The Crisis Facing Portland Theaters - Extended
b'Shelley McLendon struggled for years to find affordable theaters to stage her sell-out adaptations of movies like \\u201cRoad House\\u201d and \\u201cThe Lost Boys,\\u201d as well as sketch and improv comedy shows.
\\u201cIt wasn\\u2019t just affecting me \\u2014 it was affecting everybody else,\\u201d McLendon told State of Wonder during an episode she guest curated. \\u201cSo you had all these companies, from comedy to straight-up drama to dance to poetry, looking for places to put up a show\\u2014places that were not only available, but affordable. We were all in competition.\\u201d
McLendon decided to go in search of her own space. After two years of hunting for the right building, she opened the city\\u2019s first new theater in some time, the Siren Theater.
McLendon\\u2019s story is a bright light in an otherwise darkening theater landscape. The list of performing companies who have lost their homes or struggled to find new ones as a result of Portland\\u2019s booming real estate market continues to grow at an alarming rate, starting with the companies sent scrambling after the close of Theater Theatre in 2013 and most recently seen in the displacement of three of the city\\u2019s dance companies \\u2014 Northwest Dance Project, Conduit Dance and Polaris Dance Theater.
Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/could-the-arts-get-pushed-out-of-portland'