Portland Magazine
February 20, 2024
Maddie Tran ’18 took Portland Center Stage by storm.
Story by Marty Hughley
Last year, Portland Center Stage held several days of auditions for their production of the musical Hair—first in Portland and then in New York City. They winnowed 130 aspirants down to 19. Then UP alum Maddie Tran ’18 won the coveted role of Sheila—a striking choice in part for having a Vietnamese- American actor play the character who protests most passionately against the Vietnam War. She sang such hits as “Easy to be Hard” and “Good Morning Starshine.” The role was Tran’s highest profile one yet.
“It’s a marathon of vocal pyrotechnics,” says director Isaac Lamb, “and you have to have the musical skill and bring the spirit of this youthful protest. Maddie just has that fire.”
Maddie Tran’s arts career—whether it’s theater, musical theater, or opera—is taking off. And lucky for Portlanders, she wants her career to happen here.
In 2022, Lamb also directed Tran in a production of The Music Man, a spare yet spirited version with all the characters, songs, and instrumental accompaniment performed by a cast of six.
He recalls that Tran showed up for her Music Man audition with a cast on one hand (she’d closed her finger in a beer cooler door while bartending). The audition required playing piano. “Not only did she not know how to play very well, but she only had use of her left hand. So she just played this karate-chopped bass clef, but she sang in this angelic voice and had this playful energy that was just right.”
“I think that will be one of my favorite projects ever, forever,” Tran says. “That show was totally the pivot point for me thinking, ‘I’m going to go back to theater’—which I had done a lot of as a kid, rather than opera. I just remembered how good it feels to do something that is joyful and funny—which is definitely present in opera, but I think there’s less of that. And it reminded me that there’s really, really good theater here, and if I want to do performing work that feels satisfying, I can stay in Portland.”
Growing up in Tacoma as the oldest of 26 cousins in “a very hippy-dippy” extended family, Tran had the performing bug early.
“I would write scripts and instruct the little cousins in what I wanted them to do, and we would put on little productions,” she says. “I don’t know that there was an age at which it began—it just became more coherent once I could speak. Everyone had to come into the living room to sit and watch me, and I would wave scarves around and sing.”
She sang in choirs, and in high school she performed musical theater and played in a band that did regular coffee shop gigs. “Then my junior year, my high school voice teacher made me do all this classical music because it’s kind of like ballet for your voice. I’m not a lifelong classical music lover; I found it after it was foisted upon me when I was about 17.”
And she hadn’t really intended to focus on music in college. In fact, when Tran first considered University of Portland, she planned to study political science as a prelude to law school. “But when I went to tour the campus, mostly on a whim my mom and I went into the music and theater building—the Mago Hunt, or the Mango Hut, as we called it—and everyone was so welcoming. I really liked the energy, how it felt when I walked in there. And I ended up just getting further and further into wanting to do music.”
Tran switched her major to focus on singing opera and found a valuable mentor in Nicole Hanig, director of vocal studies at UP. “She’s an excellent vocal coach technically, but she’s also one of my biggest cheerleaders in my life. There are so many things that are outside of the purview of her job that she helped me with—that woman was doing work that should have been the work of a therapist for me. With a school that size you can really find allies like that, and I am so thankful.”
After graduating, Tran took a year to prepare for grad school auditions. But after committing to San Francisco Conservatory, life—and the COVID pandemic—intervened. Having fallen in love with Portland, she decided that what she really wants is to perform for a living here. “Not having debt was a better fit for that than having another degree.”
She still studies privately with Hanig and is on the creative team for the Portland company Renegade Opera, where she moves between performing and administrative work. Hoping to phase out bartending altogether, she also teaches stage combat. “I did gymnastics for a decade when I was little, and I’ve never lost that desire to move. So I love doing fight choreography, especially for schools. Little kids—specifically little girls—need to be given a sword!”
“I think a lot of people misuse the word ‘talent,’” Hanig says. “Maddie has something much more important than talent. She has a worldview and a view of herself that is so positive. She honors the hard work and the people that are around her.
“Is Maddie a special talent? Yeah.
“But it’s about Maddie being a special human being.”
MARTY HUGHLEY is a Portland journalist who writes about theater, dance, music, and culture.
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