With a lineup featuring gender-bending roles and progressive themes, Stumptown Stages leans into timely conversations. by Robert Ham The Mercury covers culture & art because we think all its various forms are—quite plainly—h ow people understand one another. Conversations about food, music, performance, and “weird” installation art provide touchstones to deepen friendships, create new connections, and better understand one another. If you appreciate the Mercury’s interesting and useful news & culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible. - Though unintentional, the 20th anniversary season of Stumptown Stages couldn’t be more perfectly timed for a repudiation of our current anti-trans, “ah yes, the two genders” political climate. Three of the productions undertaken by the local theater company are musicals that involve characters or portrayals that fall into that wonderfully fluid spectrum of sexuality. Kiss of the Spider Woman, staged last October, centers on the fantasy world created by a gay window dresser to help survive the abuse and fear he endures while languishing in an Argentinian prison. And every production of the gloriously campy Hairspray, from John Waters’ peerless 1988 film to its Broadway iteration as a musical (and subsequent 2007 film adaptation) features a male actor playing Edna Turnblad, the doting mother of the main character. Stumptown’s production of the musical, which just wrapped up last month, was no exception with the great Gary Wayne Cash slipping on the house dresses and hair curlers to play Edna. Gender roles get even blurrier in the final production of Stumptown Stages’ 2024-25 season as the company takes on Tootsie, the Tony-winning musical based on 1982 comedy film about a difficult actor who decides to take on a new identity as a woman to score a role. “They address a lot of really cool things,” co-director and co-star of Stumptown’s production of Tootsie Steve Coker says of the musical’s creators Robert Horn and David Yazbeck. “It was written during the #metoo movement and it really is pro-woman in so many ways.” The musical hews pretty closely to the plot of the Sydney Pollack-directed film as it follows the ups and downs of Michael Dorsey (played by Stumptown Stages artistic director Kirk Mouser) who, desperate to score an acting part and to spite his agent, opts to audition for a gig as Dorothy. He lands the job and hijinks ensue, as well as learning some tough lessons about what it’s like to be a woman in show business. The biggest change that Horn and Yazbeck made was changing the role that Michael scores from that of a hospital administrator on a soap opera to a nurse in a Broadway musical. “It’s Romeo and Juliet Part Two,” says Coker. “So it’s a ridiculous premise. That’s really the biggest difference. They also buffooned up the character of Ron Carlisle (played by Dabney Coleman in the film and Sean Ryan Lamb in this production) and made him this really ridiculous Broadway director. He’s still perving on the lead, and he still goes through all the problems he has with Dorothy, but he says ridiculous stuff and does an amazing, crazy dance-choreography thing.” Landing the job of co-directing this production of Tootsie feels fitting for Coker. (He shares the responsibility with fellow cast member Emily Alexander.) He is perhaps best known in Portland’s theater community for the many pop-culture inspired musicals and plays he has put on with his own company, Stageworks Ink, like a stage version of the ’80s film Electric Dreams or the film noir-inspired original musical The Adventures of Dex Dixon: Paranormal Dick. Coker has been working with Stumptown Stages for nearly a decade now, having premiered Dex Dixon with them and starring in their productions of Urinetown, and Ring of Fire, a musical based on the life of Johnny Cash. In addition, he’s begun directing at least one production a year for the company. “I’ve been an unofficial company member since 2011 or 2012,” Coker says. “When I first started, I was doing all the design work for their sets. I finally got called up to direct something because I’d been bugging them for a while. He finally said yes, and I jumped right in.” Tootsie feels like a comfortable fit for a theater company that—from their first productions back in 2005—have specialized in fresh takes on beloved musicals like Rent, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and West Side Story, mixed with premieres from new dramatists and fun left turns like The Toxic Avenger Musical. Their scrappy energy and spirited performances have made Stumptown Stages fan favorites among regular theatergoers and netted the company a handful of awards from the Portland Area Theatre Alliance. Tootsie, however, wasn’t their first choice to close out their 20th season. According to Coker, he was set to direct a different show for Stumptown Stages, but the rights for the musical became unavailable. (He declined to say what specific show it was.) But while Tootsie may have been the backup pick, it did afford Coker and Mouser an opportunity to continue a working partnership that they began when the former directed the latter in a 2023 production of The Full Monty. “I think that just made it more comfortable,” says Coker. “We’ve been circling each other forever and it seemed like the right fit. I’m also kind of known for comedy and the script is extremely funny.” As comfortable and fun as it all sounds, I did have to ask whether he and Alexander pulled their punches or had any reservations about directing Mouser, the person who is essentially their boss at Stumptown Stages. “Kirk is a professional and takes direction very well,” Coker says. “He had a conversation with me like, ‘Hey, are you cool with me doing this? It’s a part I’ve wanted to play.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think you’re the appropriate age for it. It’s a good role for you.’ Sometimes I’ll tease him while he’s rehearsing. When he’s singing the Michael part of a song, I’ll say, ‘So, is that the man voice or the woman voice?’ He just looked at us and said, ‘Emily, thank you. Steve, go to hell.’” Stumptown Stages presents Tootsie at the Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Fri March 21- Sun April 13, $39-$67, stumptownstages.org ...read more read less