A case of stage might

Students train as artists, actors and dancers at North Portland academy

By Chris Jordan

The Portland Tribune, May 28, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

It’s 7 p.m. and the curtain is about to rise. Actors sit onstage repeating their lines. Suddenly, Lori Van Sise, who is playing the lead role in a scene from the musical “Annie,” runs offstage to give someone a hug. Another actor grabs the show’s director, Carol Stady, and asks what her line is. Yet another actor, who is not involved in the opening scene, wanders onstage and is quickly escorted off.

Then the curtain rises, and for a moment there is silence.

From stage left, a wide-eyed Stady whispers the first line to one of her student actors, and the winter recital for the Pacific Handicapped Artists, Musicians and Entertainers performing arts school for special-needs students is off and running.

“Some of the best memories of my life are the quirky moments that go on during a PHAME performance,” says Stady, founder of PHAME.

PHAME is a nonprofit academy and the only one in the country that offers a full arts curriculum for people with special needs. Next weekend, the students will present the school’s annual spring musical at the World Trade Center in downtown Portland.

“When I was little I always wanted to become an actress, and PHAME has allowed me to accomplish that,” says Barbie Kragrud, a developmentally disabled 37-year-old, who plays Joice Heth in this year’s production of “Barnum.”

The school started in 1984 when Stady performed in a Christmas play with students she met at the Special Olympics. A few years later the group graduated to musicals. In 1992, Stady quit her job, secured a practice space and started working full time at the school.

Stady, an energetic 66-year-old woman with a large, dark, curly hairdo, has devoted the past 20 years of her life to special-needs people. She says the passion for her work comes from the loneliness she felt when she moved to Portland from England in 1949.

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