Yaw's Top Notch Restaurant was founded in 1926 by Winford Page Yaw (1887-1967) as a lunch counter in Portland, Oregon. Yaw's later became a popular burger restaurant located at 2001 NE 40th Avenue, managed by Yaw's son W. Page Yaw (1918-1976), and then his grandson Stephen Yaw (1946-2017). The restaurant closed in 1985. Stephen Yaw unsuccessfully tried to open a new Yaw's restaurant in 2012.
The Mark Allen Players was a theater company founded in 1957 by Mark Allen (1923-1994) in Portland, Oregon. In the 1980s it leased a theater in the Willamette Center, and became known as Willamette Repertory Theatre. It later changed its name again to Portland Repertory Theater. The company dissolved in early 1998.
In late 1982 and early 1983, Yaw's Top Notch Restaurant hosted dinner theater productions of the melodrama "The Drunkard," performed by the Mark Allen Players and directed by Corey Brunish.
The collection consists of a poster advertising performances by the Mark Allen Players of "The Drunkard" every Saturday evening at Yaw's Top Notch Restaurant, presented by Yaw's Theatre Dinnerhouse and the Willamette Repertory Theatre. The poster includes three stage production photographs and hand-lettering that notes the times for the cocktail bar opening, dinner, and the play's start.
Collection is open for research.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.
Yaw's Top Notch dinner theater poster, Coll 884, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Gift of Corey Brunish, August 2021 (RL2021-100).