Portland Stage Company

Portland, Maine

Celebrating its 35th season in 2008–2009, Portand Stage Company's (PSC) mission is to produce the finest professional theater possible for a diverse audience across northern New England. As Maine's only League of Repertory Theatres (LORT) house, the company provides a season of seven mainstage productions including classic, contemporary, and new works. PSC organizes two annual programs that focus on new play development: From Away, a reading series in collaboration with the University of Iowa International Writers Program, and Little Festival of the Unexpected, a weeklong event that matches actors and directors with playwrights to workshop new scripts and present staged readings to audiences for feedback. The company is also the proud host of the prestigious Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights, the winner of which receives a world-premiere production on the mainstage. PSC's affiliate artists, a collective of local theater professionals, also create a number of programs throughout the season, from author events, to an annual community open house for families, to the recently launched Studio Series. The company's full range of educational offerings include season-long internships for recent college graduates, subsidized matinees for more than 7,000 students annually, a wide variety of public discussions, classroom workshops in middle and high schools, school-vacation acting classes, the Young Writers Project for high school playwrights, and PlayNotes, a comprehensive online resource guide for teachers, students, and general audience members.

Portland Stage Company will open its season in September 2008 with Julius Caesar on the mainstage. The production will reach more than 2,200 students from an estimated 30 schools through the early show student matinee program. The primary audience is from southern Maine, and with a vigorous outreach initiative supported by the Shakespeare in American Communities grant, PSC plans to engage many school districts from central, western, northern, and downeast Maine that have not previously participated in the education programs by offering ticket and transportation subsidies. For many students, this will be their first opportunity to experience live professional theater. Every early show performance of Julius Caesar will be followed by a talkback with the cast and crew. In addition, PSC will offer pre- and/or post-show classroom workshops at no cost to every school group attending the play. Julius Caesar is the ideal vehicle for exploring politics, power, and personal responsibility in this presidential election year, as well as in the current context of elections and political violence around the world. Our modern-dress production will be set in the current media age, in which characters communicate by cell phone and instant messaging, television pundits can be soothsayers, and women and minorities are serious candidates for the most powerful and influential position in the world. The contemporary setting, use of high-tech design elements like projections and video, and a multi-racial and gender-blind cast will allow middle- and high-school students to more easily enter the world of this classic text.

Visit them at: www.portlandstage.com