Portland Center Stage Is Flourishing Under Marissa Wolf’s Leadership

“Marissa will listen to the play. She builds a company of actors who are willing to explore that world and find moments of discovery onstage.”

Marissa Wolf (Courtesy Portland Center Stage)
By Max Tapogna

Age: 40

Occupation: Artistic director of Portland Center Stage

Why She Matters: In addition to boasting arguably the best performance space in Portland—the glorious and glamorous Gerding Theater at the Armory—Portland Center Stage is the Disney of Portland’s theater scene. If Disney took creative risks, that is.

Since taking leadership in 2018, Wolf (who spent six years cutting her teeth as artistic director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater) has steered Portland’s flagship theater through the uncertain waters of the pandemic. She has also kept the company on the cutting edge, mounting inventive productions like an all-female Macbeth and a lavish version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights (years before it became an acclaimed film).

Beyond all the success, Wolf is a mother who enjoys swimming, Tiny Desk Concerts, and fighting with her husband over who gets to read the front section of the Sunday New York Times first. At once ambitious and unpretentious, she’s an ideal representative for the city’s biggest blockbuster theater company.

Biggest Influences: “I consider myself primarily a new-play director, but A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, and Angels in America by Tony Kushner cut to my core every time I read them!”

Greatest Personal Achievement: “Being a parent and working professionally in the nonprofit arts: It’s infinitely complicated and infinitely beautiful.”

Favorite Guilty Pleasure: “Very trashy reality television. No, I’m not going to name any titles.”

Best Quote About Her: “Marissa will listen to the play. She builds a company of actors who are willing to explore that world and find moments of discovery onstage.” —Christina Anderson, Tony-nominated playwright and screenwriter

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