Remembering Peter Fornara

The most remarkable theater season I've ever seen.

RISK IN REP

Remembering Peter Fornara’s Remarkable Theater Company

By Charles Deemer

(To appear in Citadel of the Spirit, edited by Matt Love)

            At first glance, it’s a typical no-budget program put together by a struggling theater group: a sheet of paper folded once, cover on front and season calendar on back, with the play particulars (cast, crew, etc.) on the inside pages, everything typewritten and machine copied in black, white and gray. A simple graphic on the front cover, a neutral theater mask, adds a small touch of class.

The program belongs to David Olson, and he treats it with care because it’s an important artifact. Olson, who’s been Portland’s Director of Cable Communications for several decades, was a young actor in the 1978 theater season represented by this program, a participant in and witness to Oregon theatrical history. This is the program of the Fall, 1978, theater season of Peter Fornara’s The Production Company, an ambitious and remarkable season of plays that has not been matched by any Oregon theater company since then for its reach, risk, energy, achievement and circumstances of creation.

            The four plays listed on the cover begin to tell the story: Cabaret, Marat/Sade, Joe Egg, American Buffalo. These four plays – a dark musical set in Nazis Germany, an even darker music drama set in an insane asylum, a disturbing family drama and a tough-edged story of street thugs – would make for a remarkable season at any time because they lack the variety typical of commercial theater selections. All these plays are serious. All have dark visions of human experience. Today a theater company might add one of them, even two, to its season – but four “heavy” plays in a row? Never!

Read the essay.