Mission:

To propose new ways of being through creative inquiry and performance.

Vision

A life of unfolding experience in which multiplicity and complexity are recognized, valued and artfully expressed in community.

PETE is a company of artists who make new plays in a collaborative way. We train together and teach our work. We are committed to creative rigor, to the enrichment of our local arts ecology, and to connecting with diverse audiences. We challenge established notions of theatrical form and content with innovative practice, presentation and organization. We strive to achieve a radical kind of presence shared with audiences in the performance event.

We pay attention and ask questions. PETE asks questions about our specific time and place, about history, about the intrinsic stuff of being human. The answers are in experience. The truth exists in the spaces between. Our work exists between the ancient and the new. Between the body and technology. Making performance helps us comprehend ourselves and the world, helps us know the way life lives. We are passionate and compassionate and we think this will be so contagious that it spreads.

We value relationships. This is an issue of our time. We value relationships between ideas, between artists and between artists and audience. We allow the world to be complex. We make things larger, not smaller. We allow for confusion and patience.

Theatre is about ways to be together. We are conscious of the ways we treat each other. We allow one another to be dangerous, as a show of the greatest respect. We are demanding of our audience. We listen to them, see and feel them. We offer them adventure. We invite them to lean into the performance event, so we can make new meaning together and share an experience of being truly alive in the present moment.

History:

PETE has been making performance as an ensemble since 2011. Together we have created eight original devised works (Song of the Dodo, Drowned Horse Tavern, All Well, Deception Unit, Fronteriza, Weather Room, The Americans, and Cardiac Organ), four new plays ([or, the whale] by Juli Crockett and Procedures for Saying No, How To Learn, and Our Ruined House by Robert Quillen Camp) and six revivals (R3, a new adaptation of Richard III, Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and Cherry Orchard, Maria Irene Fornes’ Enter the Night, and Beckett Women, an evening of Beckett short plays). Our work has been produced at Northwest New Works at On the Boards, Summerfest at CoHo Theatre, Risk/Reward, Caldera, and PCS’s JAW Festival. Our work has been supported by grants from the Oregon Community Foundation, The Kinsman Foundation, The Miller Foundation, The Collins Foundation, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Oregon Cultural Trust, the Mental Insight Foundation, the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition, and the Oregon Arts Commission among others. As part of our training institute, we offer community classes in the Viewpoints, Suzuki, Devised performance, Linklater Voice, Alexander and other performance trainings. Our year-long certificate program in performance (Institute for Contemporary Performance) offers 20 hours a week of training over 10 months culminating a festival of new works each spring. 2024 marks our tenth cohort of new performance makers.