Oregon or Bust: “Days of Rain” at the Portland Center Stage

The purpose of my trip to Portland was to see a play, “3 Days of Rain” which starred Sash Roiz and Silas Weir Mitchell both from the NBC show, “Grimm.”  The also starred Lisa Datz.  I won’t into the story of this play written by Richard Greenberg, but it only has a cast of 3 and actors play the children in the first act, and their parents in the second act.  The actors were superb in this wonderful play.

The interesting thing was I feel that there were a few fans of Sasha Roiz in the audience in that his character in the first act is an actor on a television show whose purpose was “to be shirtless and do stuff.”  Fans of Grimm and of Sasha know that having his shirt off is a running joke (and something the Grimm writers joke about often on Twitter.)  Whenever his character’s shirtlessness was mentioned on stage a few people, including myself, laughed pretty loud.

Portland Center Stage is the theater group which is housed by the Gerding Theater in the Amory.  The building was built in the late 1800s to house Oregon’s National Guard, hence the name “the Armory.”  It was declared a historical monument in 2000 and soon after a renovation occurred to what it is today.  There are two stages in the Armory, and “3 Days of Rain was performed on the Main Stage.

The Main Stage is the larger of the two theaters/stages seating 599, and the smaller theater (a black-box styled) seats 200, and there isn’t a bad seat in the house.  As you can see on my ticket, it says my seat was Orchestra Left, but since there are only aisles on the far left and far right of the theater, it’s not a true “Orchestra Left” and I was very close to the center of the row.