I just finished writing an article about Hand2Mouth Theater, in which I quote H2M director Jonathan Walters on his hope that Portland will one day become a year-round destination for touring theater companies (instead of drawing a shit-ton of awesome acts during TBA and then dying for the rest of the year). In my article, I mentioned that in addition to Hand2Mouth, Sojourn Theater does some pretty amazing experimental theater, and that I’m looking forward to Good, their summer show.

Then I checked my e-mail to find a press release from Sojourn, announcing that artistic director Michael Rohd has just accepted a two-year teaching position at Northwestern University in Chicago.

This is obviously huge news for Rohd, but what, exactly, does it mean for Portland? The fear, of course, is that in Rohd’s absence Sojourn’s artistic vision will lose focus—the way some people think Liminal tanked when artistic director Bryan Markovitz took off.

I called Rohd to confirm that he will in fact be remaining artistic director of Sojourn, and that Sojourn will continue to use Portland as its home base—the key difference, Rhod said, is that for the next few years Sojourn will place more emphasis on other projects happening in otherparts of the country.

So this could actually be good news for Portland, if it serves to strengthen ties in the theater community between Portland, Chicago, and other cities.

Press release after the jump!

ELEASE: April 6, 2007

Sojourn Theatre Artistic Director Michael Rohd Takes Visiting Appointment in Chicago

PORTLAND, OR -- Sojourn Theatre is proud to announce Artistic Director Michael Rohd has accepted a two-year visiting appointment at Chicago's Northwestern University as the Ethel M. Barber Assistant Professor in Theater, a newly created position on the faculty of the University's School of Communication in the area of Devising Performance. He begins in September 2007. Rohd has been a guest faculty member at Northwestern the past two academic years, regularly traveling back and forth between Portland and Chicago.

Sojourn Theatre's work will continue, through special projects at the company's home-base (which will remain Portland), and through Rohd's work in Chicago and around the nation. Sojourn continues to be a flexible, expansive means for the ensemble and its collaborators, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rohd, to develop a unique body of theatrically adventurous, often civically engaged work. The potential for collaboration with Northwestern University is clear, and the exploration of university-based projects that act as a Lab for the work Sojourn does around the US has already begun.

Since 1999, Rohd has written and directed (in collaboraton with the ensemble) 20 full-length works that have been seen in Oregon and around the country. In the last 12 months, Sojourn's work in Portland includes the award-winning production The War Project: 9 acts of determination, and the city-wide tour of One Day, a civic engagement collaboration with The Mayor of Portland's Office. The company also created a new piece, American Value, which opened the North American Cultural Laboratory's 2006 Summer Festival in New York, and was commissioned to create and perform Voices from the Edge as the closing event at the 2006 The Pacific Edge Festival in Mackay, Australia.

On June 10th, 2007, Sojourn will premiere it's newest full-length work, GOOD, a multi-media site-specific performance journey at the Wentworth Subaru parts and service facility/dealership in SE Portland, to be followed by this Summer's Sojourn Lab at Lewis & Clark College, Throwing Bones, a new work by New York–based visiting director and Princess Grace Award Recipient Maureen Towey . The 2007 (8th annual) Sojourn Institutes will take place as planned in Portland and in New York this July & August.

Upcoming Sojourn Theatre projects in early stages of development include:

- work with the US Department of Defense on an interview-based production about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Warrior Returns, in collaboration with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as part of an effort to bring soldiers, families and communities together;

- work with Georgetown University on The Race, a piece about the 2008 Presidential Election to be produced in Washington, DC;

- and work at Northwestern and in Chicago on a multi-year civic theatre project examining the housing crisis in US urban areas as our projected population grows from 300 million to 400 million over the next forty years entitled Where will we live?.

As Sojourn moves to a streamlined format of project-based work, the organizational structure will shift in ways that allow for greater programmatic flexibility.

Sojourn Theatre:
a research and production institution whose primary activity consists of exploring and innovating the intersection of theatre and democracy through process and performance in professional, education, and community settings with a commitment to rigor and excellence in its aesthetic and engagement practices.

For further information regarding this announcement, please call 503.312.3493.