Third Rail Repertory Theatre was born in 2003 from a desire to deliver artistic excellence to Portland audiences on a consistent basis. Like the Group Theatre of the 1930s and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, Third Rail’s permanent ensemble shares an esthetic, a vocabulary, and an understanding of each other’s working styles. This means that great risks can be taken quickly, and thus great dramatic (and comic) potential is tapped. The result for theatergoers is productions that are surprising, thought-provoking, and above all, consistently entertaining.
The artists of Third Rail are professionals. They have worked as actors, directors, and designers at all levels of American theatre from summer stock to Broadway—and as teachers in outreach programs and in higher education. The company’s ties to Portland are deep and strong. Many members were born here, and their involvement with Portland theatre spans decades.
Why “Third Rail”?
“I had been living in New York and was a few weeks from moving to Portland with the intention of starting a professional theatre company. Ever since I had figured out that I wanted to run a company I had been trying to find a name that made sense for the kind of work I wanted to produce. I was standing on the subway platform to take the A Express downtown and looked down at the tracks and the metaphor hit me with great clarity: the third rail. It provided power and propulsion to the train. It moved people and took them great distances to places that could be familiar or unknown. It was dangerous and not to be touched. It had a metropolitan/urban sensibility. It felt like the perfect metaphor and I knew instantly that I would be hard pressed to find a better name for the work I was drawn to producing.” – Founding Artistic Director Scott Yarbrough
Staff
Leadership
Maureen Porter
Managing Artistic Director
maureen@thirdrailrep.org
Box Office
Alea Tran
Patron Services Coordinator
alea@thirdrailrep.org
Niels Truman
Box Office Staff & Marketing Assistant
niels@thirdrailrep.org
AC Campbell
Box Office Staff & Front of House Manager
ac@thirdrailrep.org
Maddy Schultz
Box Office
maddy@thirdrailrep.org
Camille Rose Perry
Front of House Manager
camille@thirdrailrep.org
Production
Michelle Kashinsky
Associate Producer
michelle@thirdrailrep.org
Administrative
Kelsea Vierra Ashenbrenner
Bookkeeper
kelsea@thirdrailrep.org
Matthew Jones
Fiscal Manager
matthew@thirdrailrep.org
Board of Directors
Mark Takiguchi, Board President
Community Volunteer, Visual Artist
Alex Haslett, Secretary
OPB
Stuart Robertson, Treasurer
The Partners Group
Matt Brown
Partner, YBA Architects
Cheryl Ching
Portland Japanese Garden (ret.)
Kevin Kearns
Multnomah County Library Capital Bond Program
Jennifer Lin
HL Stearns, Third Rail Company Member
Maureen Porter
Third Rail Repertory Theatre, Managing Artistic Director
Pancho Savery
Reed College, Professor of English & Humanities
Advisory Council
Scott Yarbrough, Founding Artistic Director
Ava Schoen, Immediate Past President, Tonkon Torp, LLP
Mary Chaffin, Attorney (ret.), community/political advocate
Kerry Cobb, Kerry Cobb Marketing
Jim Cox, Western Rivers Conservancy
Penny Greenwood, Organizational strategist and business owner (ret.), community volunteer
Nicola Sysyn, City of Portland, Program Specialist
Founding Company Members
Rachel Brodkey, Stephanie Gaslin, Michael O’Connell, John Steinkamp, Valerie Stevens, Tim True, Scott Yarbrough
