PORTLAND, ORE.: CoHo Productions, Third Rail Repertory Theatre, and Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble (PETE) have all joined forces to establish the Cuomo Theatre Collaborative, a new performance venue in Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood that will preserve and expand on the current CoHo Theatre on Portland’s NE Raleigh Street. The Cuomo Theatre Collaborative will serve as a new building for small to midsize theatres such as Third Rail and PETE, and will serve as a space to nurture artists and the performing arts. The Cuomo Theatre Collaborative will operate under a model of collective leadership, artist empowerment, and affordable access.
The new performance venue was a venture begun by the late Philip Cuomo, CoHo’s producing artistic director, who died in November 2021. Cuomo had committed to purchasing a performance venue on NW Raleigh Street to safeguard it against expansions in Slabtown that could threaten its existence as a performing arts venue. Prior to his death, Cuomo had negotiated purchase terms with the building’s owner, secured support from a foundation and two generous individual donors and engaged an architect to design renovations which would transform the space into a multi-functional artistic center for the community. Since his death, the Philip Cuomo Family Foundation has set out to complete his original mission: to secure a permanent home at the CoHo Theatre building for a consortium of performing arts organizations in Portland.
Coho Productions was established 26 years ago as a foundation for emerging artists that provided essential creative resources, opportunities, and networking support that centered marginalized and oppressed voices in Portland. Third Rail Repertory Theatre was founded in 2003 to provide a dynamic artistic home for both audiences and artists in Portland. And PETE is a company of artists who make new plays in a collaborative way committed to creative rigor, the enrichment of our local arts ecology, connecting with diverse audiences and challenging established notions of theatrical form and content with innovative practice, presentation, and organization.
