It’s the new year and theater companies are announcing their literal schedules for 2027, bless their boots. They’re your over-prepared friends trying to get everyone to pitch in for the group trip, except their group trip involves selling tickets for a Tony-award winning production. Welcome back to Art Snack, a smol attempt at streamlining the beautiful chaos of Portland’s arts and culture scene. If the thing you want to read about isn’t in this week’s Art Snack, check back next week. And it never hurts to put it on my radar. Anyhoo, let’s snack!
• Broadway Portland announced its Portland 2026-2027 season, kicking off in July 2026 with Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen in July. Highlights for the season: The Outsiders in November, Hadestown in January 2027 😳, and Clue in March of next year. See the whole season line-up here.
• Theater company Hand2Mouth announced a festival of new works, titled New2You, which will—in its first year—present commissioned pieces by local artists, built around ideas of body and technology. Kicking off in the Annex at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), from Fri March 27-Sat April 4, the list of commissioned creators includes multi-talent performance artist Pepper Pepper and collaborators Daye Thomas and Dylan Hankins, whose 2025 Faena we raved about.
• On the heels of that Broadway in Portland season announcement, a new study commissioned by the City of Portland advised against the plan in place to renovate Keller Auditorium, the city’s main venue for Broadway tours. In 2024, City Council gave two competing plans the go ahead—one to renovate the Keller and another to build a venue on Portland State University’s campus that would be able to host Broadway shows. At that time, the city also commissioned a $60,000 feasibility study to research whether Portland could produce enough demand for two Broadway show venues. The results seem to suggest that we cannot.
• Reed College hipped us all to a Portland connection from the summer’s ultra weird horror thriller Weapons. It turns out that Amy Madigan—the actress who played the movie’s very best character, Aunt Gladys—has been a Reed College Trustee since 2016. According to the announcement, Madigan and her husband screenwriter Ed Harris became supporters of Reed’s performing arts due to their daughter’s attendance of the school. Madigan was just nominated for the year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but we would have been bragging long before now.
• Portland author Renée Watson won the Newbery Medal for her 2025 book All the Blues in the Sky, which tells the story of a teenager grieving the death of a close friend. Watson expressed gratitude to “every anchor that has supported me as I navigated my own grief these past few years. What a profound gift to love someone enough to grieve them. What a deep comfort to have been loved. Here’s to loving and living, to grieving and remembering, to growing and most of all to letting ourselves feel joy even in the midst of sorrow. There is much to rage against and also, there is so much celebrate.”
• Multnomah County leaders announced in a memo on last week that they do not plan to install metal detectors in the Multnomah County’s Central Library downtown. The library’s research does not indicate metal detectors would meaningfully impact the “most frequent security incidents or alleviate community concerns,” County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson wrote.
• Republica stans rise up. The restaurant group’s co-founder Angel Medina put out the call in his newsletter Between Courses (probably my favorite local newsletter) asking for community help to release an important episode of his production company’s new documentary series Humble Kitchen. Todos Media had planned to release the episode with the rest of the series in May, but the escalating violence by federal agents in Minneapolis made Medina want to release the episode now. It spotlights Minneapolis chef Gustavo Romero, who runs Oro by Nixta with his wife, Chef Kate Romero. Furthermore, the duo were just named as semifinalists for James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: Midwest category. Medina explains a little more and offers a link where readers can contribute; they’re trying to raise $12.000 to get the episode across the finish line.
• LIKE I JUST SAID, the James Beard Awards recently announced its semifinalist round. While semifinals are still two rounds away from winning an actual award, this is your early, early warning that an already busy restaurant in Portland could become impossibly busy very soon (June). This could also be a romance win, if you can get reservations at one of these spots for Valentines. The Portland restaurant semifinalists are (find the complete list here):
Le Pigeon – semifinalist for outstanding restaurant
Coquine – semifinalist for outstanding wine and other beverages program
Scotch Lodge – outstanding bar
Joel Gunderson, Heavenly Creatures – outstanding professional in beverage service
There are 20 folks in the running for best chef of the Northwest & Pacific region, but the Portland has four!
Taylor Manning and Siobhan Speirits of Cafe Olli
Kristen Murray of Måurice
Thomas Pisha-Duffly of Gado Gado
Ryan Roadhouse of Nodoguro
• Fans of food and an open fire likely already follow Tournant, the outdoorsy fine cuisine project of chefs Jaret Foster and Mona Johnson. Generally, we think of them as over hill and over dale, inviting foodies to the Oregon Coast for crab parties, or even taking vacationers on tasting tours of Croatia and Greece. In November, Portlanders got to have Tournant closer to home at downtown luncheonette Maurice. It’s nice to hear that with their next residency they won’t go far, stepping into an April-October collaboration with Side Yard Farm & Kitchen. This doesn’t mean that farm owner and chef Stacey Givens is leaving. She’s going to continue to host events both at the Portland Side Yard and the second Side Yard location in Rogue Valley.
• Be the brunch you want to eat: Darcelle XV Showplace has an ad out, looking for line chefs.
Suzette Smith
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