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Chris Coleman is the artistic director of Portland Center Stage, located in the renovated Armory Building in the Pearl District.
Before joining PCS in May 2000, Mr. Coleman was the co-founder and artistic director at Actor’s Express in Atlanta.
Mr. Coleman's directing credits have taken him from Portland to Broadway and stops all over the country, including Actor’s Theater of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT-Seattle, The Alliance, Dallas Theatre Center, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and Center Stage in Baltimore as he's tackled such diverse fare as Fiddler on the Roof, Sophocles' Antigone, Anna Karenina, Oklahoma!, Cabaret, West Side Story, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Shakespeare's King Lear and The Merchant of Venice.
Mr. Coleman is native of Atlanta, Georgia and holds a B.F.A. from Baylor University and an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon. He currently chairs the Creative Advocacy Network board, and serves on boards for the Cultural Advocacy Coalition and the Institute for Metropolitan Studies.
My impressions of Mr. Coleman: in his own words, he describes himself as driven to succeed and that really comes through in our interview. He was drinking from a coffee cup, but I sensed that he had enough energy and enthusiasm for his life and creative work that coffee was unnecessary. As a born Southerner, Mr. Coleman was polite yet direct, and willing to share wisdom and insight.