The Mercury Company

For six weeks during October and November 2020 (building upon the collaborative process established in June 2020’s Mercury Company I), Artists Repertory Theatre hired nearly 90 writers, directors, educators, actors, technicians, designers, and producers (including several ART staff) to create theatre-inspired work that moves beyond the traditional form in response to public assembly restrictions. Individuals were involved in a multitude of projects, forming a repertory company dubbed ART: Mercury II.  

COVID has been a transformative experience creating unprecedented uncertainty. In the inaugural Mercury Company, ART found a model to employ with confidence as the pandemic timeline continues to shift.  Individual donors, along with State of Oregon distributed COVID relief grants, funded the additional round of creative work that took place during the six-week intensive process (20 projects were worked on by nearly 90 artists). A series of audio dramas and experimental short films will be released to audiences in the winter, spring, and summer of 2021. ART is planning its next Mercury Company development process which will occur in the spring of 2021.

“We are not paused and waiting for a return to pre-pandemic normal. Instead, we are fully immersed in a period of transition and transformation. We are using the time to re-imagine the way we work. At the forefront of it all is dismantling biased systems that have held theatres back from achieving the diverse, welcoming, accessible, and equitable spaces to which we aspire.”

ART Artistic Director, Dámaso Rodríguez.