Imagining Otherwise: Storytelling, Design & Speculative Imagination
Monday, October 20th, 2025 • 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Kiln Coworking • Doors at 5:30 PM
What stories prepare us for the futures we want to live in? And what happens when performance design, narrative experimentation, and speculative imagination collide?
Imagining Otherwise is a cross-disciplinary panel featuring theater-makers, performers, and designers in conversation about the role of storytelling in shaping cultural and civic futures. This is not just a conversation about design — it’s about how creative practice becomes a tool for social imagination. Together, panelists will discuss and explore approaches to narrative experimentation and design for future-making, how performance and documentation can challenge and expand norms, the tensions of innovation and cultural resistance, and ways that storytelling and performance help us reframe questions, rehearse worlds, and prototype futures.
What to Expect
You’ll hear from each of our panelists, and they will engage in a moderated dialogue followed by audience Q&A, offering multiple entry points for reflection and exchange. Expect a lively, layered conversation that bridges the actionable with the visionary.
Hear an interdisciplinary conversation featuring local creatives on how theater, performance, and art intersect
Reflections on the challenges of making work that bridges art, activism, and speculation
Audience Q&A and open dialogue with practitioners
Who It’s For
Artists, directors, and performers working at the edges of their fields
Designers, storytellers, and futurists curious about cultural imagination
Anyone interested in how art and design open pathways toward justice, joy, and belonging
Featured Panelists and Moderator
Kamilah Bush (she/her), Playwright, Dramaturg, and Educator, Portland Center Stage
Rebby Yuer Foster (they/them), Artist & Director, Shaking the Tree
Erin Boberg Doughton (she/her), Artistic Director & Curator of Performance, PICA
Kevin Truong, Documentary Photographer, Filmmaker and Journalist
Organized by the Agency for Speculative Futures
This panel is part of the three-day Radical Future(s) Fest (Oct 6–8) and Imagining Otherwise: Storytelling & Narrative Future(s) Miniseries (Oct 18-20) during 2025 Portland Design Month:
Performance as Prototype (developmental table reads of an in-progress performance on Oct 18 and Oct 19)
Narrative Design Lab (a hands-on workshop on Oct 19)
Learn More at bit.ly/asf2025
Featured Panelists and moderator
Kamilah Bush (she/her)
Playwright, Dramaturg, and Educator, Portland Center Stage
Kamilah is a playwright, dramaturg, and educator originally from North Carolina. She holds a B.F.A. in theater education from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was a NC Teaching Fellow. She currently holds the position of Literary Manager at PCS. Kamilah has spent several seasons at celebrated regional theaters across the country, including Triad Stage in Greensboro, NC, Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, FL, and Two River Theater in Red Bank, NJ. She was a Playwright in Residence at Williamstown Theater Festival in 2024 and was featured as part of their Fridays @ 3 Reading Series in 2023.
Rebby Yuer Foster (they/them)
Artist & Director, Shaking the Tree
Rebby Yuer Foster is a Chinese American artist & director.
Recent pieces with Shaking the Tree include, We Wrote This With You In Mind (director), In A Different Reality She's Clawing At The Walls (director), Forbidden Fruit (Alice), MODELMINORITY (director), Chick Fight (Her), Family (Alice), 家人: A Self Portrait (director/editor), Refuge: Our Lady of Lunar Reflection (director/editor), The Edge (director/editor), 抜け首 (director/editor). Recent acting credits include Once (Seacoast Repertory Theatre), We’ve Come to Believe (Humana Festival ‘19), Dracula (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville), & Xiaoyen (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville). Rebby is a former Acting Apprentice at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville ‘18-19. They grew up in Seattle, Washington and received their B.A. in Theatre & English at the University of Portland.
Erin Boberg Doughton (She/HER)
Artistic Director & Curator of Performance, PICA
Erin Boberg Doughton works collaboratively to curate and produce performance programs including dance, music, theatre, and multidisciplinary projects as part of PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival as well as year-round presentations, commissions, and residencies including the Creative Exchange Lab. She also teaches performance as an Assistant Professor and Mentor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). She serves on the advisory council for the National Performance Network (NPN) and is a former National Dance Project hubsite advisor. Erin grew up in Portland and studied dance, music, and theatre at Lewis & Clark College, and has worked at PICA in various roles, starting as a volunteer, since the organization’s founding in 1995.
Kevin Truong
Documentary Photographer, Filmmaker and Journalist
Born in a refugee camp for Vietnamese Boat People in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Kevin was raised in Oregon and has a strong connection to the Pacific Northwest. He first gained recognition through The Gay Men Project, documenting queer men in 37 countries. His films have been supported by the Sundance Institute, CAAM, and BAVC Media, and he is a member of A-Doc. Kevin has written for NBC News, VICE, and PBS NewsHour, with written and photography work appearing in The New York Times, Washington Post, OUT Traveler, BKLYNER and Hello Mr. A two-term AmeriCorps alum, he is deeply committed to community service and storytelling.
Host & organizer
erin stevanus
erin is an artist, strategist, and social entrepreneur whose practice spans foresight, innovation, and multidisciplinary practices. Her current project, the Agency for Speculative Futures, explores our collective right to imagine otherwise. She also runs a design futures studio, collaborating with private, public, nonprofit, and philanthropic organizations, and coaches leaders committed to building just and joyful futures. In her creative practice, erin writes, produces, and performs works that explore not-too-distant futures and the mindsets needed to navigate them. She currently hosts the sonic sound lab, a series of deep listening experiences that invites curiosity, exploration, and rest.
