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Sondra Pearlman, who gave generations of Oregon children the experience of live theater, died last week at the age of 81.
Pearlman founded the Oregon Children’s Theatre and was its executive director from 1988 to 2004.
A former high school English and drama teacher, Pearlman started the Portland Civic Theatre for Young People in 1988, according to a 1992 profile in The Oregonian.
In 1990, Pearlman split off and officially started the Oregon Children’s Theatre, right before the Civic went bankrupt.
“As her star on the sidewalk outside the Newmark Theatre in downtown Portland proclaims,” her family wrote in announcing her death, “she brought ‘Children’s Theatre to Millions.’”
Pearlman’s productions often combined literature and live theater, a mix that The Oregonian called “central to Pearlman’s mission” in 1992.
“It’s hard to pinpoint in terms of ‘They will come to this play and leave with these thoughts,’” Pearlman told the paper at the time. “But the arts have been proven to improve a child’s self-image and self-worth, and it’s a real aid in children’s understanding of culturally diverse populations.”
“They can go to the theater and see something that touches their own lives, broadening their world,” she added. “I think it goes logically that if a child hasn’t been exposed to the theater, that as an adult they won’t think about that. But if they are exposed, they’ll take in not just theater, but all the performing arts.”
Pearlman produced many plays for the company, including “On the Threshold of Life: Anne Frank Remembered,” based on the “Diary of Anne Frank.”
Tens of thousands of students in the Pacific Northwest saw that production in 1992, which starred, among others, a 14-year-old Whitford Intermediate School student named Ari Shapiro.
“It’s really interesting,” Shapiro told The Oregonian at the time. “This puts a personal touch on something that could easily become just numbers. When they hear that so many people died, that’s not as meaningful as if they hear the story of an individual, someone close to their own age.”
Pearlman was honored with the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award by Gov. Ted Kulongoski in 2003.
Her family said that donations can be made in her memory to the Sondra Pearlman Memorial Fund at the Oregon Children’s Theatre, which paused operations last year amid financial difficulties.
In a statement on its website, the theater company estimated that Pearlman brought live theater to “almost 4 million children.”
“She believed that all children deserve to experience this magic,” wrote Jenn Hartmann Luck, the producing artistic director of the company, “and that belief still guides our work today.”
“We will be sharing with the public our plans for the next chapter of OCT in the coming weeks,” Hartmann Luck added, “and while we are heartbroken that Sondra will not be here to experience it with us, her passion for this work will continue to lead us.”
©2026 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
