Location: Portland
Team: The Portland Theatre Collaborative: Adam L Vachon, Micheal Dix Thomas, Mariah Bergeron, Stacey Mancini Koloski, Lisa van Oostrem, Corey Anderson, and Deirdre Fulton
Website: www.portfringe.com
Portland Theater Collaborative will enable creation and performance of high quality local theater during the Portland Performing Arts Festival. PortFringe 2012 is a celebration of the richness of the theatre community and provides a unique opportunity to bring creative energies together. PTC has arranged to provide venues, and technical assistance, as well as print and press marketing free of charge to theater artists looking to present work at PF-12. This arrangement (supported by PTC’s independent fundraising) will allow you to keep the vast majority of the money made on ticket sales, while minimizing some of the financial impediments to creating work.
How are you making Maine a better place for young people?
The Portland Theater Collaborative (PTC) aims to enable the creation and performance of high-quality local theater as part of the Portland Performing Arts Festival (June 28-July 1, 2012) through establishing the PortFringe theater event – a coalescing of established theater companies with the budding performers and producers of the greater Portland region.
This summer, PTC will facilitate PortFringe 2012 — a celebration of the richness of the theatre community in southern Maine that provides a unique opportunity to bring our creative energies together. PTC has arranged to provide venues and technical assistance, as well as print and press marketing free of charge to theater artists looking to present work at PF-12. This arrangement (supported by PTC’s independent fundraising) will allow artists to keep the vast majority of the money made on ticket sales, while minimizing some of the financial impediments to creating work. Aid of this kind is particularly important to enabling young and new players to enter the field, as well as providing the opportunities for internships and potential college credit.
PTC has an impact beyond PortFringe. Expanding the breadth of arts and their availability extends education outside schoolroom door. Bringing together the numerous theater companies and satellite performers of Maine creates new dialogues and rapports necessary to fertilize visionary theatrical arts. PTC is invested in tapping the resources of new theater talent outside the staple stages and established companies. PTC seeks to reach out to young Mainers in the community – those still in college, just graduated, or newly arrived in Maine – and help them start to network within the local theatre community. Young artists are especially encouraged to apply for their work to be included in PF-12. PTC provides support through finding collaborators, spaces, as well as all the brass tacks assistance necessary for production and press. Students and new artists will also be able to start networking by volunteering and interning for PF-12 in a number of technical, marketing and box office roles.
What challenges in your community are you addressing?
The Portland theatre community is growing at a rapid pace. In the past few years a number of new theater troupes have been founded, and more young artists have settled down and begun to look for theater opportunities in the Portland area. Rehearsal and performance spaces are, unfortunately, at a premium, and many artists are struggling to find a means of executing these productions. PTC meets the challenges of retaining this vital creative economy here in Maine in a variety of ways. PTC addresses the expanding theater demographic by providing an easy and affordable means to produce their performances through PortFringe as well as future events. Culturally, PTC is committed to bringing theater of a kind generally unavailable to Maine audiences. Art has invigorated this working waterfront with a booming creative economy, revitalizing Portland in just a few years. As with the burgeoning visual art scenes, it is the contemporary and avante garde that has not only retained the youth of Maine to pursue creatively in their home state, but also attracted those young students and artists from far and abroad who come here to be a part of this movement. Obscure and original theater is bubbling in this state, and through PortFringe 2012 this invaluable art can reach a whole new audience. With educational budget cuts quick to hit the arts first, we as a community must take up that challenge and provide a more whole cultural experience. PortFringe is not merely a community event, but an ongoing investment in the creative commerce of Maine.
Who will benefit from your idea? How will people access and learn about the work you are doing?
PTC is specifically aimed at aiding theater artists in the Greater Portland Area in their production of new entertainment for theater patrons in Portland. Through PortFringe, the PTC allows artists the ability to fully realize their own productions – from acting and directing to set design and choreography – and present it to their own community. Theater of this nature is generally outsourced, something that tours through town and disappears. PTC knows that Portland is a hotbed of fresh and willing talent, as well as a community hungry for art that is unique and challenging. PTC has already received wide interest from the theater performance communities regarding participation, many with direct affiliation to schools, colleges, and community outreach programs. We have created a website, www.portfringe.com, as well as a group on Facebook for the Portland Theatre Collaborative page. PTC has included in our budget promotional film production and newspaper ad space.
What major success would you like to see at the end or apex of your project?
PortFringe 2012 will be a great experience to partake in and behold, but ultimately is it the foundation of a more permanent and resonating concept for the arts in Maine. This is an opportunity for the new leading artists and creators to enliven, education, and inspire their own communities. PortFringe subsists on young ideas, fervent creativity, and artistic risk-taking. This bevy of ability and interest is right here in town. What makes this project such a resource is not only the symbiotic relationship of community engaging community, but also the lasting impressions that good art serves everyone. The success of PTC’s PortFringe is in the new relationships and future projects that this project fosters, as well as in the audience, young and old, who may have never seen the likes of this before.
Any thing else you’d like us to know?
PTC are all really big fans of what The League of Young Voters has done and continues to do for the rising generations of Maine’s communities. Thanks for the chance to do our part!
Project Partners: Lucid Stage, St. Lawrence Arts & Community Center, SPACE Gallery, Portland Performing Arts Festival, Lorem Ipsum Collective, AIRE Theater, Mad Horse Theatre Company, STAGES Performing Arts Academy for Kids, Snowlion Repertory Company, Dramatic Repertory Company
