A Scene from Vanport The Musical by Shalanda Sims

As part of the 7th Vanport Mosaic Festival, we were honored to present "Vanport The Musical," written & directed by Vanport descendant and World Stage Theatre director Shalanda Sims and co-directed by Sarah Jane Hardy.

Sims’s great-grandmother and great-grandmother were among the 40,000 people who lived in Vanport during the war. They were displaced by the flood in 1948, finding their way to Northeast Portland with only one family photo salvaged in all the chaos.