JOIN THE EVENT Why attend PNMC Festival
CELEBRATING OUR DIFFERENCES TOGETHER Welcome to the Beautiful Pacific Northwest!
The Pacific Northwest Multi-Cultural Festival (PNMC Festival) is an inclusive multicultural festival that gives space and highlights the artistry of the under-represented playwright, filmmaker, and actor.
Our goal is to provide an artistic and professional environment where under-represented artists can showcase their works to the general public and each other.
The PNMC Festival is part of PassinArt: A Theatre Company. It’s based in Portland, Oregon. The company launched the inaugural festival in August 2021. Due to COVID restrictions, the festival was virtual. This year in the beautiful city of Portland, we’re excited to host the PNMC Festival in person. We’ll also host Canadian artists from our neighbors across the border. Highlights of the festival will be available post event through September, 2023.
LISTEN TO THE PNMC Festival Special Guest Speakers
Regina Taylor
Actress, director, playwright, educator, activist, Golden Globe winner for I'll Fly Away; playwright, Crowns, Bread, Oo-Blah-Dee.
Regina Taylor
Actress, director, playwright, educator, activist, Golden Globe winner for I'll Fly Away; playwright, Crowns, Bread, Oo-Blah-Dee.
The Black Album Mixtape By Regina Taylor
Regina Taylor created this series of plays about the relevant issues of today "Because now is not the time to be silent!" Six tracks speak out with a hold-no-punches urgency on January 6, Covid, gun violence, gender politics and the rolling back of hard-won social and civil rights.
Regina Taylor is an actress, director, playwright, educator, and activist. In her TV role as Lily Harper in "I'll Fly Away,” she received a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress, three NAACP Image Awards and two Emmy Award nominations.
Plays she has written include, “Bread,” “Crowns” (four Helen Hayes awards, including Best Director), "Oo-Bla-Dee," "Drowning Crow," “The Trinity River Plays,” and “stop.reset.”
Ms. Taylor received the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair Fordham University at Lincoln Center. An Artistic Associate of Goodman Theatre, Taylor is its most produced Associate Artistic Playwright.
She is currently writing a new play for The Old Vic, “Jubilee:Concert” about the Fisk Jubilee Singers. She is also directing/workshopping a play by Phanesea Pharrel for La Femme Productions in NY.
Stephanie Frederic
Two-time Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist, TV and film producer, Girls Trip, All Eyez On Me, Night School, American Gangster
Stephanie Frederic
Two-time Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist, TV and film producer, Girls Trip, All Eyez On Me, Night School, American Gangster
William Andre Buchanan
CEO, ILL 4 Real Entertainment, Will Buchanan Investments, and CFO, Ram-Z Entertainment. Angel investor, coach, mentor, producer of two award-winning shorts - Neighbor and T.I.M.E to be screened during the festival.
William Andre Buchanan
CEO, ILL 4 Real Entertainment, Will Buchanan Investments, and CFO, Ram-Z Entertainment. Angel investor, coach, mentor, producer of two award-winning shorts - Neighbor and T.I.M.E to be screened during the festival.
William Andre Buchanan, also known as Dre Buchanan, is CEO of ILL 4 Real Entertainment (a marketing and advertising agency), Will Buchanan Investments, and the CFO of Ram-Z Entertainment (a production company). As an angel investor, he assists in financing film makers and creators who need anchor investors, especially those in the BIPOC community, who have the potential to attract an international audience. In addition, he provides free mentoring, coaching, and workshops to entrepreneurs to help them market and scale their companies and learn the process of raising capital and getting off the ground.
Buchanan also the executive producer of two award-winning shorts Neighbor and T.I.M.E which will be screened during the festival.
Ted Lange
Playwright, director, actor, star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Contribution to the History of Television for The Love Boat
Ted Lange
Playwright, director, actor, star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Contribution to the History of Television for The Love Boat
Blues In My Coffee by Ted Lange
Two Black guys are sitting enjoying their coffees at Starbucks, when in walk the women of their dreams: Susie a classical musician and a quintessential vanilla blonde and Daphne a teacher at NYU and an intellectual dark roast. Comedy and romance ensue, but they also taste complex realities as they experience soulful blues and ethnic differences.
Ted Lange, a graduate of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, has won numerous awards for acting, directing, and writing during his prolific 50-year career. Perhaps best known for his role as Isaac Washington the bartender in television's The Love Boat, Lange's true love is theater. He's earned many stage awards, including the Renaissance Man Theatre Award from the NAACP and the Paul Robeson Award from the American Film Institute.
Lange has written 25 plays including Blues in My Coffee which he will direct during the PNMC festival. It's a relationship comedy/drama about the political issues surrounding Black Lives Matter.
Lange's quest is to weave African American experiences into stories that entertain and educate by using current events as themes. He wrote Four Queens - No Trump in reponse to a colleague's challenge to write a play for Black actresses over 40. He wrote in his Author's Notes, "I started hearing the voices of women in my life speak ... ethnically centered, bodacious, brazen, and bawdy."
Lange, who wrote The Footnote Historian, specializes in researching little known historical facts and bringing alive lost moments of Black history; for example, George Washington’s Boy, the story of George Washington’s favorite slave, Billy Lee.
Lange's understanding of the transcendent relevance of Shakespeare inspired his play, written in verse, The Cause, My Soul, the Prequel to Othello, which won the NAACP Theatre Best Play of 2017. Lange also wrote, directed, and produced Born a Unicorn, a rock ‘n roll musical depicting the life of Black Shakespearean actor, Ira Aldridge.
Here is some wisdom Lange likes to share: “The duty of the Artist is to find his muse, then let her rip.”
Javon Johnson
PNMC Festival Co-Chair. Playwright, director, producer, actor The Oval, Daddy's Little Girls, Boo! A Medea Halloween
Javon Johnson
PNMC Festival Co-Chair. Playwright, director, producer, actor The Oval, Daddy's Little Girls, Boo! A Medea Halloween
Javon Johnson's career as a writer, actor, director, and producer spans the screen, stage and writers' room. He is perhaps best well known for his work with Tyler Perry - particularly The Oval, where he played Richard Hallsen. Javon is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Actors Equity Association, and the Dramatists Guild.
He is a founding member and resident playwright of Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago. He received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He regularly conducts artist development workshops and actors' bootcamps and intensives.
Rose Bianco
Actress, East New York, Minx, Cobra Kai, Being Mary Jane
Rose Bianco
Actress, East New York, Minx, Cobra Kai, Being Mary Jane
Rose Bianco has been acting for many years on stage, television, and film. She is probably best known for her recurring guest star role as Miguel’s grandmother Rosa in the Netflix series, Cobra Kai. She attended DePaul University and majored in Speech and Drama. She also spent two years studying acting at the Ted Liss Studio, and has had classical training as an actress.
Currently Rose can be seen in the CBS/Paramount+ new show, East New York with Jimmy Smits. Soon Rose will be seen in a recurring role on Minx, on Starz. Her previous work includes Dopesick, the role of a drug cartel matriarch in the Netflix movie Project Power, and a guest starring role as Jane’s grandmother in Doom Patrol.
Born and raised in a Puerto Rican family in Chicago, Rose attended Catholic school and was raised by a strong working mom. She's lived in Minneapolis, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and landed in Atlanta, her current hometown.
Rhavynn Drummer
National casting director, director, producer, The Haves and The Have Nots and If Loving You is Wrong on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Rhavynn Drummer
National casting director, director, producer, The Haves and The Have Nots and If Loving You is Wrong on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Bobby Yan
PNMC Festival Co-Chair. Playwright, six-time Emmy Award winning director, Stalker, K-Love.
Bobby Yan
PNMC Festival Co-Chair. Playwright, six-time Emmy Award winning director, Stalker, K-Love.
Bobby is a second-generation Chinese American director and writer from New York City. He graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans and holds a Masters degree from NYU in Visual Effects. Starting his career with music videos, he has directed and edited over one hundred music videos and commercials and won seven Emmy Awards for editing and producing in sports television.
Born and raised in New York City as a child of immigrants, Bobby's early life was surrounded by the diverse cultures and melting pot of NYC, which displays heavily in his work today. An avid video gamer and lover of comic book culture, Bobby fuses pop culture influences with visual elements of hip hop culture.
With a focus on telling diverse stories that bridge communities, Bobby's work often explores topics and stories from a marginalized community perspective, exploring common bonds of ethnic/cultural heritage, gender, sexual orientation, and political identification. His work explores themes and genres of racial identity, LGBTQ, gender, and anti-Asian violence.
Bobby's first film, a proof-of-concept, award-winning narrative short titled Marz premiered at Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco and has been screened at more than 50 festivals worldwide.
Bobby is a participant in the ABC Disney Directing Program and Ryan Murphy's HALF Initiative Mentorship program. Bobby's directing credits include Stalker, which aired on TV One and Lifetime Network; movies for BET Network; and, nine episodes of K-Love a TV series from the Philippines streaming on VIU.
Bobby is currently in development for several film and TV projects including a feature film inspired by his own life story, an Asian American coming of age comedy-drama at the intersection of music and culture.
Vera J Katz
Professor, academic career spans 32 years in theater department at Howard University, 22 years at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Washington DC.
Vera J Katz
Professor, academic career spans 32 years in theater department at Howard University, 22 years at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Washington DC.
Vera J. Katz, a professor emerita in the theatre arts department at Howard University, has taught acting and directing for 32 years. For the past 22 years, she had also been a member of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. She has directed more than 50 productions, originally working with Joe Hyman, who produced the famed playwright-director-author, Moss Hart, on Broadway.
She has taught such notables as Debbie Allen, Anthony Anderson, Chadwick Boseman, Corey Hawkins, Taraji P. Henson, Isaiah Johnson, Jayme Lawson, Phylicia Rashad, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Fredericka Whitfield, Lynn Whitfield, and Isaiah Washington.
She is the author of A Katz Walk: A Toolbox of Techniques for Actors and Directors, with a foreword by Phylicia Rashad. The book is her contribution to the artistic disciplines of acting and directing, especially as it relates to the strengths of the Black Experience.
She's taught featured workshops in acting and directing for the past six years at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem. For the PNMC Festival, Professor Katz will lead a workshop on techniques for monologues.
+
Celebrity Speakers
Master Classes
+
Script Readings
+
Event Participants
REACH US Get Directions to the PNMC Festival
Venue
Time
How to get there
Venue
DoubleTree by Hilton – Portland
1000 NE Multnomah St., Portland, OR 97232
Time
August 17-20, 2023
How to get there
DoubleTree by Hilton is in Portland’s Lloyd District, within a half-mile of the Oregon Convention Center and the Moda Center. We’re one block from Lloyd Center shopping, and the local MAX Light Rail station is next door, linking to downtown Portland and the airport. Enjoy our 24-hour fitness center, outdoor pool, and a warm welcome cookie on arrival.