Discover how a minor character from “Twelfth Night” inspired a brand-new tragicomedy at a Brentwood-Darlington home …
This production of “The Simple Truth”, performed by the Oregon Adventure Theatre unfolds just beyond this Brentwood-Darlington driveway, turning a backyard into its world-premiere stage.
Story and photos by David F. Ashton
A Southeast Portland backyard turned into a lantern-lit theatre when Oregon Adventure Theatre presented the world premiere of “The Simple Truth” on Friday evening, June 26, at the “Art Barn” in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood.
The production marked a first for Oregon Adventure Theatre (OAT). Since its founding in 2012, the nonprofit company has been known for staging Shakespeare and Shakespeare-inspired plays in parks and backyards across the Portland area. This summer, OAT debuted an original script that still traced its roots directly to “Twelfth Night.”
OAT’s Artistic Director Eleanor Johnson shares how “The Simple Truth” grew from a long fascination with Antonio and became Oregon Adventure Theatre’s first original summer production.
Artistic Director Eleanor Johnson introduced herself as the company’s leader, and told THE BEE that OAT has “been around since 2012” – and she’s been in artistic director for the past four years.
A forgotten character on center stage
Johnson explained that “The Simple Truth” grew out of a long fascination with Antonio, a supporting character from “Twelfth Night” who barely appeared in the original story.
“This is the very first time that we are not doing a summer show that is a William Shakespeare play,” she said, “but it is written in the shadow [of] Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’”.
Playwright Ken Yoshikawa helps unpack musical instruments for “The Simple Truth”, pitching in behind the scenes as well as on the page.
Playwright Ken Yoshikawa performed Antonio – and also Malvolio – in OAT’s 2017 production of “Twelfth Night”. Johnson recalled how that staging planted the seed for a new story: Yoshikawa kept wondering who Antonio was, why he lived as an outlaw, and why he risked so much to save Sebastian – the twin brother in the original play’s tangled plot.
“For the last eight years, he has been thinking about what that world was, what that world was dealing with, and the different character problems that might be happening,” Johnson explained. “That world is Bonavilla, and the characters that you see in ‘The Simple Truth’ are his inspiration.”
Behind the set up in the East Portland yard, the cast of “The Simple Truth” warms up for Oregon Adventure Theatre’s world premiere.
The world premiere cast featured 10 performers, bringing that imagined world to life in an intimate, close-up setting.
From one backyard to many parks
Although the June 26 performance in Brentwood-Darlington marked its premiere, Oregon Adventure Theatre structured the show as a roving production, which moved through parks and neighborhoods across the region this summer.
An audience that eventually totals about 50 finds seats in the backyard as “The Simple Truth” gets underway in Oregon Adventure Theatre’s pop-up outdoor venue.
The company opened the run on June 19th, and continued performing throughout the Portland metro area into mid-July, with most standard neighborhood and park performances free and open to the public.
OAT also produces smaller winter shows. Johnson described those as much more compact: “Normally just four actors, puppets, masks – an hour long, and family-friendly,” with upcoming perofrmances to be announced later in the year. Even so, she emphasized that the group’s mainstay remains its outdoor summer productions, where the changing light and open air became part of the staging.
As the show begins, From left, Foley (Charles Lattin), Dozen (Jay Minton), Queen Herona (Molly Gilbert), Princess Ethelia (Ania Myszkowska) and Callido (Matthew Sepeda) share the stage in Oregon Adventure Theatre’s world premiere of “The Simple Truth” as Herona tries to keep her child inside the palace and away from the city’s unrest, while Bonavia struggles under the Illyrian blockade.
A backyard stage for masks and verse
For this premiere, OAT performed at the “Art Barn”, which is an eco-artist village, and also the home of local artist Michael O’Neil, in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood.
Johnson characterized her host for the night O’Neil, as a clown and Commedia dell’Arte practitioner who once taught her at the University of Portland. She credited him as “a big reason why Oregon Adventure Theater uses Commedia dell’Arte masks in all of our shows,” calling him a “brilliant mask artist” whose work deeply influenced the company.
Dozen (Jay Minton), Della Sega (Luke Langfeldt), Queen Herona (Molly Gilbert) and Callido (Matthew Sepeda) hold back Princess Ethelia (Ania Myszkowska) as the queen proposes marriage between the princess and Duke Orsino, from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
To help audiences unfamiliar with the form, Johnson outlined Commedia dell’Arte as a 16th-century Italian art form, built on stock characters and masks that highlight archetypes.
Historically, traveling troupes have performed in village squares, mixing scripted scenes with improvisation. Johnson remarked that the style is still powerful, and “really elevates all the heightened language” that OAT used in its productions.
Foley (Charles Lattin), Callido (Matthew Sepeda), Queen Herona (Molly Gilbert) and the three Majestics (Calvin Porterfield, Caitlin Lushington and Elliot Lorenc) crowd in, all reaching for the royal orb.
The story of “The Simple Truth”
“The Simple Truth,” a five-act verse tragicomedy in the shadow of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, unfolds in the mythic city-state of Bonavia, where Princess Ethelia fights to protect the sacred Kingswood, as Duke Orsino’s Illyria tightens a blockade and her grieving brother – new King Leonardo – teeters toward capitulation.
Two commoners (Molly Gilbert and Jay Minton) tend to Princess Ethelia (Ania Myszkowska), after she is struck down during the high‑stakes wrestling match that will decide the fate of Bonavia’s sacred Kingswood, and a kingdom straining under Illyria’s blockade.
When a desperate people and an endangered forest collide with royal indecision, a single wrestling match and a tangle of love, grief, and power test where true sovereignty – and simple truth – really reside.
You can stil be in the audience for the final performance of “The Simple Truth” at Camp OAT, watching Oregon Adventure Theatre turn a farm field into its closing-night stage.
The final performance of the run was on July 18 at “Camp OAT”, am overnight event at Turning Earth Farm in Dallas, Oregon, featuring music, food, Shakespeare, and camping, bringing together fans, artists and families for one last celebration of this season’s work.
For more information Oregon Adventure Theater visit their webpage: CLICK HERE.
© 2026 David F. Ashton ~ East Portland News™
