They call it the Second Season: The New Year brings an end to the bustle and clamor of the holidays, and brings with it a fresh, quieter, more focused season. It’s the time when we at Artists Rep bring out more intimate, meatier fare…the plays whose beauty and power reflect the intensity and fresh energy of the New Year. It’s a time for bursts of laughter, moments of wit and opening up to the cleansing power of empathy, sadness, beauty, joy. These are just some of the things that await you in Artists Rep’s Second Season. Explore the shows we have planned for you below.

NEW! You can choose any three plays in our Second Season for just $99* and enjoy all the benefits of subscription plus an extra pair of tickets FREE.

As a subscriber, you’ll enjoy easy exchanges, missed performance insurance and our new “Encore Privilege” which lets you return to see your favorite productions again when you bring a friend. Plus, every patron who purchases a 3 play package will receive a voucher for a FREE pair of tickets to use yourself or share with friends.

Download your 3 Play Package Order Form here, or call the box office at 503.241.1278 today to secure your seats at any three of our remaining season productions- before they go on sale to the general public.

*3 Play offer is not available on Previews or Sunday Performances. Student 3 play packages can be purchased for $60. There is no Senior Rate available. Price does not include a $10 handling fee.

Few things are more mundane than cleaning a house. But in Sarah Ruhl's luminescent new play, cleaning house becomes a deeply personal, magical meditation on the jokes and jabs of human existence and the way we make messes of our lives. In it, you meet Lena, a doctor who believes her house should be spotless but won't to participate in its maintenance. Matilde, her Brazilian maid, is too wrapped up in writing the perfect joke to clean. Fortunately Virginia, Lena's sister, finds house cleaning a transcendental experience. It all works beautifully (Virginia cleans, Matilde jokes and Lena is none the wiser) until Lena's husband comes home and announces he is in love with a patient who has a beautiful soul and a serious illness. Suddenly the lives of these four women get very messy indeed.

It's a play that will move you, delight you, and remind you that our lives are never as tidy as we deserve.

In the aftermath of an utterly unexpected tragedy, Becca finds herself adrift in an unrecognizable universe – a world where the mundane details of folded laundry or a small discarded sneaker can have the shattering impact of a hand grenade. As the people around her push and prod her to buck up, breakdown, or just move on, she gradually regains her own unique and inspiring footing. With poetic empathy, David Lindsay-Abaire has written a play rich with sweet relief for anyone who has ever lost something precious and then found the way back to embracing life.

Continuing a tradition of radically redefined classics, Associate Artistic Director Jon Kretzu re-imagines this classic tale of love, brute strength and madness through the memories of a much older Blanche DuBois. Changing not a word of Williams’ powerful text, Kretzu will have you questioning everything you think you know about Stella, Stanley and Blanche, while keeping you in touch with the tender, ever-beating heart of the play’s emotional core. Experience this American masterpiece again for the first time and find yourself talking about it long after the lights go down.

The History Boys, winner of an astonishing (and record breaking) six Tony awards, uses staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence to provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it. In it you see two dueling professors at an English prep school fighting for the hearts, minds, and examination results of a group of boisterous and whip smart high school boys.

This comic school drama uses musical numbers, scholarly debates, and the acting-out of vintage movie scenes to counterpoint moments of shocking emotional nakedness. Along the way Bennett creates a compelling debate about the nature of history and the purpose of education that will radically redefine the way you look at the world…and everything that ever happened in it.

* music for Ghosts of Celilo by Marv Ross, Chenoa Egawa, Arlie Neskahi, and Mel Kubik-Bondy

What better way to launch our 25th anniversary season and re-introduce Portland to our two renovated intimate venues than with this utterly unique theatrical event that only Artists Repertory Theatre could pull off? In it, two interlocking plays are performed simultaneously on two separate stages with a single cast that dashes madly back and forth (and up and down stairs) to make their entrances and exits. In House, a luncheon is being prepared. In Garden a midsummer maypole fete is in the works. Shuttling between the two are a highly comic series of catastrophes and intertwined relationships that will leave you literally gasping to know what might be happening just out of sight in the other theater.

Make a weekend of it to fully experience Ayckbourn's wild and glorious twin visions of English country life.

In 1957, Celilo Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the west and a sacred fishing ground for Oregon's Native population, was flooded by the creation of the Dalles Dam. A historic engineering feat, it was disastrous for the people who had made their home by the falls for centuries. Marv Ross, a nationally known musician and the leader of the Trail Band, has created a world premiere musical event of stunning depth and power. In it you follow the story of a young Native boy, snatched from his home and sent to missionary boarding school. When he hears the falls are to be flooded, he escapes back to Celilo Falls to catch his ceremonial "first salmon" only to have his life changed forever.

Get swept away in the history and drama of this very human take on an event that changed Oregon forever.

You'll find your toes tapping and your heart lighter after your evening with the woman Margie Boule calls "one of the best voices in the Northwest."