Fertile Ground Festival
New works of theater, dance and comedy fill Portland's stages every year.
Oregon Arts Watch
Early birds, script-chasers and workshop-watchers already know: Fertile Ground Festival is where you go to see Portland’s newest performance works first. Produced by the nonprofit Portland Area Theater Alliance (PATA), this annual festival will return April 12–21, 2024.
Fertile Ground Festival is distinct from other cities’ “fringe” fests in two important regards: 1) It only features local producers, and 2) it’s non-juried, waving creators through an open door to access the critics they value most: audiences.
As you might imagine, that means there’s a lot to see. Offerings include theater and dance, along with flourishes of comedy, musical theater, multi-media performances, staged readings and more. Each year, there is way more to see than one person can manage, 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 Artists Repertory Theatre, Clinton Street Theater, The Back Door Theatre and Portland Playhouse.
If you like your performance arts like your produce — locally sourced and partially raw — then you’re sure to enjoy Fertile Ground’s bounty.
Fertile Ground Events
Explore the Fertile Ground Festival with these upcoming events.
Strange Birds
When Jo and her forest ranger trainee find blood in the snow outside a remote mountain house, they suspect that something bad has happened. Can they figure out what before the storm hits? Jo’s old friend Lou might be able to help… or she might be involved herself. Strange Birds is about women, and wolves,…
An Equal Voice: The Story of Votes for Women
A retired scholar of women’s history is invited to address the city council and staff about voting. Excited and surprised, she picks her theme: Why Vote? Just Ask History. Gathering a lifetime accumulation of photos, stories, and costumes, she plots the 70-year woman suffrage campaign. But she needs help from the audience — volunteers to…
Joan in the Desert
So what do you do when a hero, a saint, or a martyr shows up? You don’t burn them at the stake anymore. But what is done to them is as cruel. In Joan in the Desert, a play by Louise Wynn, an innocent young girl is confronted, in 2024, by the mob, the medical…
empty spaces
Mara’s already complicated life gets turned upside down when her teenage daughter Jazmine goes missing. As Mara fights through various systems in an effort to be seen and locate her missing child, we watch Jazmine’s life spiral in ways she could never imagine after she falls in with the wrong crowd in her own struggle…
maybeland & Beaten Up By A Girl
Beaten Up By A Girl by Samm Hill — It’s the 80’s and you’re the least popular boy in school but it can only get worse when the least popular girl tells everyone you’re going to the Fall Fun Fantasia together. In Maybeland, a semi-malevolent Overseer conducts a modern family through their lives but begins…
The Long Haul
Enter Roger and Della’s world with a crash. Literally. A minor car crash in their driveway. There are a lot of bumps in a 40 year marriage, some bigger than others. The car still runs, as does the marriage, but things are rougher for both. It hasn’t been a good stretch for Roger. His partner…
Bone Sorrow: The Elder Tree, Cleave, & A Circle of Stones
The Elder Tree — This retelling of the witch trials of 1500s Europe follows the harrowing infestation of religious fanaticism in a once harmonious village. Witness the womenfolk resist the onslaught of perverse accusations and embrace their attempts at reclaiming their power. Cleave — A girl child, intrigued by a shadowed figure that looms outside her window,…
The Last Lost Canada Goose
How odd it is to be. How do you navigate these seas of ecstasy and desperation? The Last Lost Canada Goose searches for illumination within the unknown. Fertile Ground veterans Mary Rose and Nathaniel Holder bring their utterly singular form of embodied improvisation to this collaboration featuring the original music of Molly Mayo, resulting in…
True Life – A Shooter’s Story
The play tells the story of Winter, a boy who has suffered abuse, becomes an incorrigible adolescent and ultimately commits an atrocity. Winter is guided through his story by a counselor, Rachel Silver who seeks to help Winter face the reckoning for what he has done. It is Rachel’s hope that Winter will find a…
Cessair: How Ireland Was Born
According to Irish legend, when Noah — yes, that Noah — tells his granddaughter that there is no room for her on the ark, Cessair takes matters into her own hands. After a tumultuous journey aboard a discarded fleet, 39 women and one lone man land on what is now known as Ireland. This musical-in-progress…
Far From Home
This is a collection of short works united by the arc of immigration and overcoming difficulties as a foreigner in the United States. Far From Home is an attempt to depict two different stories: the story of a young woman who immigrated to the United States, as she faced a ban on acting in her…
Faena
In the hopes of dispelling some common misconceptions regarding the hotly debated topic of bullfighting, an unnamed narrator tells the story of Víctor, an arrogant matador, and Floripondio, a notoriously murderous bull. However, much to the narrator’s chagrin, at every twist and turn he is faced with humanity’s grotesque and melodramatic inhumanity — bringing into…
R U N
College track star Amanda meets Sean. Her parents grapple with their cranky neighbor. Her therapist navigates new territory on the job. This modern Greek tragedy takes an intense psychological look at relationships and what makes us human. Content Advisory for this Staged Reading: Scenes of Intimate Partner Violence.
Beauregard at Manassas
After her estranged father’s death, Caroline receives his most prized possession in the mail; an important, and potentially valuable, painting of a Civil War-era battle called “Beauregard at Manassas.” Soon, a representative of a shady and controversial museum in the American South arrives offering Caroline an enormous amount of money for the painting — and…
Heaven and Hollywood
Heaven and Hollywood presents two one-act plays that look at icons on the stage and the screen. Act I — Noel Coward visits Oscar Wilde in heaven. They trade bon mots, talk about theater and dish about their loves. They ultimately delve into why Wilde, not Coward, became a gay icon. Adam Roper and Michael…
Bad Ass Japanese Pimp with Whose Lion is it Anyway? and Underlings
Bad Ass Japanese Pimp by Rob Katsuno, directed by Cassie Greer: Rob, a Japanese-American, struggles to overcome his habit of choking when angry or put on the spot, repeatedly derailing his life’s progress. Enter Ana, a Brazilian, igniting romantic sparks and cross-cultural hilarity. Rob’s susceptibility to pressure and anger returns with a vengeance when they marry. Marital tension…
Looking for Light
"The Hand of God, directed by Stan Yeend": As the American Civil War draws to a close, two Confederate soldiers meet on an abandoned train platform. One has been sent to kill the other, and neither reason nor moral argument seems capable of preventing the death. "Vertical Daylight, directed by Amelia Michaels": Five nights a week, lonely…
Rhythm & Autism
Andee Joyce’s one-woman original musical comedy, Rhythm & Autism, is an interactive, funny, and touching narrative about growing up autistic in the ‘60s and ‘70s. This special sensory friendly performance offers people with high sensory sensitivity a rare opportunity to see a show while also welcoming audience members of all abilities to enjoy the pop…
The Alchemy of Steam
Ifeoma is a driven, brilliant and determined African American Studies student on her way to making her mark on the world. She is burdened by the extra effort that must be undertaken in order to compete in a country that wasn’t made for Black women. And then there is the matter of her tail. Tayir…
Epic Shorts: Strange Burdens
Don’t miss this juried selection of 10-minute works submitted by PDX Playwrights and performed by an ensemble cast. These plays explore the theme of “Strange Burdens” in distinctive, compelling ways. The theme is inspired by author Ursula K. LeGuin from The Tombs of Atuan: “Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for…
Geographies of Oppression
While publishing fiction in Montevideo, Mario Benedetti also worked as a journalist. In June 1973, a military dictatorship seized power, closed the newspaper, and set about persecuting intellectuals and leftists in concert with “Operation Condor”. Benedetti was fortunate to leave the country. Living in exile in Argentina, Peru, Cuba, and Madrid he was separated from friends…
Ten-Minute Tapestry: AAPI Writers’ Showcase
Theatre Diaspora’s “Ten-Minute Tapestry: AAPI Writers’ Showcase” is a dynamic collection of short plays that celebrate and amplify the multiple identities of Asian American writers (mixed-race, LGBTQI, Refugee). This showcase will be supplemented by a physical visual arts tapestry made by local AAPI community members. This project aims to transcend traditional storytelling boundaries, offering a…
The Golden Thread
Everyone knows the story of Helen Keller, the little deaf/blind girl in "The Miracle Worker." This is the story of what happened next. How Helen and her teacher Annie Sullivan, herself uneducated, took on the challenge of an Ivy League education. At the same time, grappling with questions such as whether either could find love…
The Government Agent
Ted Wyatt’s criminal reign as mayor and future political aspirations are thrown into peril when an undercover government agent arrives in his small town of Crystal Canyon, U.S.A. With the help of his closest city council members, Ted’s dysfunctional family pulls out all the stops to impress the agent, preserve the status quo, and possibly…
Anne Zander is MOTHER
From the mind that created the “painfully funny” smash-hit JUICEBOX (Official Selection 2020 HBO’s Women in Comedy Festival) and the body that birthed twins two years ago comes Anne Zander is MOTHER. This brand-new solo show will make you laugh until you pee a little (we won’t judge your pelvic floor strength here). Imbued with…
The Mural
Set in a town not so far away, The Mural tells the story of an in-debt, struggling soup cafe owner named Denny, who finally begins to see her business grow after painting a mural on an otherwise drab wall. But, the mural that seemed to bring business gets defaced, which turns out to be the…
Earth: This Being Human
Earth: This Being Human takes us on a poetic and musical journey that opens up worlds of tenderness, connection and wonder to what is outside and inside everyone. Come closer to your own humanity and the connection with everyone. As you watch and listen, imagine that the sounds you hear flow through the movements of the…
merry xmas & a happy new queer
merry xmas & a happy new queer begins with a story you've heard a hundred times — turn on the TV in December and you’ll see it again and again thanks to a certain greeting card company. But what happens when a queer couple disrupts that story? Turns out, it might be more slasher than…
SKINSHOW
Backstage at a seedy, neon-lit cabaret, two inhuman performers prepare for their entrances: Frankenstein’s Monster and The Creature from The Black Lagoon cycle through their dressing room as a normal night of work slides into a grasp for connection amidst a storm of vicious self-scrutiny and euphoric self-expression. In an original performance that weaves together…
Blue Girl and the Burning Bushes
What if the second coming already happened? And She was Blue? Blue Girl and the Burning Bushes is the story of the coming of age of a young orphan — a science prodigy growing up alone in a junkyard — destined to sing the goddess back into the souls of humanity — and save the…
The Masked Villain of Sellwood
Rogue Pack produces their first film. Diving into Hollywood nostalgia, Charlie Chaplin-style, “The Masked Villain of Sellwood,” is a black and white silent movie directed and written by Randy Sean Schulman, inspired by stories written by teen participants in Oregon Youth Authority custody. With the second industrial revolution in full swing, a genius boy’s broken…
Starstruck
A musical based on a real-life meeting between Judy Garland and Frances Farmer in Indianapolis in 1967. Note: This production uses adult language. Book, Music, Lyrics by Jeffrey Michael Kauffman Directed by Jeffrey Michael Kauffman Featuring Ava Rose, Kerie Darner, Lisa Knox, Barbara Ayars, Dirk Foley, Bobby Jackson, Michael Hammerstrom, Joey Klei, Alicia Green, Karyn…
Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil, Parts I & II
With memorable tunes from vaudeville composers such as Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen comes Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil, a new jukebox musical devised by Timothy Krause (a Portland theatre-maker whose historical drama Bread and Roses won Portland Civic Theatre Guild’s 2024 New Play Award). Inside the Paradise Music Hall, heavenly…
Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil: A Vaudeville Jukebox Musical
With memorable tunes from vaudeville composers such as Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen comes Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil, a new jukebox musical devised by Timothy Krause (a Portland theatre-maker whose historical drama Bread and Roses won Portland Civic Theatre Guild's 2024 New Play Award). Inside the Paradise Music Hall, heavenly voices…
The Ballad of Johnny Rose
The Ballad of Johnny Rose, is a spiritual rock opera in two acts with nine-piece band and twelve singers. After returning home broke and jobless, Johnny shelters from the rain in a nearby church. After the choir’s rehearsal, an old friend recognizes Johnny and invites him to the Sunday service. Johnny declines and leaves; however, his attempts…
Freedom: The Untold Story of Moses
Join the world-premiere concert performance featuring a selection of songs from Freedom: The Untold Story of Moses. This rousing rock musical brings one of civilization’s most iconic tales to life, portraying the Hebrew prophet Moses not just as the destined leader of his people but as a young man torn between royal privilege and stark…
Remote and White Noise
REMOTE: Working remotely and living remotely… is it a life of lonely isolation or the ultimate freedom? A woman moves to the backwoods of rural Oregon to re-frame her future, only to find her past comes knocking on her door. Mother Nature has met her match. Remote, by Sofia Molimbi, is a modern-day comedy about…
That Abortion Play and Tru Adoration
That Abortion Play by Tamar Bolkvadze — It’s the abortion play you didn’t know you needed. Eliana, a Jewish single mother, finds time between work and breaking up her kids’ fights to volunteer at a local abortion clinic, escorting patients past pro-life protesters. Escorts are instructed not to engage with the protesters, but Eliana takes a…
Hit The Stage
Explore more of Portland's vibrant performing arts scene.
Portland Theater
Portland has a well-established network of venues and theater companies and an increasingly dynamic and diverse small theater scene.
Comedy in Portland
There's always something funny happening in Portland. From stand-up comedy to improv or even comedy classes Portland has any kind of comedy you may be looking for. Portland boasts many stages to bring you fresh, up-and-coming, and touring comedians.
Was this page helpful?