Brooke Totman spent nearly a decade chasing an acting career in Los Angeles before landing back in Portland, where theater sat dormant in her life for ten more years. Now she is a co-founder of 100 Lives Theatre, a company built to champion raw, emotionally honest work centered on women artists over 40, and this Saturday she is throwing open the doors to its brand-new home in a converted Central Eastside winery.
The open house, scheduled for Saturday at 2025 S.E. Seventh Ave., marks the unveiling of a 4,500-square-foot warehouse space that once housed Helioterra Wines and its sister cidery, Alter Ego Cider, according to Eater Portland. The venue sits six blocks from the founders' acting studio, according to reporting from the Portland Tribune. It is a dramatic upgrade from the company's original home at Spotlight Theatre, a cramped black box with 8-foot ceilings, 32 seats, a 30-foot stage, no green room, only a tiny corner bathroom, no air conditioning, and electricity that reportedly cut out whenever a slideshow was used, per the Tribune's account.
Totman told the outlet that theater is in her dna and that she has always wanted to act and perform on stage. Born and raised in Southern Oregon, she studied theater at the University of Oregon in Eugene before her long stretch pursuing acting in Los Angeles. The Tribune's report on the new venue also revisits her national television and comedy credentials: Totman was a featured cast member during Season 5 of MADtv and trained for four years at The Groundlings in Los Angeles as a Sunday Company member, according to background compiled by Willamette Week. She also starred in the Amazon comedy web series The Benefits of Gusbandry, which drew critical praise from national outlets including The New York Times and Paste Magazine, that same background notes.
A Decade Away From the Stage, Then a Return
After settling in Portland, Totman lived away from acting for the next decade, a period during which she experienced depression through the 10 years of her 30s, per the Tribune's reporting. She eventually auditioned for a play with Portland Playhouse and was cast, and she also taught sketch and improv at Curious Comedy Theater, a role she has now held for nine years, according to the same account.
It was through that teaching and performing life that Totman and Annie Kehoe began hosting shows and classes together at Spotlight Theatre, where Kehoe shared ideas with Totman about producing gutsy, character-driven theater, the Tribune reports. Kehoe brings her own resume to the partnership: a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from Ithaca College, a stint co-founding Chicago's LASTmatch Theatre Company, and performance credits in Chicago, New York, and London, according to Broadway World. Together with 71-year-old actor-director Blaine Palmer, the two women founded 100 Lives Repertory in February 2025 specifically to champion character-driven work for and by women artists over 40, Willamette Week reports. The company's name comes from a line in Duncan Macmillan's 2015 play People, Places and Things, in which an actress in addiction recovery describes wanting to live 100 lives through acting, per that outlet.
Intimate, Uncomfortable, and Sold Out
The company's mission statement is blunt: depth over flash, experience over novelty, connection over comfort. Its debut production made that philosophy literal. Orange Flower Water by Craig Wright opened with a sex scene and depicts four couples, including two people having an affair, and the show went on to win regional 2025 Broadway World Awards for Best Performance in a Play, awarded to Totman, and Best Direction of a Play, shared by Kehoe and Palmer, according to Broadway World.
Per Totman, the production's intensity landed hard with Spotlight audiences, who responded positively to the intimacy of the performances, and one viewer reportedly told the company that seeing Orange Flower Water led them to decide to divorce. The company followed that debut with a second production in February, Tira Palmquist's road-trip drama The Body's Midnight, directed by Totman at the same Spotlight venue, Broadway World reported at the time. Totman also stayed active on Portland stages on her own, starring in a 12-character solo staging of Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at Portland's 21ten Theatre in March 2025.
Trading a Corner Bathroom for a Full Kitchen and Bar
The new Seventh Avenue building is a different animal entirely. It has 18-foot ceilings, a proper restroom, a lobby with bench seating, a full kitchen, a stainless-steel bar, a mezzanine balcony, and an upstairs rehearsal room. The main stage will seat 54, with Totman planning to add seating if a show sells out, and the building will also include a separate 30-seat black box theater along with two lobbies and multiple lounges, per the Tribune's reporting.
None of it came free. People donated money, materials and time to help build out the space, the Tribune notes, though the outlet's reporting does not detail how much was raised or from whom. Totman said the effort behind it all comes down to a simple belief: her work makes a difference.
Opening Amid a Shaky Season for Portland Theater
The expansion arrives at an anxious moment for Portland's performing arts scene. Portland Center Stage launched a $9 million emergency campaign in May 2025 to avoid closure, citing post-pandemic audience shifts and federal grant cuts, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. That a scrappy, mission-driven company built around actors over 40 is expanding into a custom two-stage venue while a flagship regional institution scrambles for survival dollars underscores just how uneven the city's arts economy has become.
100 Lives Theatre is set to open its first play in the new space on October 23. Whether its dual main-stage and black box configuration can sustain a full season, and whether centering women artists over 40 proves a viable long-term model in Portland's shifting arts market, remain open questions the company will answer only once the lights come up on Seventh Avenue.
