By Eric Bartels
Portland Tribune
August 28, 2008

The four actors who form Artists Repertory Theatre's new resident acting troupe will see plenty of stage time with the company this coming season.

Perhaps none will make a more high-profile appearance than young Amaya Villazan. Villazan, who joins veterans Vana O'Brien, Michael Mendelson and Todd Van Voris to form ART's new repertory company, will star opposite Artistic Director Allen Nause in David Harrower's two-person drama "Blackbird," which opens next week.

The youngest of the four-actor troupe at 26, Villazan is one of the fastest-rising stars in Portland theater. Until recently, the Quebec, Canada, native, whose father is from Spain, was best known from productions at the Latino-oriented Miracle Theatre, although she does not speak Spanish.

She made an impressive debut at ART in last year's comedy, "The Clean House," in which she played a quirky Brazilian housemaid. Her letter-perfect telling of a elaborate, bawdy joke – in Portuguese – was one of the highlights of the local theater season.

Now she's paired with multiple Drammy Award winner Nause in a tense, twisting drama that opens the company's season. The play deals with a middle-aged man confronted by a woman with whom he had had a sexual relationship when she was 12 years old. From its beginning at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004, the play went on to London's West End, beating out Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll" for an Olivier Award in 2007.

"I think all of us were really drawn to it," Nause says. "There's really nothing quite like it. You think you know what it's going to be about, and then it turns. It challenges your assumptions."

Nause says the play shares some similarities with "Frozen," a dark drama about a serial child murderer that ART staged in 2004. "It certainly is about a difficult subject," he says. "No one dies in this play. People are wounded emotionally and psychologically."

"Blackbird," which unfolds in real time, greets the audience with intensity at the opening curtain and never lets go, Nause says. "The first moment the lights come up, you're in it," he says. "It's unrelenting. It never stops."