Triangle Productions Revisits Portland's Anything-Goes Theater Heyday
Triangle Productions is closing its 25th anniversary season with a tribute to another long-running Portland theater institution: Storefront Theatre.
During its twenty year run, Storefront was infamous for productions that pushed every boundary imaginable. They put on over-the-top shows involving nudity, drugs, and a fabulous DIY aesthetic of glitter and glue guns\u2014shows that ranged from Sam Shepherd (who came out to work with the theater) to a radical sex play about a porn store called \u201cQuarters\u201d to a reimagining of \u201cBeauty and the Beast,\u201d where the Beast bit the dust (and Beauty got naked).
\u201cIt was unsafe and a mess and the most magical, amazing, astounding place I had ever been in in my life,\u201d recalls actor Wendy Westerwelle, a charismatic local actor who first performed with Storefront in 1974 and continues to grace stages today. \u201cThere was no, \u2018what if it sells?\u2019 There was no, \u2018what\u2019s our season?\u2019 The politics of it was \u2018screw it \u2013 we\u2019re artists and we\u2019re going to do what we do.\u2019\u201d
To introduce Triangle's show, "Storefront Revue: The Babes Are Back," we invited four Storefront vets to take us back in time. Here are some of the highlights from our interview with Don Horn, Henk Pander, and actors Wendy Westerwelle and Vana O\u2019Brien.