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5 days ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
Comedian Andie Main left Portland six years ago for Denver and then New York, in search of a fresh start and less-sensitive comedy audiences. She returned home in November and, safe to say, a lot has changed. Many of her pre-2019 friends might not even recognize her.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
In what it is calling an “emergency” move, Portland Center Stage is launching a multi-year fundraising campaign called “Save PCS” to stay open. The first benchmark the regional theater company—the largest in Portland—must hit is $2.5 million by August 31. Otherwise, PCS will have to close its doors. Overall, the company must raise $9 million by June 2026.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
All I learned about dirty soda I learned from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Last fall, the popular Hulu reality show depicted a group of TikTok influencers procreating, in-fighting and sipping on enormous cups from “Swig,” a drive-thru dirty soda shop founded in Utah. Inside the cups: brand-name sodas mixed with flavored syrups and creams with names like Berry Boujee and Life’s a Peach.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
More Portland arts organizations have come forward to announce that they, too, have abruptly lost National Endowment for the Arts funding in the past few days. My Voice Music, Profile Theatre and Oregon Children’s Theatre all also received emails rescinding grants for their work.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
Oregon Ballet Theatre has announced that principal dancer Jessica Lind will retire at the end of the current season after being at the company since 2011. “OBT has been my home for the last 14 years,” Lind said in a statement. “I have seen the company through a lot of change, but through it all, the support from the people I work with has been unwavering.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
In 2003, eight young Rhode Island artists created a secret apartment in a hidden space inside the Providence Place Mall. They snuck furniture and building materials into their 750 square foot hidey hole above the retail stores, accessed via a steep ladder from the megamall’s back corridors. They tapped into the mall’s electricity, ate a lot of food court meals and, fortunately for documentarian Jeremy Workman, filmed the whole thing. The group lived in their secret mall apartment for four years.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
Mother’s Day is usually associated with prissy brunches, pastels, and hanging fuchsia baskets. But this Sunday, May 11, a group of local comedians is subverting all of that and throwing a show called Wrangle Your Rights at Funhouse Lounge as a fundraiser for Northwest Abortion Access Fund. Brunch? Fuchsia baskets? Try a clown lassoing abortion pills from atop a womb-horse, the central image on the event flyer.
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1 week ago | 
wweek.com | Andrew Jankowski |Rachel Saslow
Portland Playhouse’s 2024–25 season closer Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opens tomorrow night. But less than 24 hours before curtain, the National Endowment for the Arts informed the theater company via a May 2 email that a $25,000 award to fund the production had been revoked. Staging August Wilson’s play, the email says, no longer aligns with President Donald Trump’s curatorial vision for the country.
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2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
With two Portland Thorns players expecting babies, the soccer club is leaning all the way in and attempting to host the world’s largest baby shower this Saturday, May 3. The Thorns will take on the Orlando Pride at Providence Park at 4:30 pm.
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2 weeks ago | 
wweek.com | Rachel Saslow
2–5: dadweedSounds like: Sunrise under a willow tree in the country. Let’s address the name first. None of the members of the bluegrass trio dadweed, all in their 20s and early 30s, is a dad. The weed, however? It’s around, but not, like, in an overexcited or glorifying way. Speaking on the morning of April 21, when the band had just played Bend’s HomeGrown Music Festival, a 4/20 celebration, they had no stories to share about sparking up onstage right at 4:20 pm, for example.
