2025 stage fright festival
installations
feast your eyes on this year’s performance art installations
Installations can be found throughout the the theatre lobby next door to CoHo.
These events have no set start time. You can come and go as you please between 6 and 7 PM.
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can — All Proceeds Support the Artists
LIMBO
October 11th 6:00 PM
Limbo is a place in the afterlife where you wait. (And while you wait, please enjoy some hors d'oeuvres.) This ten minute experience, for just five people at a time, invites you to cross the border of life into a peculiar secret place. What’s going to happen there? If we told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
RATED: PG-13 | CREATED BY: Summer Olsson / The Queeps | SOCIALS: @mslemonsours
The Queeps create original, spooky, queer, weird, dreamy, scary comedy. Their last show was the runaway hit They Were A Dracula.
MARY CONTRARIAN
October 11th 6:00 PM
“Play with me!” the spooky cry,
Like mist your form appears,
“What game’s afoot?” I dare to ask
(And will it end in tears?)
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Is that you I hear?
This eerie laughter echoing,
It fills my heart with fear.
RATED: PG - R (each Each experience is tailored to the person experiencing it) | CREATED BY: laura loy | SOCIALS: @whimsicalroundups
LAURA LOY is an actor-creator who believes passionately in theatre’s power to foster empathy and community. Laura has devised, directed, taught, and performed at venues across North America and around the world. Her award-winning physical theatre company Box of Clowns has been featured on America's Got Talent and The Gong Show. Portland credits include shows with Imago Theatre, Broadway Rose, Tears of Joy, Lakewood, Speculative Drama, Sir Cupcake’s Queer Circus. You may have seen her creepy work at Stagefright in They Were a Dracula, or The Paranormal Pair.
join your local rat king!
October 11th 6:00 PM
Feeling lonely? Left out? Like everyone you know has found their special someone(s) and left you behind? Join us in the lobby to tie your tail to our growing community. We’ve got arts and crafts, puppetry, and zines!
RATED: NR | CREATED BY: Notion (it/its)
Notion is a theater designer and puppet-maker who grew up in the Pacific Northwest. It has previously worked with local productions such as designing puppets and sets for IMAGO theater, and puppeteering on the in-progress puppet series Fogtown.
dead media raveyard
October 11th 6:00 PM
The VHS tape is full of ghosts — performers and directors long dead, tethered to this world with lines of magnetic code. Running the films of Ed Wood Jr. — Glenn or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan Nine from Outer Space — through a series of both audio and video synthesizers, we shall attempt to resurrect, reanimate, and remix these films in an effort to celebrate these ghosts of queer artists and let them dance. Literally, dance. We're making techno music. (Ok, maybe a little Witch House if we're being honest with ourselves.)
Watch some glitched-out classic B-Horror films and dance!
RATED: NR | CREATED BY: Nathalie Owen FitzSimons (she/they/it) | @weirdthingsforimaginarypeople
Nathalie Owen FitzSimons is a clown, theatre technician, synth player and horror scholar in Portland, OR. She has her MFA from Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre and has dreams of getting her doctorate to spite those FOOLS at the university who mocked her.
jawbone puppet theatre
October 18th 6:00 PM
A funny dirty Bible story about patriarchal lineage and cum!
Fasten your seatbelts, let down your hair, and put the kids to bed — PG time is over! This show contains scenes of graphic puppet on puppet sex, and extreme wrath of god. Not for the feint of heart.
RATED: r | CREATED BY: adam ende | @jawbonepuppettheater
Hi! I’m Adam Ende, founder and janitor of Jawbone Puppet Theater. I like to spread unexpected wonder in people’s lives through the magic of iconoclastic puppet shows and wierdo installations made of baby dolls, goat bones & rusty saws in public places. I also like to fight evil with the power of friendship, like a magical girl.
body soup
October 18th 6:00 PM
A detailed and vivid scientific explanation of how a body decomposes set against the backdrop of haunting theremin music echoing the whispers of rotting flesh with live, body mapping projections poetically describing the process on a micro and macro level.
RATED: pg-13 | CREATED BY: janessa JOhnsrude & Mystical A/V Club | @glitr_gizzrd, @mysticalavclub
Body Soup is a collaboration between Glitter Gizzard (Jannessa) & the Mystical A/V Club.
Glitter Gizzard makes work that is funny-strange where eccentric campiness and etherealness intersect. With a bend toward surreal and/or cockamamie storylines, GG’s work ranges from collaborative productions to interactive installation pieces.
Mystical A/V Club is a boundary-pushing performance company that blends multimedia storytelling, physical theater, clown, puppetry, drag, ritual, and live music in work that is deeply collaborative and brings together artists from across disciplines.