In early 2021, PTF Founder Dave Register sought a way to reinvigorate live theater in Portland after COVID-19 closed theaters everywhere. Eager audiences were seeking safe avenues for live entertainment, and an intimate, outdoor production seemed like a fitting project for the times.

​

Dave approached the owners of Tandem Coffee Roasters and pitched the idea of staging Annie Baker’s THE ALIENS—a play set behind a coffee shop in Vermont—in the lot behind their roastery in East Bayside. Owners Will and Kathleen responded enthusiastically, and helped enlist Mayo Street Arts to coproduce the production. After a sold out and critically celebrated run, a new theater company was born, and preparations began for the first annual festival the following year. 

Now embarking on its 5th Anniversary Season, PTF has performed across the city in both familiar and entirely unusual spaces. Past venues include Mechanics Hall, The Hill Arts and Mayo Street Arts, as well as a vacant office skyscraper in downtown Portland and waterfront warehouse off Commercial St.  The festival employs an annual summer staff of over fifty artists and administrators, and has produced remarkable works from some of our greatest living playwrights such as Annie Baker, Martyna Majok, Lucas Hnath, Hansol Jung, Antoinette Nwandu, Samuel D. Hunter, and Sylvan Oswald. Recognized for its cultural immediacy and careful treatment of contemporary issues in its work, PTF has been covered extensively in American Theatre Magazine, Portland Press Herald and Arts Fuse.