Jana Crenshaw
Jana Crenshaw is secretly planning a comeback. After years in the background composing music for theater and film, she returns to the stage with her first one-woman production, PIANANATOMY. Her music can be heard on most online platforms, and has been heard in over 30 Portland productions including: Constellations, Kodachrome (Portland Center Stage); No Candy, 2.5 minute ride, Fires In The Mirror (Profile Theater); Atomos (The Theater Co.); Note to Self (Adrienne Flagg); Left Hand of Darkness (Hand 2 Mouth); Our Town (Liminal). Janacrenshaw.com
PIANANATOMY is the story of a girl finding her magic by learning the piano, losing a piece of her soul by listening to the piano, and her attempt to regain what was lost by examining the one strange moment in music school that changed everything. Using music, science, puppets, eggs, yarn, boxes, and duct tape, Jana Crenshaw spins a story of lost innocence and asks you to help in the search to find
Andrea Parson’s
Andrea is a Oregon native, Andrea Parson, has worked as a contemporary dancer, teacher and choreographer based in Portland Oregon since 2009. Over the past four years she has written and self produced three solo dance theater works and is thrilled to be creating a fourth work in residence with From the Ground Up.
Her stunning new work You Can’t Be Seriousis a solo autobiographical work that tells a tragic story of loss through dance, and stand-up comedy.
shona carter
With nearly 20 years of experience in community philanthropy, Shona Carter has established key partnerships to eliminate structural barriers, advance racial equity, and transform social and economic outcomes. She danced African diaspora dances professionally between 1991-1997 and performed with Ballet Saungamare (West African) for the SF Ethnic Dance Festival at the Palace of Fine Arts in 1994.
Sublimation (Working Title) looks at you square in the eye and saves you from nothing. This piece holds Shona’s generational trauma in one hand and celebrates her power, resiliency and spirit in the other. If you’re looking for truth-telling and a broader social awareness, you’ve come to the right place
Mckinley hughes
McKinley is a musician, comedian, and storyteller. In 2018 she performed her solo show “Hangry” across the country and since then has performed in a number of theater productions and comedy shows. She most recently self produced and hosted a fat positive variety show called “Embody.” McKinley is committed to taking up space with her art and hopes to make at-least one man feel uncomfortable in each show that she performs
Back to Saturn is an emerging new work that asks what do you do when everything in your life has gone to shit? Do you Cry? Scream into a pillow? Hop into an imaginary rocket ship and blast off into outer space? Back to Saturn is a hysterical, outlandish, and heartfelt exploration of grief and the resiliency of the human spirit.
jacquelle davis
Jacquelle Davis is a Portland based actor, writer and improviser. She enjoys pickles, karaoke and puns. She is a Fight Choreographer and an ensemble member of Theatre Vertigo. Her passion is creating art through humor, empathy and human observation.
Welcome To Oblivion, simply asks, why am I still here? Exploring her journey of battling addiction and find her way back Jacquelle unfolds her life, looks at her family lineage and discovers that her will, wit and resilience have saved her life more than once.
nikki flinn
Nikki is proud to call Portland her home, where she has really enjoyed being a member of the acting community. Any day that she is helping to tell a story is a good day. Recently, she directed her first short film, and wrapped as the female lead on a feature called Punched after the Fact. Along with acting, Nikki is a Teaching Artist of Creative Dramatics helping kids use their imaginations.
Her new Blowing Dandelion is about a human, who happens to be a woman, who happens to be a struggling actor/artist, is feeling lost. She finds a book, has an idea, obsesses, and decides to chase the idea with the help of her imaginary friend.
ashley thurow
Ashley is an educator, artist and collaborator. Her years working with children have curated a practice of curiosity and wonder and inspired a healing journey to meet her own inner child, bringing her back to creating again. She has a BFA in Acting from Texas State University, and was a part of a fringe theater company, Ensemble Mercury, in Austin, TX. Most recently she was a part of a short film project in town with The Theater Company. Ash creates art that offers an intimate and sensual experience and an invitation to play.
Her new work, Shadow Play probes into a Saturn Return, dark night of the soul, Ashley finds that the only way out is through, failing forward towards an embodied self. Shadow play is a journey through the dark and light of the human experience, traversing the peaks and valleys of self identity and existential angst, through the spiral of what ifs to come back into what is. This piece holds a container for the audience to meet their own fragmented parts of themselves, and extends an invitation to heal through play.
maria Mogavero
Maria Mogavero was once described by a fellow actor as a cat who plays like a dog. During 2020 she stayed creative by being part of the award-winning ensemble for the new media unscripted parody series The Single Guy. This fall, she will be seen in a live musical version of the punk cult classic Repo Man at The Chapel Theatre. She's appeared in numerous stage productions, and more recently, indy films and audio dramas and comedies. She is a graduate of the Atlantic Theater Acting Conservatory in NY.
Her emerging work Riding Solo on the Back of a Motorcycle What starts as a moment of freezing fear in her foyer becomes a journey of discovering courage. In a stripped-down setting, Maria takes the audience through not only her challenges during a motorcycle safety class but challenges the viewer to take an outside look at their own fear of change and what it means to succeed.
bonnie koehler
Bonnie Koehler, ACE is a retired Hollywood film editor and Oscar-voting member of the Motion Picture Academy. She is currently writing a memoir: PRETTY LITTLE HEAD: 50 Years on the Cutting Room Floor. She grew up on a farm in the Willamette Valley, studied Art History at Stanford and accidentally launched herself on a passionate, life-long adventure in cinema.
Razor Sharp View from the Cutting Room Floor, Can you follow your Bliss until it kills you? Montaged moments from 5 decades of falling for movies and men who made them.
amy conway
Amy Conway is an artist, writer, comedian, farmer who lives in Portland, Or with her spouse, two sons, two cats and four ducks. She is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work tends towards reflections of the personal. Amy utilizes performance, drawing, writing, video, installation, collaboration, space making and comedy. She earned her MFA in Applied Craft & Design in 2013.
Her new work
How to start a farm in 4 easy steps
(an ongoing document)
Step 1: ignore the intense feelings of imposter syndrome
Step 2: find or make the space (both physical space and mental space)
Step 3: learn
Step 4: don’t stop or give up