Oregon Arts Watch

performers on stage at Coho Productions
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Coho Productions presents artist-driven plays in their homey 99-seat theater.
Credit: Owen Carey

Fertile Ground Festival

New works of local theater, dance and comedy fill Portland's stages every year.

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Oregon Arts Watch

Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival is a Fringe-style theater festival with a unique spin: it’s an un-juried festival that highlights exciting new work by local artists and performers. Produced by the nonprofit Portland Area Theater Alliance (PATA), this annual festival will return to PDX from April 4-19, 2025.

Three people in nautical gear and one in an old-fashioned diving suit perform on a stage
Jacob Coleman, Cristi Miles, Rebecca Lingafelter and Paige McKinney play four versions of Captain Ahab in “[or, the whale]”.

Credit: Owen Carey

This year, 64 performance projects are featured across 27 venues in the Portland Metro area. Offerings include site-specific theater, dance, solo performances, aerial shows, puppetry, and brand-new scripts from Portland playwrights.

Each year, there is way more to see than one person can manage — though you can try, with the purchase of an unlimited pass or passes that allow viewing of 6 or 10 shows — and stumbling into something on your own that turns out to be fabulous is part of the fun. It also offers an opportunity to experience a variety of local performance spaces, including CoHo Theatre, 21ten Theatre and the Back Door Theater (operated by Fuse Theatre Ensemble), which is presenting a lineup of exclusively LGBTQ+ creators, as well as more than 20 other locations.

A woman on stage dressed in a babuska costume.
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Kate Mura portrays multiple characters in Fuse Theatre Ensemble’s "The Play About My Father" at the Fertile Ground Festival.
On a stage, a group of children hold fluffy bird puppets on sticks
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Northwest Children's Theater puppet troupe the Starlings perform the show "Dinosaurs!"
Credit: David Kinder
a performer in clown makeup moves through a crowd of people
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Anne Zander clowns in "MOTHER", a postpartum physical comedy performance.
Credit: Tamara Carroll
people on a stage gather around an artificial campfire as someone tells a story and the others listen attentively
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Robin Woolman, Kaycheri Rappaport, Bevin Solomon, Tera Nova Zarra and Summer Gaines perform in "Stranger than Fiction" by the Echo Theater Company.
Credit: Lara Klingeman

If you like your performance arts like you like your produce — locally sourced and partially raw — then you’re sure to enjoy the Fertile Ground Festival’s bounty.

Events, Festivals, Theater, Winter

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