About
Theatre in places that weren't built for it.
Puddletown Theatre Collective is an artist-led company bringing immersive, site-specific theatre to Portland — work staged in warehouses, parks, churches, historic buildings and outdoor landscapes rather than behind a proscenium.
Why Puddletown exists
Puddletown was founded by Chase Davidson, a Portland performer who spent years working professionally, including on Broadway, and wanted to make more room for exceptional theatre artists closer to home.
Like every new arts organization, we are starting from the ground up. Every rehearsal, every costume, every musician, every performance space, and every opportunity we create for an artist begins with people who choose to believe in the work before it is fully made.
A note from the founder
After years of performing professionally, including on Broadway, I kept arriving at the same thought: Portland has more extraordinary theatre artists than it has rooms for them to work in. Puddletown is my attempt to build one more.
I spent a long time inside immersive, site-specific work at another company — long enough to watch audiences lean in, stay late, and come back for the next one. I want to make that kind of theatre here, and I want the people who make it to be paid properly for doing it.
For now we are a belief and a date. If you are reading this before October 18th, you are early — and early is a good thing to be for a company that is still deciding what it will become.
Theatre you are inside of
We do not think theatre has to live inside a theater. We want to make immersive, site-specific productions that turn unexpected spaces into whole worlds — warehouses, parks, churches, historic buildings, outdoor landscapes. When the environment becomes part of the storytelling, an audience does not simply watch a production; they move through it.
This is not a hunch. Chase spent years working inside exactly that model at another company — long enough to know that audiences embrace this kind of theatre, remember it, and come back for more.
A bigger artistic ecosystem
Our vision reaches past producing plays. We hope to grow Puddletown into a thriving ecosystem where several creative disciplines support one another.
Actors, musicians, visual artists, costumers, photographers, educators and craftspeople all have something valuable to contribute, and all deserve opportunities to share their work — teaching classes, designing costumes, making artwork, selling handmade pieces, collaborating across forms. We want this to be a place where artists help sustain one another while making work that is worth the effort.
Our first production
Our Founding Concert is a concert reading on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at a Portland church we will name as soon as it is confirmed — the first step in building an artist-led collective dedicated to bold, professional theatre in unconventional spaces. Admission is free, and there is no catch in that sentence. We would rather you were in the room than at a price tier.
How this is paid for
Puddletown Theatre Collective is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas. In practice that means Fractured Atlas holds the charitable status, and contributions made through our campaign there are tax-deductible to the extent the law allows.
It also means we collect nothing on this site. Every giving link here goes to that campaign, which is where the money is handled and accounted for.
Opens our Fractured Atlas campaign in a new tab.
Who's involved
- Chase Davidson
- Founder
The rest of the company, and the artists joining us for the founding concert, will be listed here once the room is set.
Program of Thanks
Founding supporters and patrons will be credited here as the campaign grows.