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Max Tapogna

Max Tapogna is a writer, musician, and theater maker who hails from Portland, Oregon. He graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a degree in Theater Arts and minors in English and music. Max is a former Acting Apprentice at Portland Playhouse and has performed with musical groups including the Adelphian Concert Choir, Portland Symphonic Choir, and the Oregon Symphony. He has worked various other jobs, including waiting tables in Grand Teton National Park and teaching English in southern Spain.
Posted inTheater & Performance

Even at Three Hours, Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird Is Riveting

Make it out to the touring production’s short run at the Keller Auditorium while you have the chance.
Avatar photo Max Tapogna

It’s no small feat to fill the Keller Auditorium’s 2,992 seats, but the cast of To Kill a Mockingbird played to a nearly packed house Tuesday night—and for good reason. Aaron Sorkin’s critically lauded adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic is Broadway’s highest grossing non-musical show. The national tour of the 2018 Broadway production, directed by […]

Posted inTheater & Performance

Shaking the Tree’s Play About Abortion Contains More Than Politics

Suzan-Lori Parks wrote Fucking A in 2000, but the play remains an unflinching and prescient critique of today.
Avatar photo Max Tapogna

About halfway through Fucking A, a character named Butcher (John San Nicolas) delivers a language-bending monologue that lists every law his daughter has broken. The offenses range from the severe to the mundane to the absurd. They include homicide, jaywalking, and “leading men and women into cyberspace and leaving them there lost,” among many, many […]

Posted inFall Arts 2022

Fucking A with a Capital Abortion

“You cannot do this play without talking about race,” Shaking the Tree’s Samantha Van Der Merwe says.
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Shaking the Tree is a staple to Portland audiences. It’s a theater company that both embraces classics and subverts them, where audiences can start from a place of familiarity before leaping into the unexpected. Housed in an unassuming SE Portland warehouse, it has produced memorable versions of Macbeth, and the Bakkai, in addition to inventive […]

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