Theater has long held the power to move people dramatically. Now entering its sixth season, the Portland Theater Festival has worked hard to, as executive and artistic director Dave Register puts it, “sharpen and deepen … shared experiences between actors and audiences.”
By locating its productions around Portland in both traditional and nontraditional venues, the festival has created a sort of identity-on-the-move. The intent is to cause the already challenging plays, selected by Cape Elizabeth-raised Register and associate artistic director Bari Robinson, to “come alive through performance.”
Hoping to exemplify “our interest in actor-driven work that lives right in front of an audience,” the theater festival’s 2026 season, titled “Confronting the Forces That Shape Us,” begins with “The Monsters,” a two-character play written by Ngozi Anyanwu. To be held at the intimate Portland Stage Studio (June 25-July 12), this drama reunites siblings with a troubled past, placing their struggle to reconnect against a backdrop of private and public pain while one of them pursues a boxing career. The director will be Leandra Torres Santiago, who was an associate director on the original production of the play. The cast includes Brandon St. Clair and Allison Jones.
Register’s assertion that the theater festival is “interested in work that feels alive in the present” is certainly evident in “Octet” (July 23-August 9), an a cappella chamber musical by Dave Malloy. The site-specific work, staged at the Maine Irish Heritage Center in Portland, visits an internet addiction support group meeting where issues affecting individuals and society in the digital age are raised and confronted. The director will be Bari Robinson. The cast has not been finalized.
It is debatable how contemporary theater can sometimes be seen as aligning itself a little too closely with whatever the socio-political cause of the day may be. Register says the Portland Theater Festival champions “work that feels alive in the present” but that “the immediate context is just an entry point into something deeper – something human, contradictory, unresolved.”
The artistic director does admit to a certain “expansion of the … (PTF) … palette” with the inclusion of Amy Herzog’s recent, highly regarded version of Henrik Ibsen’s classic “An Enemy of the People” (August 20-September 6) to close out the season. He notes how contemporary it feels as “a play about truth, power, and what happens when those two collide.” It will be performed at the new Crewe Arts Lab on the campus of the University of Southern Maine in Portland. The director will be Kelly O’Donnell.
Register said he wants to present plays that are “useful to this moment” but to always present “invitations to pay attention” and “to be less about sounding an alarm and more about asking: Are we really seeing clearly?” Experiencing theater at its best, he believes, serves to “heighten awareness” in important ways.
Despite his own busy career as a film and TV actor, Register is still inspired by the defining “curiosity” exhibited by PTF audiences. He senses that “there’s a real and fast-growing appetite for the kind of work we’re making.”
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer in Portland.
“The Monsters,” by Ngozi Anyanwu, June 25 – July 12, Portland Stage Studio, 25 Forest Ave.
“Octet,” by Dave Mallow, July 23 – Aug. 9, Maine Irish Heritage Center, 234 Gray St.
“An Enemy of the People,” by Henrik Ibsen, new version by Amy Herzog, Aug. 20 – Sept. 6, Crewe Arts Lab, 111 Bedford St.
For more, go to portlandtheaterfestival.org