THE FUTURE SHOW to Continue 'New Frontier Series' at Artists Rep

Artists Repertory Theatre presents THE FUTURE SHOW by acclaimed performance artist, Deborah Pearson. A multi-year hit at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, THE FUTURE SHOW is a unique in-the-moment theatrical experience written and performed by the London-based Pearson.

"As soon as I finish speaking you will clap. Even those of you who were a bit bored will clap because it's a comfortable way to signal an ending." With these words, Deborah Pearson begins to tell the future in one sitting; starting with the end of the performance and finishing at the end of her life. Obsessively rewritten for every new performance (and consequently every new future), this show examines the uncertainty and fragility of what lies ahead for us all.

THE FUTURE SHOW is a new piece developed at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) and Dublin Fringe that is continually redeveloped. It tells the story of Deborah Pearson's future, creating a space on stage full of anticipation, humor, anxiety and hope. Deborah writes every performance anew for the venue where she is performing. The form is deliberately stripped down and simple. Deborah is on stage reading, with nothing but a table, some papers and a microphone, allowing the predictions of the future to create a shared imagined space between her and the audience of what could lie ahead.

"I am proud that Artists Rep can bring such an internationally recognized artist to Portland," said Frontier Series curator, Jerry Tischleder. "I've seen her perform THE FUTURE SHOW in two cities and am continuously blown away by her work. In preparing the 67-page Visa petition to bring her to the United States, I was increasingly impressed with her accolades and achievements. It made proving her status as an an artist 'of extraordinary ability' to Homeland Security an easy task."

IF YOU GO:

Artists Repertory Theatre presents
The Future Show
By Deborah Pearson

ONLY FOUR PERFORMANCES: December 1-4, 2016
Saturday @ 7:30pm; Sunday @ 2pm

At Artists Repertory Theatre, Morrison Stage, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland

Tickets: $30 regular price; $75 for 3-show series
Buy Tickets: 503.241.1278 or www.artistsrep.org

Pearson is a unique artist of international recognition. She tours frequently, is a published writer, and founder of the multi-award winning organization Forest Fringe. Beginning at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007, Forest Fringe has carved out a reputation as one of the most radical and innovative performance organizations in the UK. For her work with Forest Fringe, Pearson and her co-directors have won two Herald Angels, a Scotsman Fringe First and the 2009 Peter Brooke Empty Space Award.

Pearson's work has been presented at key international festivals like Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Mayfest Bristol in the United Kingdom, the Performing Arts Meeting in Japan and at distinguished venues such as Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) and The Gate Theatre in London. Other international presentations include performances in Toronto, Canada; Dublin, Ireland; Lisbon, Portugal; Bangkok, Thailand, and cities all over the UK including Glasgow, Nottingham, Cambridge and Oxford.

Deborah Pearson is a writer, performer and producer. In the last decade she has developed a reputation as one of the UK's most exciting young performance artists for a series of innovative solo performances exploring intimacy and narrative, as well as her role in the creation of Forest Fringe and a number of collaborations with high-profile theatre companies in the UK and Canada.

Her celebrated 2010 show LIKE YOU WERE BEFORE explored the experience of leaving her childhood home in Canada to move to the UK through the re-enactment of a video she recorded on her last day in her home country. The piece won a prestigious Herald Angel at the Edinburgh Festival, and was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Innovation and an Arches Brick Award, and consequently toured across the UK and internationally.

Deborah's show, THE FUTURE SHOW, an informal companion piece to LIKE YOU WERE BEFORE, was structured around an attempt to predict her entire future from the moment the show itself ended and the audience began to clap. The piece is rewritten for each new context in which it is performed. Developed through residencies with Battersea Arts Centre in London, MAKE, The Lir Academy and the Dublin Fringe Festival in Ireland, the piece has been performed to great acclaim at Fusebox Festival in Austin, the Kinsale Arts Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, PuSh Festival Vancouver and Vooruit in Ghent. The show will soon be presented at Mayfest in Bristol and at Culturgest in Lisbon.

Alongside these studio pieces, Deborah has created a series of more formally unconventional solo pieces, including INDISCREET, a one-on-one performance about eavesdropping commissioned by BAC for their one-on-one festival, and THE BRAIN, an audio piece commissioned by Fuel and the Roundhouse as part of their BODYPODS series. This May she will be bringing a new one-on-one, DRIFTING RIGHT, for an audience member in a canoe to the NextWave Festival in Melbourne, Australia. In 2012 Deborah created THE QUEEN WEST PROJECT, a collaboration with choreographer Allison Cummings and street youth from Eva's Phoenix. This was an ambitious immersive audio-walk and dance piece focusing on a rapidly gentrifying area of Toronto commissioned by Theatre Passe Muraille to open their Theatre Beyond Walls Season, supported through a unique 50th anniversary grant from the Metcalfe Foundation.

In the last seven years, Deborah has been involved in developing Forest Fringe's work in the UK and across the world, including projects in Austin, Yokohama, Bangkok, Lisbon, Dublin and Vancouver. For her work with Forest Fringe in 2009 Deborah was listed in The Stage newspaper's top 100 most influential people in British theatre. Deborah is currently researching a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway, focusing on the nature of narrative in contemporary performance, where she is the recipient of a Reid Scholarship. Read more about THE FUTURE SHOW on her blog HERE.

Artists Rep's new FRONTIER SERIES features internationally acclaimed artists who are breaking new ground in theatrical creation and presentation. These short-run presentations are offered for one weekend only. This inaugural season features innovative works by internationally acclaimed artists from London, Vancouver, B.C. and Los Angeles.

2016/17 FRONTIER SERIES:

December 1-4, 2016

THE FUTURE SHOW by Deborah Pearson

March 24-26, 2017

WINNERS AND LOSERS created and performed by Marcus Youssef & James Long

Produced by Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre in association with

Crow's Theatre

April 21-23, 2017

RODNEY KING by Roger Guenveur Smith

Artists Repertory Theatre's mission is to produce intimate, provocative theatre and provide a home for artists of varied backgrounds to take creative risks. Artists Rep is Portland's premiere mid-size regional theatre company and is led by Artistic Director Dámaso Rodriguez and Managing Director Sarah Horton. Founded in 1982, Artists Repertory Theatre is the longest-running professional theatre company in Portland. Artist Rep became the 72nd member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) in May 2016 and is an Associate Member of the National New Play Network (NNPN).

Artists Rep's 2016/17 season offers a stylistically diverse season of seven imaginative and entertaining plays that grapple with family and the pursuit of happiness. The season features one World Premiere commissioned by Artists Rep's new play development program Table|Room|Stage, along with five Northwest Premieres (including a musical) by some of the best contemporary playwrights in the country, and one re-imagined classic featuring an all-female cast. The 2016/17 selections emphasize the aesthetic and scope of work Artists Rep has been committed to producing for almost 35 years as Portland's premiere mid-size regional theatre company.

Artists Rep has become a significant presence in American Regional Theatre with a legacy of world, national and regional premieres of provocative new work with the highest standards of stagecraft. The organization is committed to local artists and features a company of Resident Artists, 24 professionals of varied theatre disciplines, who are a driving force behind Artists Rep's creative output and identity.Artists Rep is committed to developing new work through the recently launched new play development program Table|Room|Stage. With T|R|S , Artists Rep strives to empower and support Oregon-based playwrights while also creating a Portland home for writers from around the country to develop their work. Additionally, this program will make a meaningful impact on equity in the arts by mandating opportunities for women writers and writers of color, and cultivating the next generation of theatre- goers by creating work specifically for young people (13 and up). Artists Rep makes a significant impact on the Portland arts community with its ArtsHub, creating space and offering a home to more than eight multidisciplinary arts organizations within its facility.

RESIDENT ARTISTS - Artists Rep productions feature the work of a core group of 26 multidisciplinary theatre professionals. Hailing from around the country, our Resident Artists are nationally renowned and award-winning actors, directors, writers, designers and educators who have chosen to make Portland and Artists Rep their artistic home. Working together and independently, they create inventive and theatrically rich experiences for our audiences while playing a major role in defining Portland's cultural landscape.

TABLE|ROOM|STAGE - Through T|R|S, Artists Rep is committed to becoming an engine for new play development. As a recipient of a $125,000 Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights grant to establish a robust new play development program, the company is creating opportunities for local and national playwrights to ensure that underrepresented voices are heard on stage. The T|R|S program will commission a total of eight plays by 2017 - at least four of the eight commissions will go to writers of color, at least four will go to women, one play will be written for young adults and one will be the Oregon Play Prize, awarded to Oregon playwright Steve Rathje for his play SIGNS. Artists Rep has now extended five of the eight play commissions to Yussef El Guindi, Linda Alper, Larissa Fasthorse and Andrea Stolowitz.

ARTSHUB - Artists Rep is also home to the ArtsHub, serving as a community arts center, where its performance venues and lobbies buzz with creative energy and Portland's arts-loving audiences can gather. Artists Rep offers a home within its facility to a diverse range of artists and arts organizations. They can thrive here with access to affordable administrative, performance and rehearsal space, as well as a myriad of support services. Over the last year, hundreds of performances, events and happenings by Portlanders found a place in Artists Rep's building.

The 2016/17 Artists Repertory Theatre season is presented by sponsors Ronni Lacroute/WillaKenzie Estate and David & Christine Vernier and the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz and Renaissance Foundations. Other season support comes from the Collins Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, Theatre Communication Group and the Regional Arts and Culture Council and Work for Art.