THE GREAT LEAP Begins Performances At The Armory in January 2022

Portland audiences have the chance to experience the work of award-winning playwright Lauren Yee - among the most-produced and widely celebrated playwrights in the country in recent years - through a co-production with Portland's largest and oldest theater companies: Portland Center Stage and Artists Repertory Theatre, respectively. The Great Leap is directed by Zi Alikhan, ART's artistic directing fellow, and the production marks his Portland directorial debut.

The Great Leap begins preview performances on January 15, opens on January 21, and runs through February 13, on The Armory's U.S. Bank Main Stage. Tickets are on sale now.

"We're thrilled to partner with Artists Rep to launch this fantastic, boisterous play. It has been a joy to collaborate with ART and support the deeply creative work of director Zi Alikhan. The Great Leap uses bright humor and a celebration of the unsung heroes of basketball to unearth complexities around the violence embedded in entrenched political systems, both in the U.S. and in China," PCS Artistic Director Marissa Wolf said.

"We are pleased to co-produce this feisty, funny play with Portland Center Stage. The Great Leap examines facets of the U.S./Chinese relationship and how our presumptions and lack of understanding distort and poison it. At a time of rising anti-Asian violence, this conversation about missteps of the past feels especially vital if we are to collectively find a better way forward," ART Interim Artistic Director Luan Schooler said.

The Great Leap brings together basketball, politics, and history to explore personal identity, cultural ties, and relations between the U.S. and China. The play is loosely inspired by the real-life adventures of Yee's father, whose basketball heroics led him to visit China in the 1980s. Its fictional plot - set in Beijing and San Francisco in two different time periods - also incorporates a monumental historic event, the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, for a moving story that keeps the tension rising right up until the final buzzer.

The Great Leap had its world premiere in 2018 and, prior to the COVID-19 shutdown, it was one of the most-produced new plays on stages across the country in 2019-2020. Since then, social unrest and political events continue to bring a renewed immediacy to this biting and timely story. Portland audiences get to see this show at a unique time when sports and politics are also playing out on the world stage; The Great Leap opens on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which is currently being boycotted by the U.S. government.

Prices range from $25 to $87 and tickets may be purchased at pcs.org/the-great-leap, 503.445.3700, or in-person from the box office. Prices vary by date and time and are subject to change.

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