A bumpy and clear chalice sits on a table outside of Lincoln Hall through this past Labor Day weekend, collecting tips for the volunteer-based cast and crew while paying homage to the name of the new theater group that directs the show—Bumpy Chalice Productions. At its core, Bumpy Chalice Productions aims to represent theatrical absurdity, a “Strange thing that surpasses social norms,” stated co-creator and PSU Alumni Isaac Sten.
The first production from the group was What Happened While Hero Was Dead by Meghan Brown. A spinoff of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, the story takes place between canonical scenes in the time where someone accuses the lead of adultery and believes she is deceased.
The showing of What Happened While Hero Was Dead within the basement of PSU’s Lincoln Hall marks the debut of a new theater company that Sten and current PSU Senior Ronnie Rantis founded Bumpy Chalice Productions. Rantis—who has attended PSU’s theater department since freshman year—developed his career entirely within the walls where this first production premiered.
Sten—who graduated from PSU in 2022 with a Bachelor of Science in Theatre—attributed their drive to coming back in person to PSU and connecting with other students like Rantis. Both Rantis and Sten explored more traditional paths for future careers prior to their involvement with PSU theater.
“If I’m going to spend my life doing something,” stated Sten. “It better be something I enjoy.”
After high school, Rantis initially planned to pursue botanical science, but a theater teacher encouraged him to explore technical theater. After working with the props master for the international production of Wicked, he shifted his focus to theater.
Rantis describes the show as a “labor of love” that has sprouted from his love of family, friends, theater departments, other students and volunteer work. As a graduate from PSU, Sten felt nervous prior to auditioning for What Happened While Hero Was Dead, as they worried only current students from the university would audition. However, the cast invested in using word-of-mouth auditioning campaigns and sparking buzz around the show. This prompted a much larger scope of involvement. What Happened While Hero Was Dead brought unseen talent to the PSU sphere through the cast members’ connection within the broader theater community.
The production cast Lucy Gordon—a graduate from Linfield University—in the lead role of Hero. Gordon has no prior relationship with PSU theater but emphasized how the founders of Bumpy Chalice Productions—Sten and Rantis—emphasize collaboration within the experience of production. Gordon explained how this encourages creative influence from cast-to-character.
“When that was established right off the bat, then, [constantly] in rehearsal I was like, actually I want to try this instead,” Gordon stated. “Or, I have an idea. Or, instead of this blocking, I’d like to approach it from this way! It was a collaborative experience, while still feeling like I was getting good guidance under a director.”
Cast members stated this encouraged fluidity and expression within character development and the production.
Bumpy Chalice Productions emphasized that this collaboration is a result of who the cast and crew are.
“This is a very queer cast and crew,” Sten stated. “Which I think is very fun in a play that already explored differentness and the idea of being an other in a society. To fill the space with people who do feel that way in different ways even than [those that] are expressed in the play. It brings such a new angle.”
Cast Member Liz Kinnard—a PSU Student of Psychology and Spanish—expressed enthusiasm for the flexibility and opportunity that Bumpy Chalice Productions produced. Kinnard highlighted how the broader environment opened doors for new connections and experiences. While What Happened While Hero Was Dead contains mature themes, Kinnard described the show as similar to Monty Python with its “goofy” nature.
“I love this play in that it questions and plays with a lot of things that are hot topics now that were certainly hot topics in the 1500s when this play is based,” Sten stated, while speaking on the timeless nature of the play’s themes. “For example, gender norms, bodily autonomy, these are things that are not recent issues.”
Within the production, cast members and crew worked with Intimacy Choreographer, Anna Rajala. Both Gordon and Kinnard emphasized the importance of intimacy choreographers and the appreciation of boundaries, consistent check-ins and comfortability within work.
Kinnard describes the level of communication and respect that Bumpy Chalice Productions crafted in the production of this show.
“Every run, we go over what we are comfortable with and if we weren’t comfortable with something that day,” she stated. “If someone is on their period and doesn’t really want to be touched that much, then one could say, ‘Hey, I don’t really want to be touched that much,’ and we work around it.”
Kinnard acknowledges that working with Rajala gave insight around personal autonomy.
“I can have agency and like boundaries, even without a play that involves intimacy,” she stated. “Theater in itself is pretty intimate. I am able to understand more about how to set boundaries.”
Throughout the production, Bumpy Chalice Productions displayed their commitment to morals and autonomy within a production and capitalist-based society. As a result of the intimacy within theater, close relationships like the one Rantis and Sten hold often blossom from the collective.
“Theater is a community,” and provides a “third space” to many, said Kinnard. “It’s really hard for people to have a thing that’s not home or work to interact with others.”
Kinnard and Gordon both highlighted the unique connections in theater productions. They expressed that there is a dynamic development between those involved, not just because of similar personalities, but also their mutual love for theater and art.
“Knowing people and being in the community is kind of what makes it happen…[The theater industry] is big, but it’s also really small,” said Sten. “It’s such a strange phenomenon where you’re always meeting new people, but then you’re always running into the same people. Or those people that you’re meeting know a person that you already know, and that’s a big part of the community. I think it’s amazing that as many theater institutions are in Portland, just how connected it all feels.”
For creators of Bumpy Chalice Productions, Rantis and Sten, bringing people together, meeting new community members who share the same interests and collaboration within larger community aspects has made the production what it is. With their first show, Bumpy Chalice Productions toyed with a unique concept.
“Taking something that’s classic, something that we think of as this set thing, and looking at the deeper intricacies that happened at the time, whether or not we saw them or have been taught that those things happened at that time,” said Sten.
Bumpy Chalice Productions aimed to prompt the audience to examine what someone is telling them, who is telling it and who is excluded from the conversation. The show aimed to exhibit forms of media literacy and comprehension in our modern society.
“What I love about the show is that it is really asking you to think about more than just the story that you are being presented,” Rantis stated. “I think that is such an important mindset to have when we live in such a hostile world right now.”
Bumpy Chalice Productions is currently looking towards future productions. More information and contact channels for Bumpy Chalice Productions can be found on their website or on their Instagram, @bumpy.chalice.
