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:
11:00am - Rogues by Charlotte Higgins
ALL Characters have a deep sense of humor. Irony and connection of Humanity. They are ALL fighting to stay above board. Keep their heads above water. They all have a sense of FIGHT in them to survive and move forward.
They are at varying degrees of course, but the thing they have in common is.......Hope and survival. Do they succeed?
That is the journey.
The play is a realistic, unsentimental, often funny, and sometimes brutal story of the plight of the Caregiver. It portrays the poignant loss of loved ones and the life they had hoped to live, while struggling not to lose themselves and maybe even their own lives.
Location: 21ten Theatre 2110 SE 10th Ave Portland , Oregon , 97214
What the Fox? by Jed Sutton
In "What The Fox?," a vibrant, coming-of-age comedy follows an LGBTQIA+2S and neurodivergent Scout troop on an unexpected adventure when their smartphones fail. Stripped of social media feeds, they delve into an exploration of nature, collaboration, adversity and encounter a mystical nine-tailed fox that challenges their beliefs, fostering self-discovery and camaraderie through a ritual calling to the ancestors - the Legendary Mothers of Harlem ballrooms. The play opens with an excerpt from Ms. Bittner’s "Mountain Woman," setting the mood for the journey ahead. With Bittner’s transcendent score and Andrea Parson’s joyful choreography, audiences are transported to the Oregon desert and beyond, where laughter, heart, hope, and magic await!
Performance Length:
90 minutes, no intermission
Rating/Recommended Age:
13+ for coming-of-age themes and brief coarse language.
Location: The Back Door Theater 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97215
LineStorm Playwrights Present: 545 by Francisco Garcia
2:00pm - LineStorm Playwrights Present: 545 by Francisco Garcia
545 is inspired by the 2020 events of the 545 migrant children who were separated from their families by the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy and have yet to be reunited with their parents. 545 explores the hardship of two young sisters, Luli and Oli, who are separated from their mother and held in custody on the border, as they struggle to find hope in the darkest of places. 545 was originally commissioned for Portland Playhouse's Wonderland Festival of New Works and made into a short film during the pandemic. This staged reading of 545 features a new updated script for LineStorm Playwrights and the Fertile Ground Festival and will mark the first time it is being presented on stage.
Location: Artists Repertory Theatre 1515 SW Morrison St Portland, Oregon, 97205
2:30pm - VIRAL by Meg Morrigan, Katie "AL" Rodgers, & Matt Sunderland
In an era when social currency is stronger than the dollar, VIRAL explores the interconnected infections that affect us all. A young woman desperate for attention meets a stranger who promises her fame. But as her popularity spreads, so does an increasingly disturbing series of accidents and events, and soon her following has a body count. Investigating addiction to attention, contagious fear and despair, and malicious ideas spreading like wildfire, VIRAL delves into the broken psyche of the deeply alienated denizens of our world. Drawing on inspiration from classic texts like The Bacchae, Faustus, and Paradise Lost, historical events like the 1518 dancing plague, and contemporary social media horrors, VIRAL is a journey into social psychosis and its individual manifestations.
Viral began with a question: what happens when the need for attention and recognition collides with the harsh economic realities of today's world? We took that idea one step further—imagining a society where attention is literally currency. This concept opened the door to exciting research and creative exploration. Inspired by classic stories like Faustus, real historical events like the 1518 dancing plague, and the darker side of social media, we’ve built Viral using a mix of collaborative writing and devised theater techniques. For those of us on the core team, this project marks a creative milestone—working together in new ways, sometimes in roles that push us outside our comfort zones. We are excited to share this work with you in this year's Fertile Ground Festival. We’re eager to hear feedback from audiences and actors alike, as we refine and develop the piece, with the ultimate goal of bringing it to a fully realized production.
Directed by: KATIE "AL" RODGERS
Performance Length:
70 mins, no intermission
Rating/Recommended Age:
18+
Location: The Back Door Theater 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Portland , Oregon , 97215
6:00PM - 52Blue by Caitlin Nolan
A saturation diver survives what should have been a certain-death experience. After, life on land may never be the same. This 50-minute horror solo show explores themes of loneliness, alienation, and what's hiding in our depths.
Performance Length:
50 minutes
Rating/Recommended Age:
16+
Location: 21ten Theatre 2110 SE 10th Ave Portland , Oregon , 97214
7:30pm - LineStorm Playwrights Present: HALF by Susan Faust
What do you do when you find out you have 63 half-siblings you never knew about before? Start a social media group, of course! A pack of Millennials who’ve all had their identities blown to bits squabble like any family, start their own traditions, and try to come to terms with the dark secret that brought them all together. The seed of this play came from a newspaper article I read about a doctor who secretly used his own sperm to impregnate patients at his fertility clinic. This resulted in large numbers of children within a 25-mile radius who were all unknowingly related to each other. As adults, some of these offspring used DNA testing sites which eventually led them to each other.
Performance Length: 90 minutes
Rating/Recommended Age: 13+
Location: Artists Repertory Theatre 1515 SW Morrison St Portland , Oregon , 97205
2:30pm - Shelf Life by Rebecca Berger-Howe
Shelf Life is a solo show written and performed by Rebecca Berger-Howe, and directed by Brooke Totman. It follows the journey of a woman who revisits her childhood memories, stashed away in the attic of her childhood home. As she slowly opens each box, she takes audiences through her childhood memories via the mementos stored inside. Audiences will see the transition of a young girl dreaming of becoming a world famous pop-star, only to see the realities of adolescence and adulthood dragging those hopes into question. How is one girl supposed to become an international superstar when they can’t get a grasp on their own catholic guilt, their parent’s divorce, or the landmines of navigating puberty?
Performance Length:60 minutes, no intermission
Rating/Recommended Age:
12+
Location: 21ten Theatre 2110 SE 10th Ave Portland , Oregon , 97214
Fertile Ground, a flagship program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, is new works performing arts festival spanning the entirety of the Portland Metro Area. The Festival was founded in 2009 by Tricia Pancio Mead and flourished for over a decade under the leadership of Festival Director Nicole Lane.
Fertile Ground features the new work of our LOCAL artists, performers, and resident theatre companies from Portland and the surrounding areas, ensuring that the artistic and financial benefits of the festival stay in the community. Where other new works festivals are typically curated by one entity, this Festival is collaboratively shaped by community participation, uplifting a variety of aesthetic voices.
In 2021, Fertile Ground created the GROW Grant program was created to increase access to presenting work in the Fertile Ground Festival for marginalized and traditionally underrepresented artists. Through the GROW program, Fertile Ground seeks to support the artistic and professional growth of these artists, and to enrich the Portland arts landscape by providing direct support to artists from underrepresented communities.
Additional Dates:
