Wednesday, January 07, 2026
Theater 2025: Frogs on the street, thrills and chills onstage
Oregon ArtsWatch: Aside from the nationally famous amphibian who cavorted in front of the ICE facility in South Portland, though, our theaters were alight with the passion and profound insights brought to us by an array of directors, actors, musicians and designers. Not only has their work sparked conversation and mirrored the pain and joy of being human – in general and specifically in 2025 – these artists offered us something we all crave: delight and entertainment.
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I will admit that the main reason I read this article was the fact that the title “Theater 2025: Frogs on the street, thrills and chills onstage” seemed quite fun and silly to me. Upon further inspection, the article did not disappoint. I really love the photo of the ICE protesting frogs that they included at the beginning. With so much going on in the world today, I think that seeing humor in things (like the inflatable frog costumes) while still fighting for positive changes is incredibly important. With that in mind, continuing to engage with the arts and bring some of that into it is also a thing that I think should be focused on more, and part of that is why I really liked this article. It was able to showcase a ton of really cool productions in Portland, while also addressing some of the crazy things that have impacted the community around them.
I’m from Portland, Oregon and I actually worked on a few of these shows and know people who worked on almost all of them! Its been a really stressful but also exciting year in Portland. The National Guard being deployed against our city really incited a lot of fear and distress, but also so much resistance, joy, and really great theater. A lot of companies have started to make strategic repetoire choices that express the critical views a lot of Oregonians have on current events and the current political climate, as well as ICE and the National Guard deployment. My boss worked on Damn Yankess at Clackamas Rep as well as Immigrant Story Live, and walked me through some of his design process for both shows, and it was really interesting to see how the current situations in Portland factored into his designs and how he chose to present the messages of the shows. Overall, I’m proud of my home city and the art we’ve made this year.
There is something so human about using art and whimsy to protest. Theater has always been used as a form of protest. To see that there are so many productions happening that are being used to show human resilience makes me incredibly happy. I appreciate how the article included some shows that have joy because joy in a time of strife and war is a very unique form of protest that not many would include in the forms of protests. There were plenty of shows listed that were also about heartbreak and other more sensitive topics because those are also forms of protests, just a different type. Honestly, any art that is not propaganda is protest because we refuse to stop creating and being human. People who chose not to see art as protest are forgetting the history of the world where art has been used as a protest time and time again.
This is the first time I’m hearing about this. It gives me faith in the arts and the arts community, of course, but also in the wider community’s ability to rally against the evils of ICE and the Trump administration. The article, in the midst of previous events, does feel underwhelming. The power of theatre is to motivate people for a cause. It is hard in times like these with certain individuals in power to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and to envision how this will be undone. The answer is that it can’t truly be, but times like this can and will cease in the future, if the people have anything to do with it. The reviews of shows involved in this article are interesting (and I’d love to see the majority of shows listed, given the author’s reasoning), but I do believe that given that it is a form of performance, any ICE protests outdoes anything on stage.
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