Our mission since 1997:
Liminal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit ensemble of artists collaborating within the context of live performance to discover new creative disciplines that are emerging at the threshold of traditional structures of theatre, the fine arts, and multimedia technologies. Our goal is to expand public interaction with performance and engage in critical dialogues about contemporary culture through an ongoing evolution of new work.
We integrate performance with visual art, music and electronic media.
Our work is full of meticulous details that you can see, touch, hear and sometimes taste and smell. Our performances usually do not involve traditional elements of theatre, such as character and plot. Instead, they are more like immersive worlds unto themselves or critical investigations of complex ideas.
We work as an ensemble.
Our projects evolve over many stages of creation and refinement. Our performers maintain extensive physical rehearsals and workshops, while our visual artists, designers and technicians go beneath the surface of their mediums to find underdeveloped uses of their tools.
How we got our name.
Director Bryan Markovitz is a big fan of Victor Turner, who most prominently used the term “liminal” in his writings on drama in everyday life. The word “liminal” comes from the Latin, “limen” which means “at the threshold” or “the betwixt and between.” True to the term, a Liminal performance presents people, places and events that are in a state of ambiguity, where they are not quite one thing, and not quite another.
Some background and history.
Liminal grew in the mid 1990’s out of a collective desire among theatre students attending Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, to explore uncharted territories of performance, music and other forms of art. After relocating to Portland, the ensemble’s founders joined with other founding company members to develop and perform their first production, Suicide in B-flat. The rest is history.