Oregon Humanities

OCH and Portland theater company team up in innovative discussion series

Oregon Council for the Humanities and Portland Center Stage offer Portlanders a chance to explore "Four Questions" in the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

04 March 2008 | Permalink

What is the nature of love and desire? What is the relationship between power and justice?
These are just two of the timeless questions Portlanders will have the chance to consider during the upcoming reading and discussion series Four Questions: Virtue, Community, Love, and Justice in the Theater, presented by the Oregon Council for the Humanities (OCH), in cooperation with Portland Center Stage (PCS).
This series of lively conversations will be held at PCS’s Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW 11th Ave., Portland) on four consecutive Monday evenings, beginning April 7, from 7:30 to 9:00.
Registered participants will receive reading packets containing selected scenes from four contemporary plays—Spinning into Butter, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, How I Learned to Drive, and Radio Golf. Each night, a Reed College professor will deliver a brief lecture about that evening’s play and corresponding question, then will facilitate a discussion among participants.
Registration for the series is $35 and forms are available to download at the OCH website (http://www.oregonhum.org). Registration deadline is March 10, 2008. Space is limited. Participants are expected to attend all four sessions.
The full schedule is as follows:
April 7: What is the role of knowledge in being a virtuous person? Scenes from Spinning into Butter by Rebecca Gilman
April 14: What is the relationship between an individual and the community? Scenes from The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
April 21: What is the nature of love and desire? Scenes from How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel
April 28: What is the relationship between power and justice? Scenes from Radio Golf by August Wilson
Four Questions, which was offered by OCH in Pendleton during October 2005, is based on OCH’s Humanity in Perspective (HIP) program, a free college-level course in the humanities for low-income adults, in partnership with Reed College.