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:

12:00pm - PDX Playwrights: The Real Houseplants of Portland, Oregon: Workshop - by Genderbomb

The Real Houseplants of Portland, Oregon - Workshop

Written and Produced by Ezra Fockens in association with members of the Genderbomb ensemble

This event will be a theater workshop using the complexly interconnected world of plants to explore Queer interpersonal conflict and social dynamics. Using the tropes of reality TV, combined with group movement storytelling and a dynamic soundscape, we will encourage our attendees to envision themselves as houseplants going through petty mundane drama, before everything is put into perspective. We will ask: When plants stop being watered, how do they put aside their differences to find a way to nurture themselves and their community?

Rating/Recommended Age:
14+

Performance Length:
60 minutes

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

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2:00pm - PDX Playwrights: Epic Shorts: Brave Enough

Epic Shorts: Brave Enough by PDX Playwrights

As part of our annual lineup of Fertile Ground performances, PDX Playwrights will once again be hosting our ever-popular Epic Shorts event! This spectacular series of curated stories will showcase a handful of 10-minute plays based around this year's chosen theme, "Brave Enough."

Participants are invited to work with the theme however they wish. The theme was inspired by Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb" from the 2020 inauguration ceremony, words that still ring true today:

"[W]hen the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it."

Rating/Recommended Age:
15+

Performance Length:
75 minutes, no intermission

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

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