Who We Are
Basement Stair Collective is Claire Elizabeth Aldridge, Kora Link, Rachel Lindsey Routh, and Becca Wirta.
Mission Statement
Basement Stair Collective creates immersive new works through a collaborative, design-forward process, delving into the dark corners of the human experience to shed light on the spaces between grief and joy, the flesh and the soul, and the personal and the political.
We are the child running up the stairs, and the monster chasing after them.
Claire Elizabeth Aldridge (she/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR. You will find her on any given midnight at the crossroads of dance, theater, poetry, and sculpture. Committed to collaboratively driven works that push the boundaries of form she has trained with the Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s ICP, Dell Arte International School of Physical Theater and The American Conservatory Theater.
Kora Link (they/she) is a performer, musician, maker, mover & shaker based in the Portland area. Kora holds a Bachelors in Performance from Lewis & Clark College, and most recently attended and graduated from Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s Institute of Contemporary Performance. As an artist, Kora is interested in themes of embodiment & ritual and melding the personal, spiritual and political to inspire change in the world through emergent changes within ourselves.
Rachel Lindsey Routh (they/them) is a performer and artist living and working in Portland, OR. They are an actor and theatre maker with backgrounds in Shakespeare, puppetry, and movement. They are inspired by art that is deeply personal and by the power in that vulnerability. They graduated from Southern Oregon University with a BFA in Theatre Arts, minors in both Shakespeare Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies, and a handful of stage combat certifications. Since moving to Portland, they were a member of the 22-23 cohort of PETE’s Institute for Contemporary Performance.
Becca Wirta (she/her) is a theatre artist, performer, and collaborator in Portland, Oregon. She is a member of Bedrock Theatre, connecting audiences to their environment and to each other through immersive storytelling in natural landscapes, as well as a founding member of Basement Stair Collective. Becca is a 2022/23 graduate of the Institute of Contemporary Performance with Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble, where she has spent time honing her personal aesthetic grappling with aspects of loneliness, desire and change through a dual lens of femininity and decay. She is a graduate of Willamette University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Theatre Performance as well as Rhetoric and Media Studies.
