organ.

I’m In Control Which Means Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen to Me runs Dec. 14-16. Tickets are available at peteensemble.org.