Fertile Ground Festival

The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works is a citywide, multi-week performing arts festival taking place in venues throughout Portland, Oregon and the surrounding areas.

This year's lineup includes site specific theatre, dance, solo shows, aerial performance, puppetry, and dozens upon dozens of brand-new scripts by some of Portland's most celebrated and prolific playwrights.

Schedule of Events:

5:30pm - PDX Playwrights: Underground Live! by Michael Meyers & Nervous Triptych by Brad Bolchunos

Underground Live! by Michael Meyers

When a grieving woman meets a grieving man doing standup comedy in a cemetery, she’s challenged to reckon with how best to honor a loved one. The two connect over their sorrow but soon discover in their friendship a courage to celebrate those who have died but live within us.

Nervous Triptych by Brad Bolchunos

Trying to tame a nervous tic? Nervous Triptych might do the trick, confronting anxiety with absurdity. In the Bag unfolds in a city park where danger looms amid a peculiar bout of adult keep-away. A hot air balloon pilot and her husband reach new heights of emotion mid-flight in Up, Up, and Away, while Run Salmon Run embarks on a daring home-bound journey inspired—and complicated—by fish. When you’re laughing, it’s okay to twitch.

Rating/Recommended Age:
14+

Performance Length:
75 minutes, including a brief intermission between selections

Location: The Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie , Oregon , 97222

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7:30pm - PDX Playwrights: Regret: A Gothic Tragicom by Karen Polinsky

Regret: A Gothic Tragicom by Karen Polinsky

At a rustic property in Oregon—attacked by crows but suddenly worth millions—a dysfunctional family gathers to pay respects to a dying patriarch and his problematic wife, at long last turning their regrets into murder. Meanwhile, an endangered squirrel is running out of time. This show offers a fun look at how toxic family relations can be!

Starring Jon Bolden, Jessica Curtiss, Maia McCarthy, Inna Pustakhanova, Nick Buri, and Gillian Wildfire. With an original score by Michael C. Hays and Esmé Schwall of Pythias Braswell, performed live.

This play also features the visual art of Inna Pustakhanova, also playing the part of the Ghost-Squirrel. Inna, who came here from Belarus about four and a half years ago, explains why she instantly connected to the role. “I had a favorite work by writer Anatoly Kim, a novel called Squirrel. My mother was a book lover and we had 3000 books in our small apartment. This book once accidentlally fell off the shelf. Right on the floor I started reading it and got carried away…”

Rating/Recommended Age:
15+

Performance Length:
75 minutes, no intermission

Location: The Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie , Oregon , 97222

Buy Tickets