About

About The Show

Stage & Studio is moving to a biweekly podcast on Oregon ArtsWatch!

A two-time Peabody award-winning radio producer and writer, Dmae Roberts brings national quality to the local arts scene with Stage & Studio. Roberts volunteered with radio station KBOO in 1997 on a show called Theatre Scene when she stepped in for then host Sharon Whitney. Shortly thereafter, Dmae revamped the show into Stage & Studio to focus on performing, media and literary arts in the Northwest, and often, nationally. In 2009, Roberts was one of the first to podcast locally with Stage & StudioFor the last  host and producer Dmae Roberts features  performing, literary, and media artists from the Portland Metro area as well as around the Northwest.

Through the last 23 years, Roberts has interviewed more than 1,000 people on Stage & Studio. As a writer, media and theatre artist, she brings her multi-disciplinary expertise and experience into the studio to ask in-depth questions about the artistic process and more personal inquiry into the artists she interviews.

Roberts’ move will also strengthen ArtsWatch’s commitment to telling stories from all cultures. Her projects with ArtsWatch will be, in her words, “especially focused on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists and arts.” Her “extensive broadcast journalism, arts and multicultural expertise makes Stage & Studio a topical program that will encourage public discussions and views on the arts and the issues it raises.”

Roberts is well-positioned to do all of that. A Taiwanese-born biracial Asian-American who’s lived in Oregon since she was 10, she’s won two Peabody Awards, radio’s version of the Oscars or Tonys. The first was for her documentary Mei Mei, a Daughter’s Song, the story of her mother’s childhood in Taiwan during World War II. The second was for Crossing East, an eight-hour documentary that was public radio’s first series on Asian American history. In addition, she’s won two Drammy Awards for excellence in Portland theater: one as a performer, the other for her play Picasso in the Back Seat, which also won an Oregon Book Award. Roberts’ memoir The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family was published in 2016.

Roberts continues as executive producer of the nonprofit multicultural production organization MediaRites. She’s also co-founder of the adventurous Theatre Diaspora, which produces Asian American/Pacific Islander plays. And she created the Crossing East Archive, which includes more than 200 hours of broadcast-quality interviews and oral histories with Asian American/Pacific Islander people. Her newest play, co-written with Don Wilson Glenn – Troy, USA, a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, produced by Bag&Baggage – will debut January 31 as part of the 2021 virtual Fertile Ground festival of new works.

Contributors:

Clark Salisbury – Web Consultant and Engineer

Past Contributors included: Sarika Mehta, Tali Singer  and Macon Reed . 

Past Funders:

Regional Arts & Culture Council

Individual Donors through United States Artists