The Skanner
1/17/19
PassinArt “Hazardous Beauty”
The play, written by Portland playwright Bonnie Ratner, was part of the 2016 Fertile Ground Festival and has been revised and updated with new surprises for this fully produced world premiere.
BroadwayWorld.com
1/7/19
An Evening With the Lightkeepers: Siren Songs and The Boys of Terrible Tilly
Fertile Ground aspires to provide a forum where art lovers near and far will come to appreciate that Portland truly is fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and daring acts of performance, and Buck and Partain certainly hope that audiences enjoy learning a little bit of lighthouse history along the way.
BroadwayWorld.com
1/7/19
Lakewood Theatre’s offerings
Willamette Week
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
1/4/19
Get Ready for Clowns, a Teenage Richard III and Barbara Streisand in Local Theater
Here are some of the productions we’re most excited about through March 2019.
The Oregonian
by Heather Wisner
12/27/18
10 Portland dance shows to help ward off cabin fever this winter.
Don’t let seasonal Netflix-watching turn you couch-shaped. From January through March, there are plenty of performances, home-grown and imported, to get your body and brain in gear again, and remind you why it’s great to live in a metro area.
Conde Nast TRAVELER
by Rebecca Misner
12/20/18
Now in its 10th year, Fertile Ground is a dynamic 11-day event dedicated to new work in the arts and it features world premiere dance, theatre and comedy projects, staged readings, and workshops, all by local artists.
BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
12/10/18
10th Anniversary FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL OF NEW WORKS Comes to Portland Next Month
BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
10/10/18
Oregon-based writer/performer Gigi Rosenberg is taking her solo show, Firstborn, to New York City, as an official selection of the United Solo Theatre Festival.
BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
5/3/18
“THE HIGH CAPTAIN…Eric Cire is thrilled to present this original, poignant and intoxicating dark comedy at The Hobgoblin Playhouse this June as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.”
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BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
5/4/28
YOU IN MIDAIR Gets LA Premiere at Hollywood Fringe Festival
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Adventures in Artslandia
by Susannah Mars
4/9/18
What’s Fertile Ground? Find out from Robert Guitron, Artistic Director Polaris Dance Theatre, Jessica Wallenfels, Artistic Director Many Hats Collaboration, Nicole Lane, Fertile Ground Festival Director, and Roy Antonio Arauz, Producing Creative Director Milagro Theatre.
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ArtsWatch DramaWatch Weekly
by Bob Hicks
4/11/18
What is the Fertile Ground Festival but a massive series of pop-ups?
READ MORE www.orartswatch.org/dramawatch-weekly-pop-up-city/
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ArtsWatch
by Brett Campbell
2/20/18
‘Rosa Red’ and ‘Spellbinders’ reviews: staging history: A pair of Fertile Ground readings show the tricky challenges of using historical characters in contemporary drama
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ArtsWatch
by Brett Campbell
2/14/18
“Of everything I saw at this year’s Fertile Ground, Washington’s Living Things seemed one of the most fully realized, the readiest for a— make that many— full productions, and the likeliest to appeal to broad audience of many ages…”
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BroadwayWorld
by Krista Garver
1/29/18
Fertile Ground 2018 has wrapped up, and I don’t know about you, but almost everything I saw was super. Reviews: MATTER IS MOTHER, SEX WE CAN! AN EROTIC UPRISING
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ArtsWatch
Jamuna Chiarini
1/25/18
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works and its dance-centric arm, Groovin’ Greenhouse continue for a second weekend in venues all around town.
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Willamette Week
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
1/24/18
Here Are Our Favorite Moments From Fertile Ground So Far, and What We’re Most Excited to See During the Rest of the Festival —
If there’s one thing the works all have in common, it’s a spirit of reckless and fearless experimentation.
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Broadway World
by Krista Garver
1/23/18
Fertile Ground Reviews: PHILIP’S GLASS MENAGERIE, ROSA RED, PERSEPHONE XOA IRIS
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BroadwayWorld
by Krista Garver
1/19/18
8 Awesome Things You’ll Find at Fertile Ground…
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ArtsWatch
by Bobby Bermea
1/19/18
Spotlight on: E.M. Lewis and ‘Magellanica’- As Artists Rep embarks on an epic journey to Antarctica, an Oregon playwright talks about the epic journey that brings her tale to the stage.
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KGW-TV Portland Today
by Rod Hill & Tracy Barry
1/18/18
Rod and Tracy speak with Festival Director Nicole Lane about Fertile Ground 2018 on Portland Today.
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Portland Tribune
by Jason Vondersmith
1/18/18
Fertile Ground Festival – Here’s an update on what shows are taking stage at the annual festival, which runs through Jan. 28
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ArtsWatch
by TJ Acena
1/17/18
On the run from dystopia — Milagro’s new touring show “Bi–” looks to a totalitarian future and blazes a path to the beauty of in-between
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ArtsWatch DanceWatch Weekly
By Jamuna Chiarini
1/17/18
Groovin’ Greenhouse will play host to new dance works by six Polaris Dance Theatre company members, Polaris Jr. Company, Neo Youth Company, Vitality Dance Collective, A-Wol Dance Collective, Galexi, NW Fusion, and Alex Done’s r:ad — “Stranger than Fiction,” a collaborative work between Tempos Contemporary Circus and Echo Theater Company that explores the overlap of circus arts, dance, narrative and physical theatre.
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ArtsWatch MusicWatch Weekly
by Brett Campbell
1/17/18
Speaking of new artistic creations, as you’ve been reading all over ArtsWatch, one of Oregon’ most valuable artistic incubators, the annual Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, is back, and at least one of those, Mini Musicals 2018
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Willamette Week
By Bennett Campbell Ferguson
1/17/18
Fertile Ground Is a Massive Free-For-All of New Theater and Performance Art. Here’s Our Guide to Navigating It. – Over the next 11 days, the festival will unleash a dizzying mixture of disparate genres, stories and moods.
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ArtsWatch/DramaWatch Weekly
by A.L. Adams
1/17/18
DramaWatch Weekly: Fertile Ground, Playing Favorites – As Portland’s sprawling festival of new performance works begins, A.L. Adams picks her best bets (and weaves in a nonfestival highlight, too)
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Portland Mercury
by Megan Burbank
1/17/18
Fertile Ground’s Accessible Art Returns – Your Best Bets Include Rosa Luxemburg, Sexual Revolutions, and a New and Improved Uncle Vanya
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ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
1/16/18
Fertile Ground: get set, go — On your mark: Portland’s festival of new work, with more than 100 offerings, is ready to roar. Grab your tickets: It’s a jumble out there.
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Portland Mercury
by Megan Burbank
1/15/18
Get ready for SO MUCH THEATER, because Portland’s annual festival of new performance, Fertile Ground, is here!
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Portland Tribune
by Ellen Spitaleri
1/15/18
Milwaukie’s late, great Paul deLay featured in ‘Just This One’ — Musical is part of the annual Fertile Ground Festival of New Work Jan. 27-28 in Portland
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BroadwayWorld
by Krista Garver
1/12/18
Fertile Ground Reviews: PHILIP’S GLASS MENAGERIE, ROSA RED, PERSEPHONE XOA IRIS
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The Columbian
by Scott Hewitt
1/12/18
Tragic jokes. The approach is slightly more fleshed out — and the subject matter deadly serious — in the upcoming premiere of “Voodoo Snowball” by prolific Camas novelist and playwright Gary Corbin.
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Portland Tribune
by Ellen Spitaleri
1/12/18
Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’ refreshed for modern times – Shoebox Theatre presents local director’s adaptation.
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Portland Tribune
by Joseph Gallivan
1/11/18
NEW WORKS SPROUT FROM FERTILE GROUND-Theater fest banishes winter blahs with events Jan. 18-28 at venues throughout the metro area
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ArtsWatch
by A.L. Adams
1/10/18
Fertile Ground, brimming with homegrown theater offerings of every conceivable topic and timbre.
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Clackamas Review
by Ellen Spitaleri
1/10/18
Milwaukie resident adapts, directs Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’- Patrict Walsh opens his version of ‘Three Sisters’ at the Shoebox Theatre in Portland
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Amy Wang
1/9/18
Fertile Ground Festival 2018: 70+ new works, 11 days, 32 venues — Talk about a bumper crop. 14 events that caught our attention.
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Hillsboro Tribune
by Michael Sproles
1/8/18
Local emerging artist will share Fertile Ground work-Bag&Baggage’s The Vault hosts staged reading of ‘Interlocus,’ by Tiffany Rousseau.
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Lake Oswego Review
by Staff
1/4/17
Curtain rises for Fertile Ground Festival – Lakewood Center is venue for several of this season’s shows that begin Jan. 18
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BroadwayWorld.com
by BWW News Desk
December 8
“Fertile Ground 2018 welcomes new “acts of creation” from Portland’s artistic community that will thrive on stages, nooks and crannies all over the city for 11 days from Thursday, January 18 to Sunday, January 28, 2018.”
EDGE Media Network
Meg Currell
February 2, 2016
Portland’s 9th Fertile Ground Festival: Part 3 –“Stories from MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility” and “Word. Voice.”
Read more at edgemedianetwork.com.
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Willamette Week
By Hailey Bachrach
February 1, 2007
Fertile Ground Dairies: “Hurl” Is A Sports Drama About A Game You’ve Probably Never Heard Of – Of course Portland has a hurling team.
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Willamette Week
By Britany Robinson
January 31, 2017
Fertile Ground Dairies: In “Last Dance,” Angels Experience What It’s Like To Be Human – Part theater, part dance, the show explores humanness in a way that only non-humans could express.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
By Brett Campbell
January 31, 2017
Fertile Ground reviews: Young bloods – Broken Planetarium’s ‘Atlantis’ and Orphic’s ‘Iphigenia 3.0’ show the promise of today’s Portland theater
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EDGE Media Network
Meg Currell
January 30, 2016
Portland’s 9th Fertile Ground Festival: Part 2 – “1980’s Teen Musical,” “I Am An Actress,” “Men Run Amok (or It Takes Balls)”
Read more at edgemedianetwork.com.
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 30, 2017
The Tail of Sleeping Beauty—NW Children’s Theater—NW Portland: Slumbering Birdie
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 30, 2017
Astoria, Part One—Portland Center Stage—Pearl District: How the (North) West Was Won
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Kid power: Fly Guy, Teen Musical
Willamette Week
by Christa McIntyre
January 30, 2017
Fertile Ground Diaries: “William Shakespeare’s Fools” Will Shed So Much Humanity On Clowns That It Just Might Cure Your Clown-Phobia:
The one-man tour through the Bard’s clowns is a slice of old circus magic.
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Willamette Week
by Hailey Bachrach
January 30, 2017
Fertile Ground Diaries: “The Tall Tales of Paul Bunyan” Is a Puppet Show for Grown-Ups: The play features ingenuous puppetry that the script doesn’t quite match.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 30, 2017
Staged!’s “1980’s Teen Musical” and Oregon Children’s Theatre’s “Fly Guy: The Musical” bring some fresh young blood to Fertile Ground
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THRU Media – Thrupoint Podcast
by Sean Ongely
January 29, 2017
Join Yocto Theatre founders Mary Rose and Sean Bowie for the inaugural Thrupoint Podcast, formerly known as Horizon at End Times. We talk about their latest work Free Box…
More at thru.media/yocto-theatre-first-thrupoint-podcast.
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Willamette Week
by Britany Robinson
January 26, 2017
Fertile Ground Diaries: “Sisters In The Snow” Explores How Two Siblings Can Belong to Completely Separate Worlds: “Sisters in the Snow ” speaks to the power of art, both painted and acted out.
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Willamette Week
by Christa McIntyre
January 26, 2017
Fertile Ground Diaries: Broken Planetarium’s “Atlantis” Examines How We Cope with Environmental Catastrophe: In the near future, climate change has submerged the island of Manhattan.
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Willamette Week
by Shannon Gormley, Britany Robinson & Hailey Bachrach
January 25, 2017
Fertile Ground Looks For Connection Amid Chaos: If the Portland performance scene has one goal, it’s making work that isn’t frivolous.
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Portland Mercury
by Megan Burbank
January 25, 2017
You’re in a Cult, Call Your Dad! Carnivora’s Jump Scares and Abject Sorrow
Read more at portlandmercury.com.
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Portland Tribune
by Jason Vondersmith
January 25, 2017
One of Portland’s more significant arts events, the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, continues through Sunday, Jan. 29, at venues around the city. It features theater, dance and more by playwrights and companies big and small.
Read more at portlandtribune.com.
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 24, 2017
I Am An Actress…A Passion Play—Multnomah Arts Center—SW Portland: A Passion for Life
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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EDGE Media Network
by Meg Currell
January 23, 2017
Portland’s 9th Fertile Ground Festival: Part 1 – “Nansen of the North” and “Free Box”
Read more at edgemedianetwork.com.
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 23, 2017
Carnivora—theatre vertigo—SE Portland: Here There Be Beasties…
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 23, 2017
Crackin’ the Code—The Alberta Abbey—NE Portland: Oh, What a Web We Weave…
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Lake Oswego Review
by Barb Randall
January 26, 2017
See Fertile Ground works at Lakewood: Fertile Ground, a festival of new works. Lakewood Center for the Arts will present four works.
Read more at pamplinmedia.com/lor.
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Portland Tribune
by Ellen Spitaleri
January 25, 2017
Rex Putnam High School’s drama teacher Kelley Marchant takes on many roles in Fertile Ground productions
Read more at portlandtribune.com.
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BroadwayWorld.com
by Krista Garver
January 23, 2017
Fertile Ground Opening Weekend: ATLANTIS, FREE BOX, THE BABY PROJECT, LEFT HOOK, and WINGS OF FIRE — Here’s my take on what I’ve seen so far.
Read more at broadwayworld.com/portland.
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KMUZ Community Radio
by Marc, The MashUp
January 21, 2017
Alan Alexander and Homeless, The Musical: Marc talks with Alan Alexander about his new screenplay/musical score inspired by his 20 year old song “Homeless”
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Street Roots
by Suzanne Zalokar
January 19, 2017
Alan Alexander III puts homelessness to music: ‘Homeless (the musical),’ to debut at Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, invites audience to ‘see homeless people as people’
Read more at news.streetroots.org.
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Portland Monthly
by Rebecca Jacobson and Fiona McCann
January 19, 2017
6 Shows to See at the 2017 Fertile Ground Festival: Need some help navigating the annual bonanza of new, locally produced performance? Here are three solid bets and three wild cards.
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OPB State of Wonder
by Aaron Scott
Jan 21, 2017
The Many Voices of Eliza Jane Schneider at 13:47 – Discussing her show “Displaced,” where she channels dozens of displaced individuals she’s met around the world.
More at soundcloud.com/opb-state-of-wonder.
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ArtsWatch
by Jamuna Chiarini
January 20, 2017
Les Watanabe on Alvin Ailey, Lar Lubovitch, Donald McKayle and his life in dance – The dance pioneer debuts his “Love Songs” at Groovin’ Greenhouse, part of Fertile Ground
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THRU Media
by Sean Ongley
January 19, 2017
In a Nutshell: 16 Fertile Ground Festival Acts in Audio
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Willamette Week
by Shannon Gormley
January 18, 2017
More Than 100 Works Will Premiere Over 11 Days As Part of Fertile Ground: The city wide festival features everything from history lessons to Shakespearean clowns.
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Street Roots News
by Amanda Waldroupe
January 16, 2017
Eliza Jane Schneider delivers voices of homelessness. The ‘South Park’ voice actor shares stories of homeless people in ‘Displaced,’ to premiere in Portland.
Read more at news.streetroots.org.
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ArtsWatch
by Jamuna Chiarini
January 16, 2017
“Fertile Ground goes dancing…Here at DanceWatch I am just going to break down the dance offerings within the festival because, you know, I love dance and you probably do too.”
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ArtsWatch
by Christa McIntyre, A.L. Adams and Bob Hicks
January 13, 2017
Fertile Ground: Curtains (almost) up — ArtsWatch speed-dates the makers of 2017’s Portland new-works festival. We don’t kiss, but we do tell. Here’s what’s happening.
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OPB Radio “Think Out Loud”
by Dave Miller
January 12, 2017
Local clown Michael O’Neill tells us about the premiere of his new play, “William Shakespeare’s Fools,” and about his work performing in disaster-torn places for Clowns Without Borders.
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Portland Tribune
by Jason Vondersmith
January 11, 2017
Make plans for the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, which begins in earnest Jan. 19 at various venues. For more: fertilegroundpdx.org. There are some events already beginning, including: CoHo Productions presents the world premiere of “db” by Tommy Smith, directed by Isaac Lamb and featuring Rebecca Lingfelter; Milagro Theatre puts on “El Payaso,” a world premiere by playwright Emilio Rodriguez and director Georgina Escobar.
Read more at portlandtribune.com.
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OPB Radio “Think Out Loud”
by Dave Miller
January 12, 2017
Local clown Michael O’Neill tells us about the premiere of his new play, “William Shakespeare’s Fools,” and about his work performing in disaster-torn places for Clowns Without Borders.
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BroadwayWorld.com
by Krista Garver
January 9, 2017
9 Shows I’m Excited About at Fertile Ground 2017with the warmer temperatures will come one of my favorite PDX festivals: Fertile Ground. A full 11 days of brand new works by artists both veteran and new on the scene.
Read more at broadwayworld.com/portland
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Judy Nedry Reviews
by Judy Nedry
January 8, 2017
Portland, are you ready for the 9th annual Fertile Ground Festival 2017, a city-wide festival of theatrical works?
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The Oregonian/OregonLive.com
by Lee Williams
January 7, 2017
“Spanning disciplines and genres, Fertile Ground celebrates everything — as long as it’s new. Dance, circus arts, improvisation and local animation presentations share the calendar with light romantic and heavier-themed musicals, one-person comedies, history plays, plays for young kids, and plays written by high schoolers.”
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The Oregonian/OregonLive.com
by Amy Wang
January 6, 2017
Classical concerts, art exhibit openings and theater: Arts Best Bets Jan. 6-12: “El Payaso” at Teatro Milagro
American Theatre Magazine
by Jessica Wallenfels
January 29, 2016
Sampling Locally Grown, Artisanal Theatre at Portland’s Fertile Ground – Amid the January rains, theatre artists and audiences scramble from show to show at a festival of seedlings, blossoms, and tilling for future harvests.
Read more at americantheatre.org.
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Oregon Music News
by Inessa
January 28, 2016
Vaudeville comes to Fertile Ground Festival // audio – The Affable Gentlemen, made up loosely of Jason Potter, Hamilton Barrett, and Brianna Barrett in this go-round, offer up some thoughtful insight.
Read more at oregonmusicnews.com
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The Inessa Blog
by Inessa
January 28, 2016
The Return of Vaudeville – STORYTELLING, VAUDEVILLE, VARIETY SHOW “The New Vaudeville”
http://www.theinessablog.com/2016/01/28/the-new-vaudeville/
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Clackamas Print – Clackamas Community College
By Andrew Koczian
January 27, 2016
Mach Rips off old Wallpaper.
http://www.theclackamasprint.net/arts-culture/another-brick-in-the-yellow-wallpaper/
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Clackamas Print – Clackamas Community College
By Matthew Rowning
January 27, 2016
Another brick in the yellow wallpaper.
http://www.theclackamasprint.net/arts-culture/another-brick-in-the-yellow-wallpaper/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 27, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: The Big One – Wondering how to survive the earthquake that will destroy Portland?
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/27/fertile-ground-diaries-the-big-one/
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 27, 2016
ArtsWatch Weekly: 24/7 Fertile Ground (plus cats) – A look at the week that was in Oregon arts. A glimpse ahead at the week that’s going to be.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 26, 2016
Way down under, trapped on ice – Fertile Ground: Lawrence Howard spins a tale of bravery, isolation, and endurance in Antarctica in “Shackleton, the Untold Story”
Read more at orartswatch.org/.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Christa Morletti McIntyre
January 26, 2016
Into the Woods with Baba Yaga – Fertile Ground: Sam Reiter embodies the Slavic wise woman of the forest in a compelling foray into the mythological
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 26, 2016
Just art: a creative shot in the arm – Fertile Ground: Vertigo’s vivid premiere of Rob Handel’s “I Want To Destroy You” takes smart and funny aim at academia and the outer limits of art
http://www.orartswatch.org/just-art-a-creative-shot-in-the-arm/
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Willamette Week
by Penelope Bass
January 26, 2016
I Hate Oprah Hitler – I Hate Positive Thinking isn’t just a life coach’s rant.
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/26/i-hate-oprah-hitler/
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Richard Wattenberg
January 26, 2016
CoHo’s ‘Yellow Wallpaper’ a worthy, and still timely, look into madness
http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2016/01/cohos_yellow_wallpaper_a_worth.html
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 26, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Rimbaud’s Daughter in Louisiana (or The Drunken Pirogue)- Poetry and peyote combine in Portland Civic Theatre’s Cajun adventure
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Thru Magazine
by Joe Jatcko
January 26, 2016
[…or, the whale] – Empathy for Ahab
http://www.thrumag.com/or-the-whale-empathy-for-ahab/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 25, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Noise in the Waters
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/25/fertile-ground-diaries-noise-in-the-waters/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 25, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Dear Committee Members-David Berkson’s one-man show comes recommended.
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/25/fertile-ground-diaries-dear-committee-members/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 25, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Q&A with Portland’s New Theater Company – Source Material debuts a multi-racial, multimedia concert
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/24/fertile-ground-diaries-a-thousand-tongues/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 25, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Displaced – SubRosa Dance Collective immerses the audience in the theme of relocation.
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/25/fertile-ground-diaries-displaced/
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 24, 2016
I Want To Destroy You—Theatre Vertigo—SE Portland – “Eye of the Beholder”
http://dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-want-to-destroy-youtheatre-vertigose.html
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Dennis Sparks Reviews
by Dennis Sparks
January 24, 2016
Shackleton: the Untold Story—the Alberta Abbey—NE Portland – Armchair Adventures
http://dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com/2016/01/shackleton-untold-storythe-alberta.html
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 24, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Penis Puns Dominate Paranormal Dick – The Adventures of Dex Dixon: Paranormal Dick fails as a musical, but it is funny.
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/22/fertile-ground-diaries-penis-puns-dominate-paranormal-dick/
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 22, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Frankenstein: A Cabaret-Comedy, cabaret and social commentary make a beautiful monster.
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 22, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Sex Sells in Broken Promises-Planned Parenthood pairs with Milagro Theater for a show on sex trafficking.
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OPB Radio
“Think Out Loud”
by Dave Miller
January 20, 2016
Exploring the modern-day relevance of Moby Dick with two local thespians who are doing productions inspired by the book featuring […or, the whale]
Hear it at soundcloud.com.dick
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E-R Cultura
January 16, 2016
The intense monologue by Marco Martinelli on the Mediterranean refugee crisis “Noise in the Waters” is on stage in Portland on 24th Genuary thanks to Boom Arts, an organization that presents and produces contemporary theatre and performance from around the world
Read more at cultura.regione.emilia-romagna.it.
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Lake Oswego Review
by Barb Randall
January 14, 2016
Featuring the slate of Fertile Ground readings at Lakewood Theatre Company.
Read more at portlandtribune.com.
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BroadwayWorld.com
by Krista Garver
January 22, 2016
BWW Preview: 9 Fertile Ground 2016 Shows You’ll Want to Check Out
Read more at broadwayworld.com.
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The Columbian
by Scott Hewitt
January 22, 2016
Clark County thespians find Fertile Ground in Portland festival.
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Portland Mercury
by Megan Burbank
January 21, 2016
This year’s Fertile Ground theatre fest is here!
Read more at portlandmercury.com.
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Oregon Artswatch
by Jamuna Chiarini
January 21, 2016
Dance Weekly: the more we get together…
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Portland Tribune
by Joseph Gallivan
January 21, 2016
“Wallpaper” examines postpartum breakdown – Fine acting, stage sets make internal struggle more potent
Read more at portlandtribune.com.
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GoLocalPDX
by GoLocalPDX Arts Team
January 21, 2016
Fertile Ground 2016 opens today
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Portland Tribune
by Jason Vondersmith
January 21, 2016
Creativity from the ground up – Fertile Ground celebrates new work in performing arts
Read more at pamplinmedia.com.
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Portland Monthly Magazine
by Ramona Denies and Fiona McCann
January 20, 2016
Five Picks for the Fertile Ground Festival — Dozens of new, homegrown works of theater and performance will hit stages over the next 11 days. Here are the five shows we’re most looking forward to.
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Portland Observer
January 19, 2016
“Hazardous Beauty”
Read more at portlandobserver.com.
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Portland Mercury
by Mercury staff
January 19, 2016
Best Bets for This Year’s Fertile Ground – Fail Better, Think Global at the Theater Festival
Read more at portlandmercury.com.
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KBOO Stage and Studio
by Dmae Roberts
January 19, 2016
“Stage and Studio” interview featuring playwrights S. Renee Mitchell with Ophelia in Oblivion, Bonnie Ratner with Hazardous Beauty and Nancy Moss with Deception.
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Willamette Week
by Sophia June
January 19, 2016
Fertile Ground Diaries: Ethyl’s Pies Is Fresh – Two men play one large cast in Spring 4th’s dark comedy.
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KGW
by Drew Carney
January 19, 2016
Echo Theatre Company’s “Between Worlds” featured on KGW with Drew Carney, who goes flying.
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Oregon ArtsWatch
by Christa Morletti McIntyre, Brett Campbell, Bob Hicks
January 16, 2016
Fertile Ground: Let the fest begin–ArtsWatch’s writers “speed-dated” the producers, writers, and performers of Portland’s sprawling new-works festival. Here’s what they discovered.
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BroadwayWorld.com
by Krista Garver
January 18, 2016
BWW Review: Milagro’s BROKEN PROMISES Takes on the Hidden Problem of Teen Prostitution
Read the article at broadwayworld.com.
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Dillon Pilorget
January 17, 2016
5 deliciously wild-sounding Portland-written plays in Fertile Ground new works festival.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Theatre Reviews by Dennis Sparks
by Dennis Sparks
January 16, 2016
Review: CoHo Productions, The Yellow Wallpaper
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Theatre Reviews by Dennis Sparks
by Dennis Sparks
January 15, 2016
Review: Milagro Theatre, Broken Promises
Read more at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Jonthan Frochtzajg
January 15, 2016
Top performing-arts picks for January 15-21.
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The Portland Tribune
January 14, 2016
Stumptown Stages presents the original musical “The Adventures of Dex Dixon: Paranormal Dick” as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work.
Read more at pamplinmedia.com.
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ArtsWatch
by Barry Johnson
January 14, 2016
or, the whale – In search of the great white…leg. Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s “Moby-Dick” journey heads for the lower extremities.
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Willamette Week
by Enid Spitz
January 13, 2016
Behind The Yellow Wallpaper –Portland theater leaders are combining forces for a rare stage adaptation.
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Willamette Week
by Penelope Bass
January 13, 2016
Winning Sea Legs- Or, The Whale beautifully twists Moby Dick.
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BroadwayWorld.com
January 13, 2016
The Yellow Wallpaper – This world premiere production will integrate expressionistic audio, visual and movement interludes with the haunting literary text.
Read more at broadwayworld.com.
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BroadwayWorld.com
January 13, 2016
Lakewood Theatre Company presents four original works for Fertile Ground 2016.
Read more at broadwayworld.com.
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Willamette Week
What to See on Portland Stages Jan. 13-19
January 12, 2016
A few Fertile Ground Festival shows are starting early, Broken Promises at Milagro and Ethyl’s Pies: A Comedy of Deception in Two Acts at Y Arts Little Theatre
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Willamette Week
The Fertile Ground Theater Festival, Mapped
January 8, 2016
December 22, 2015
Fertile Ground is the biggest theater festival in Portland—a 35-venue theater takeover of Portland that’s both a preview of the season to come and a chance for unknown artists to be seen by a broader audience.
Read article at wweek.com
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Portland Tribune
“Bits and pieces”
December 22, 2015
One of the Portland theater scene’s most anticipated events is once again taking place in January — the 2016 Fertile Ground Festival of New Work.
Read the article at portlandtribune.com
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BroadwayWorld.com
by BWW News Desk
December 15, 2015
Fertile Ground 2016 Launches in January
Read article at broadwayworld.com
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The Oregonian/oregonlive.com
by Jamie Hale
December 16, 2015
For the last eight years, Portland’s Fertile Ground festival has established its place as one of the city’s best resources for new performance-based works.
This year organizers look to continue and grow that reputation, with 11 more days of world premieres, readings and works-in-progress staged at venues around the city.
ArtsWatch
by Brett Campbell, Jamuna Chiarini, Maria Choban
February 14, 2015
Its unusually rich combination of elements inspired ArtsWatch to cover it with an unusual team approach, using writers experienced in each of its three primary components: veteran Portland concert pianist Maria Choban to discuss the music, dance writer and choreographer Jamuna Chiarini to consider the dance, and Brett Campbell to take a look at the theatrical elements.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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AmbitMag.com
by Kathleen Dolan
February 12, 2015
What is Erotic? I like to think the show had this affect on many people in the audience. The line-up was diverse and ran the gamut from sweet and PG-rated acts to pieces with the potential to disturb and generate divisive conversations and reactions. Director Eleanor O’Brien’s introduction to the show and her work prodded the audience to not only enjoy ourselves but to honestly look at how we would answer the question of what is erotic?
Read the article at ambitmag.com
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AmbitMagazine.com
by Sean Ongley
February 1, 2015
One-man and one-woman shows demonstrate polarity at the Fertile Ground festival: Genius by Sean Bowie and “Roots, Reality & Rhyme” by Turiya Autry.
Read the article at ambitmag.com
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AmbitMagazine.com
by Kathleen Dolan
February 1, 2015
The Tracks of Truth and Lies – at a crossing, past and present collide in Nancy Moss’s Deception.
Read the article at ambitmag.com
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
Jamie Hale
January 31, 2015
“Mom?” offers more than just a metaphor on death; it makes a strong statement by this burgeoning troupe that clowns have something important to say. We can, and we should, see them as guides – as characters that are willing to step into the darkness free of fear, emerging with a smile and a glimmer of understanding. When the red nose emerges we should take note and watch closely, because it might lead us to places profound.
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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Oregon Public Broadcasting “State of Wonder”
by April Baer
January 24, 2015
At 30:10 into the program April talks about p:ear who is bringing stories of street kids, kids on the edge, and transitional youth to the stage in the Fertile Ground festival performance.
Listen at soundcloud.com/opb-state-of-wonder/jan-24-2015
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The Portland Mercury
Megan Burbank
January 27, 2015
It’s full of strong performances and covers a piece of Oregon history that’s rarely seen. It’s got that very particular quality so often crowed about in art, so rarely actually seen: capital-I importance. And if Cottonwood in the Flood can achieve this much intensity without even having its actors off-book, I can only imagine the heights it could reach if given the chance.
Read the article at portlandmercury.com
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The Portland Mercury
by Megan Burbank
January 26, 2015
Sad fact: The theatergoing public skews in a very specific way, age-wise, and it is not towards the under-30 crowd. This matters—when audiences aren’t diverse in terms of age, there’s little incentive to produce stories that actually include young people. So in deciding what shows to see at this year’s Fertile Ground festival (and I really am just seeing plays all week, like the former theater geek that I am), I intentionally sought out shows with young producers, writers, directors, and casts. I saw two of them this weekend: overunder arts’ down and the Third Rail Mentorship Company’s ID[ea].
Read the article at portlandmercury.com
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AmbitMagazine
by Jen Scholten
January 24, 2015
It seems that may be how this collective of creatives began this perceptive project. Through their diligent work, overunder arts has provided a performance that fully encompasses an accurate visual of the evolving definition of depression. They leave no stone unturned but plenty of room for exploration and discovery on the topic.
Read the article at ambitmag.com
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Jamie Hale
January 28, 2015
The fictional actors playing characters that exist in the fictional playwright’s mind – portrayed by real actors playing real characters before our very eyes – all of that came to our universe courtesy of a real playwright, who birthed them like a god into existence. “Play” exists to shine a light on that process, to paint it as the hectic layered onion that it is. The audience saw it briefly at the reading on Wednesday, but that universe lives and breathes within Copeland’s mind.
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 27, 2015
FG review: a whale of a tale. Portland Story Theatre with Lawrence Howard’s ‘The Essex’ recounts the adventure of the 1820 oceangoing disaster that inspired ‘Moby-Dick’.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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Willamette Week
by Penelope Bass
January 26, 2015
Fertile Ground Diaries: Genuis. Though there’s no nudity in the rest of this Fertile Ground performance—aside from a brief clip from the 1984 ski bum movie Hot Dog—Bowie does spend the next 70 minutes laying bare his soul.
Read the article at wweek.com
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ArtsWatch
by Brett Campbell
January 24, 2015
Fertile Ground Festival interview: Playwright Rich Rubin. After a career as a physician, the prolific Portland playwright turned to theater, with a positive prognosis.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 25, 2015
Post5 has put a lot of chips on the Fertile Ground table, opening two shows as full productions Friday night and calling them both world premieres rather than workshops. It’s a gutsy gambit, and maybe a little overeager.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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PQ Monthly
By Leela Ginelle
January 23, 2015
This year’s Fertile Ground Festival sees the premiere of Post5 Theatre Associate Artistic Director Cassandra Boice’s new play “Gender Tree” (at Post5 through Feb. 14th). The show features two actors who move through history, and examines cultural shifts, and the ways they impact the construct of gender, particularly through the lens of fashion.
Read the article at pqmonthly.com
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KGW-TV
by Cassidy Quinn
January 22, 2015
KGW reporter Cassidy Quinn visits Post5 Theatre on the first day of Fertile Ground 2015 and talks to Artistic Director Ty Boice with playwright and director Cassandra Boice about Fertile Ground and the shows offered by Post5.
Watch the segment at kgw.com
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Oregon Music News
by John Rudoff
January 20, 2015
For Oregon Music News photographer John Rudoff captured the essence of “The Snowstorm” on Opening Wekend.
Read the article at oregonmusicnews.com
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Oregon Music News
by Inessa
January 21, 2015
Interview with Brianna Barrett, Hamilton Barrett and John Maggi on“36 Appropriate Mealtime Conversations” and “#BadDecisions,” two original works created by Brianna. Brianna has written TV pilots and screenplays but only recently turned her attention to play writing. A little bit different kind of beast. The challenges she set up for herself were really complicated! Here’s how she describes this take on dating, sex, friendship and bad karaoke:
Read the article at oregonmusicnews.com
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by Megan Burbank
January 21, 2015
FROM NOW UNTIL February, nearly every available performance space in Portland will house something you’ve never seen before. This is the beauty of Fertile Ground, the city’s proudly uncurated festival of new, homegrown performance. With passes holding steady at $50, low-cost single tickets, and plenty of free performances, attending Fertile Ground may be the most efficient way to flood your theater-brain with every possible definition of performance. From socially engaged theater to conceptual art involving pigs to Liberace’s glittery hot pants, here are (merely a few of) our best bets for this year’s festival.
Read the article at portlandmercury.com
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Willamette Week
by Rebecca Jacobson
January 21, 2015
A Dark Detroit Night – A new folk opera reimagines The Snow Queen in the Motor City. “How do you create magic out of devastation?” asks Dunn, a fine-featured 31-year-old with a day job teaching poetry to elementary-school students. “Where is there space for that in adult life?”
Read the article at wweek.com
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GoLocalPDX
by Kemea Smith
January 21, 2015
Boom Arts presents Rodrigo García’s short play “I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep Than Some Other Son Of A B*tch,” to Portlanders this month. Real pigs and poetic theatrical language from five countries come together in Spanish-Argentine playwright Rodrigo García’s free-form one-man fantasy play. Fragments of the Ibero-American economic crises make for great dialogue on the value of art in a consumer society. How can art bring up the soul when the ATM has little left to give?
Read the article at golocalpdx.com
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by Arts staff
January 19, 2015
Fertile Ground 2015 – 12 picks for the festival of new works. What’s the best way to experience Portland’s 11-day mashup of new theater, dance and music called Fertile Ground? We have some ideas and they involve risk, reward, trial, maybe a little tribulation, and a lot of possibilities between Jan. 22 and Feb. 1
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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ArtsWatch
by Jamuna Chiarini
January 15, 2015
Groovin’ Greenhouse: where the dance is. Polaris hosts the biggest dance slice (but not the only one) of the Fertile Ground new works festival. Here’s what’s coming up.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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ArtsWatch
by Rebecca Waits
January 20, 2015
Minority report: highlights from underrepresented voices
Fertile Ground 2015 includes an array of works by or about people of color, queer folks, women, homeless folks, and teens. A quick guide.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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Portland Radio Project
by Inessa B
January 19, 2015
Fertile Ground Festival is a perfect launching pad for Brianna and Hamilton Barrett’s “36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations” and “#BadDecisions”, along with collaboration with music director John Maggi. In-between rehearsals at The Clinton Street Theater, we picked up the backstory pieces.
Listen at soundcloud.com
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Street Roots
by Ann-Derrick Gaillot
January 19, 2015
Turiya Autry: The Portland performer on her one-woman show about a young black woman’s search for identity. This month Autry and director Kevin Jones will premiere “Roots, Reality & Rhyme: The One-Woman Show.” It’s a multimedia poetry performance based on the book. The show will be one of several works premiering as part of Fertile Ground 2015, a city-wide festival theater festival focused on highlighting new works in the Portland performing arts scene.
Read the article at streetroots.org
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ArtsWatch
by Bob Hicks
January 17, 2015
Portland’s annual free-for-all festival of new theater, dance, comedy, music, and stuff that falls into the cracks between recognized genres runs for eleven jam-packed days this year, opening January 22 and continuing through February 1 on stages scattered across the metropolitan area. The rules are simple. Everything presented must be new (that doesn’t mean it might not have been workshopped or had readings beforehand). And the festival, which is sponsored by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, isn’t juried or curated: if you can get your act together, you’re in. It’s a bit like a baby version of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, without the international audience and 24/7 street theatrics.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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AmbitMat.com
Kathleen Dolan
January 15, 2015
“Each artist had five minutes with members of the press to introduce their work, speak about the production process, and Q & A with a member of the media. A bell would sound at the end of each five minute session. The Oregonian, Artslandia, Portland Mercury, Willamette Week, Portland Tribune, and then Ambit Magazine. Myself and Ambit’s Publisher, Sean Ongley, were swiftly taken by a line of artists waiting to sit in the chairs before us.”
Read the article at ambitmag.com
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The Oregonian
by Richard Wattenberg
January 17, 2015
‘The Snowstorm’ a magical performance that blurs lines between music, dance, theater. Using a score consisting of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s passionate, often tempestuous, often swelling, piano solos as a foundation, Nordin builds a story of lost love and redemption, while director/choreographer Jessica Wallenfels gives this story a rich theatrical life.
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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Radio “State of Wonder”
by April Baer
January 15, 2015
Hand2Mouth Theatre is ramping up a new show that takes inspiration from Gus Van Sant’s 1991 celebrated film, “My Own Private Idaho.”
“Time, A Fair Hustler” will be produced in workshop format at the Fertile Ground festival this month.
Read the article at opb.org
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BroadwayWorld.com
Patrick Brassell
January 17, 2015
[Part of Fertile Ground 2015]
The Snowstorm is an unusual piece of theater, no doubt, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. You will be glad you saw it. You may even come out of the theater wanting to dance down the street. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Read the article at broadwayworld.com
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Lake Oswego Review
Barb Randall
January 15, 2015
Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival to begin January 22. Lake Oswego Review community editor make some picks on what to see this year.
Read the article at pamplinmedia.com
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
by David Stabler
January 13, 2015
The music of Sergei Rachmaninoff sweeps over listeners in waves of yearning, melancholy and nostalgia. Its dark, Russian sound, popular with audiences, evokes an old-world character, built on shifting harmonies and insistent rhythms that suggest obsession and roiling passion. That makes it perfect material for “The Snowstorm,” a new play about memory and fixation at CoHo Productions. The show is part of Fertile Ground, Portland’s city-wide festival of new work.
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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The Portland Tribune
by Jason Vondersmith
January 13, 2015
There’ll be some clowning around, ivory tickling, deer loving and dancing with bare midriffs at the seventh annual Fertile Ground Festival of new works, an annual event that allows playwrights, producers and artists to show what they can do in various forms — including fully-staged productions.
Read the article at portlandtribune.com
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The Oregonian/OregonLive
By David Stabler
January 12, 2015
Speed-dating night at Fertile Ground 2015 drew 14 “dates” to my table, and my head was spinning. That’s 14 quick downloads from actors, playwrights, producers and composers pitching their work at Portland’s 11-day mashup of new theater, dance and music.
Read the article at oregonlive.com
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WSUV teacher’s book comes to the stage
By The Columbian
January 12, 2015
Desiree Hellegers, associate professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver, has transformed her book about women and homelessness into a play.
Read the article at columbian.com
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Artslandia
A.L. Adams
January 2015
In Artslandia’s Jan/Feb playbills issue, A.L. Adams dishes up a great interview with Fertile Ground Festival Director Nicole Lane, addressing the Festival’s history and what’s being served up this year.
Read the article at artslandia.com
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BroadwayWorld.com
January 9, 2015
Lakewood Theatre Company will be presenting four original works January 24 – 31, 2015 in conjunction with Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival. Fertile Ground, sponsored by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, is a citywide festival focused on new work in the Arts.
Read the article at broadwayworld.com
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ArtsWatch
by A.L. Adams
January 9, 2015
Fertile Ground speaks for itself, in which the playwrights from the city’s festival of new works serve up a panoply of passages from their brave new works.
Read the article at orartswatch.org
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Portland Theatre Alliance Presents Fertile Ground Festival, 1/22-2/01
broadwayworld.com
November 28, 2014
Now in its seventh year, the Portland-grown Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Work continues to flourish planted in a town of prolific playwrights, abundant actors, innovative dancers, talented designers and adventuresome producers. With wide variety of new producers, along with several returning companies, FG15 brings dozens upon dozens of new artistic works from Portland’s teeming jungle of artists to light to thrive on stages, nooks and crannies all over Portland for 11 days from Thursday, January 22 to Sunday, February 1, 2015.
Read the article at broadwayworld.com.
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Groovin’ Greenhouse Returns to the Polaris Theatre
golocalpdx.com
December 24, 2014
Kemea Smith, GoLocalPDX Contributor
Polaris Dance Theatre is once again collaborating with the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work to present ‘Groovin’ Greenhouse,’ an incubator of local dance talent.
Groovin’ Greenhouse provides an accessible and intimate space for audiences to watch diverse, lively and engaging performances by Portland dancers and choreographers. The annual production returns to the stage for the 11-day arts festival, Fertile Ground Festival of New Work.
Read the article at golocalpdx.com!
Fertile Ground: one last look
Bob Hicks
Oregon Artswatch
February 3, 2014
The sprawling new-works festival spawns some hopefuls and the thrill of the new.
Read the article at orartswatch.org.
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Amy Freed’s ‘The Monster-Builder’ at Artists Rep entertains but also dishes up lots of food for thought: Theater review
Richard Wattenberg
The Oregonian
February 3, 2014
Amy Freed certainly knows how to write a wonderfully wild and witty play. Her new work “The Monster-Builder,” currently receiving its world premiere at Artists Repertory Theatre, is a broad comedy with humor ranging from sophisticated word play to crude sexual puns. It is also a penetrating thesis drama, a gothic melodrama, and a salient satire of artistic and intellectual elites all rolled into one. But that’s just scratching the surface. This is a play that entertains, but also leaves one with much to mull over afterwards.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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BWW Reviews: THE MONSTER-BUILDER Is a Devil of a Comedy at Artists Rep
Patrick Brassell
Broadway World Portland
February 2, 2014
One of the rules you learn as a young writer is that the beginning should set the tone for everything to follow. Whether you’re working on an essay, a screenplay, a novel, or a stage script, you should give your audience a sense of what they’re in for from the very beginning. A romantic comedy, for instance, shouldn’t begin with a brutal, bloody murder. A serious historical drama shouldn’t start off with a pie in the face. You get the idea.
Read the article at broadwayworld.com/portland.
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Fertile Ground Diaries: Revival
Enid Spitz
Willamette Week
February 2, 2014
As far as Christian revivalist conversion concerts go, Revival is surprisingly pleasant. Local folk band the Skidmore Bluffs don Amish-style outfits to become the Roving Wheels of Christ, led by the de-frocked Reverend Isaac Noble (Josh Gulotta). With their Mumford-esque ballads, the Roving Wheels would fit in at any Portland open-mic night. This self-produced musical, part of the Fertile Ground festival, is like theatrical Sunday school (it’s even held at a converted church in Northeast Portland), sardonically exploring the hypocrisy of modern faith with songs that pair Christ and cocaine.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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The Monster-Builder—Artists Rep—SW Portland
Dennis Sparks
February 2, 2014
This play does have some semblance to Ibsen’s The Master Builder or, perhaps, Faust. And it does include an unabashed, one-for-the-ages, bad-guy, in the guise Gregor (Michael Elich), an architect extraordinaire’. His purpose is quite straight-forward, really, it is, like all of history’s (and myth’s) ego-maniacal villains, to take over the world. His firm is titled, appropriately, The Final Solution (ring any bells from another madman from WWII history?).But he’s not interested in devouring land, like all good conquerors, but in re-shaping it, from the warmth and silence and majesty of Nature, to the cold, noisy, ugliness of concrete and steel, and glass and plastic. An unnatural, bastard son of Art, where people are like ants and Gregor is their god….where machines and computers and robots are the masters and the rest of us, lowly obedient subjects (shadows of things to come, perhaps?). Not too hard to understand, really, for a mad genius. He is, to say the least, an environmentalist’s worst nightmare.
Read the article at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: On finding love and letting it go, watching a rose blossom and die
Jamie Hale
The Oregonian
February 2, 2014
Everybody needs a companion. Whether it’s a lover, a family member or a friend, that human interaction is important. But making those connections, and remaining whole when they’re gone, is exceedingly difficult. Young playwright D.C. Copeland explored the hardships of connection in two short plays, “Merrily Down the Stream” and “The Truth According to Rose,” performed as staged readings at the Independent Publishing Resource Center on Saturday evening. The shows focused on both ends of the spectrum of connection: the frustration of blossoming young love and the wilting of the human spirit after death.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Hyphenventilating over ‘The Monster-Builder’
Oregon Artswatch
February 2, 2014
Amy Freed’s world-premiere comedy at Artists Rep brings a little Babel to the world of starchitects.
Read the article at orartswatch.org.
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FERTILE GROUND FLASH REVIEWS! #6 – STORIES: FROM TEEN GIRLS IN TRANSITION AT SELLWOOD PLAYHOUSE
Faddah Wolf
Portland Stage Reviews
February 1, 2014
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand we hit the final stretch in this year’s Portland Fertile Ground Theatre Festival. It’s been quite the week and then some – your dauntless theatre reviewer has had to hire a personal trainer and nutritionist, consume massive amounts of energy powder fruit smoothies, and hire a physical therapist to work out the kinks in the typing fingers. It’s been rough, y’all.
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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Pep Talk—Hand2Mouth Theatre at the Peninsula Park Community Center—N. Portland
Dennis Sparks
February 1, 2014
I suppose it is time for a pep talk to Congress, our local politicians, our society…anyone that’s still out there listening! (Is that cricket chirping I hear.) Tell them to ‘fess up and apologize for what they’ve done wrong, find out who/what they admire/believe in, what scares them, and what they want to be “when they grow up.” Want a lesson in how to do that? Might want to check out Pep Talk by the aforementioned coaches.
Read the article at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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Alicia Jo Rabins and A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff
OPB State of Wonder
Poet, musician, and Torah Scholar Alicia Jo Rabins is about to premier a new staged work exploring the world of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, the multi-billion dollar fraud he committed, and the spiritual dimension of these losses. See our show website for details on the upcoming performances.
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Fertile Ground 2014: Teenage girls share their tribulations and triumphs (review)
Deborah Kennedy
The Oregonian
January 31, 2014
It’s far too easy to dismiss the problems of teenage girls as insignificant, to assume the worst they have to worry about is what to wear and who to crush on next. “Stories from Teenage Girls in Transition,” running at the Sellwood Playhouse as part of the Fertile Ground Festival, is proof that many young women are, in fact, forced to face brutal realities of adult life long before they’re ready.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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FERTILE GROUND FLASH REVIEWS! #5 – LANCELIFE PRESENTS: “LIVE YOUR FUTURE, TODAY!”
Faddah Wolf
Portland Stage Reviews
January 30, 2014
Ah, the good ol’ U.S. of mother-lovin’ A., where, especially with the upcoming Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!,” and constant reminders of how “We’re Number ONE!,” flow through our National Zeitgeist, though we trail in education behind the likes of Canada, Finland and Korea, and in business the rest of the world seems giddy, even, to watch China eat our corporate lunch. But no matter — the point is, we feel like, and are constantly reminded in the most jingoistic fashion of the oft repeated litany of just how #1 and exceptional we are, that we can only achieve the best and the absolute top if we just keep telling ourselves that, despite watching all our friends lose cherry positions in the down-sizing corporate world and take up one or more service industry jobs just to keep afloat.
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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Fertile Ground Review: Bon Ton Roulet at the Shakespeare Cafe
A.L. Adams
Oregon Artswatch
January 31, 2014
Elizabeth Huffman’s new comedy is a spicily blended Shakespearean gumbo
Read on orartswatch.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: “Dear Momma” a lesson in religious cults and maternal devotion
Jamie Hale
The Oregonian
January 31, 2014
Our relationships with our mothers are complicated. No matter what they say or do, how much they nag or neglect, whether we adore them or abhor them, we will always be indebted to our moms. “Dear Momma” explores the middle ground between eternal love and resentment that many with complicated maternal relationships understand well. Our moms are supposed to always be there for us – so how are we supposed to feel when they aren’t?
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: A play about slavery, with laughs, in ‘American King Umps’: Review
David Stabler
The Oregonian
January 31, 2014
Can you find comedy in slavery? Who would dare try?
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Hand2Mouth’s “Pep Talk” Will Get You Off the Bench
Aaron Scott
Portland Monthly
January 30, 2014
The experimental theater elevates our spirits and our funny bones with its parody of that American hallmark: the motivational speech.
Read the article at portlandmonthlymag.com.
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American King Umps: A Midsummer Night’s Melodrama on the Tragedy of Slavery
Portland Monthly
January 30, 2014
Teaming up with East Coast director Jaye Austin Williams and Damaris Webb, New York–veteran playwright Don Wilson Glenn creates “a unique twist on the American slave experience.” Named after Glenn’s great-great-grandfather, Umps is loosely based on Glenn’s personal family history of slavery in Texas.
Read the article at portlandmonthlymag.com.
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Fertile Ground Review: Middle Names
A.L. Adams
Oregon Artswatch
January 30, 2014
When playwright Corey O’Hara and director Nate Cohen pitched me their play during Fertile Ground Speed Dating, I may have gotten the wrong impression. I heard “high stakes game of rock-paper-scissors,” and “the room ends up covered in paint,” and I thought “college comedy.” Maybe even slapstick. How else does paint get everywhere? (It’s Nickelodeon circa 1985, and you just said “I don’t know.”) I didn’t imagine the intractable tension and despair that would accompany these gestures. Maybe I would’ve, had they mentioned THE GUN. And yes, Chekhov, it fires.
Read the article at orartswatch.com.
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Theater and comedy merge at ‘ALL CAPS’
Rebecca Waits
Oregon Artswatch
January 30, 2014
Anyone who has ever been to a stand-up comedy open mic or befriended a theater major knows that sometimes, character-based comedy can be cringe-inducing. That’s why it was so exciting for me (full disclosure: I’m a comic) to see actor/comedian Scott Rogers’ curated show of local actors and comedians, ALL CAPS, displaying the best and most surreal character creations.
Read the article at orartswatch.com.
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My Walk Has Never Been Average
The Portland Observer
January 29, 2014
What is it like to be a black woman working in the construction trades in America? And if I’m not that woman, why should I care? How does her life impact mine?
Read the article at portlandobserver.com.
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Pep Talk (Hand2Mouth Theatre)
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Recebacca Jacobson
Willamette Week
January 29, 2014
We sit on hard benches under the fluorescent lighting of a gym in North Portland’s Peninsula Park Community Center, clad in violet jerseys bearing a mascot that seems to be half-unicorn, half-mermaid—a mermicorn, if you will. I clutch a purple-and-silver pompom. A giant label emblazoned “JACOBSON” is affixed to my chest. Earlier, I’d been summoned (“Johnson! Manson! Jacobson!”) to play a round of foosball before the audience. At this moment, the four-member ensemble—our quartet of coaches—pontificates about Wayne Gretzky. “Are they fucking with us?” my friend whispers. I’m unsure how to answer.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Football for Theater Kids: Hand2Mouth’s “Alt Super Bowl”
Allison Hallett
Portland Mercury
January 28, 2014
Oh, look, I don’t care about football. I like beer and snacks and halftime shows that involve Beyoncé, but the actual sitting-around-watching-sports part isn’t really my thing. Which is why Hand2Mouth Theatre’s “Alt Superbowl” on Sunday promises to be lots of fun, for those of us who like everything about Super Bowl parties but the Super Bowl: At both of their Sunday showings of Pep Talk (3 pm & 8 pm), your $15 ticket includes beer, pizza, and chips, as well as halftime entertainment from breakdancers Moon Patrol Crew.
Read the article at portlandmercury.com.
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REVIEW: POST5’S SOUND AND FURY PRESENTS: THERAPY HUNGER
Matt Styner
Portland Stage Reviews
January 28, 2014
In a time where there’s a pill for just about everything that ails you, it can be tremendously overwhelming as to what actually helps and what just makes things worse. Everything has side effects, and that’s something the darkly funny short Therapy Hunger aims to point out.
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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‘The Monster-Builder’ explores power, seduction and the ills of big architecture
Jamie Hale
The Oregonian
January 28, 2014
The Artists Repertory Theatre has a beautiful building. The theater takes up the better part of a city block on Southwest Morrison, and inside offers a sprawling, open lobby and two intimate stages. You get a feeling that theater is not just welcome in the building, but revered. It’s a fitting location to house a new play that explores power, seduction and the importance of buildings.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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FERTILE GROUND FLASH REVIEWS! #4 – ALL CAPS CHARACTER COMEDY AT THE JACK LONDON BAR 1
Faddah Wolf
Portland Stage Reviews
January 28, 2014
The Fertile Ground fest has been fruitful (to stretch the metaphor past redemption) folks, but exhausting. So where to go for some libation, a decent shrimp cocktail and a brief but needed respite? Why the basement of the Rialto Pool Room (adjacent to their off-track equine wagering and other true “success stories,” as this production reminds us), to the thinking man’s watering hole (almost literally), the Jack London Bar. Definitely for those who want to explore strange, new territories with a spirit of adventure.
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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Fertile Ground Diaries: Therapy Hunger
Savannah Wasserman
Willamette Week
January 26, 2014
Therapy Hunger, written by Post5 Theatre’s Cassandra Boice and directed by her husband Ty, takes a stab at addressing the perceived need for psychiatric drugs in today’s society. Boice plays a troubled young woman who visits a number of therapists for her problems, including A.D.D., O.C.D., bulimia, sexual insecurities and anxiety. Her therapists are made out to be buffoons who poke fun at her personal turmoil, prescribing her countless drugs to solve her issues. There are several funny moments, as when sex therapist (Chip Sherman) demonstrates how Boice can stretch her lady parts and talks to her “vuh-JEEN,” or when her A.D.D. therapist (Maya Seifel)—who seems to have A.D.D. herself—rambles excessively about her own life.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Fertile Ground Review: Groovin’ Greenhouse
A.L. Adams
Oregon Artswatch
January 26, 2014
Polaris premiered new works in progress, and opened its annual showcase with Automal and PDX Dance Collective.
Read the article at oregonartswtch.com.
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Fertile Ground Diaries: Bon Ton Roulet at the Shakespeare Cafe
Savannah Wasserman
Willamette Week
January 27, 2014
With comical performances and a modern-day twist on the Shakespearean voice, Bon Ton Roulet at the Shakespeare Cafe is a high-energy, engaging show set in New Orleans during the liveliest time of year, Mardi Gras.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: ‘Groovin’ Greenhouse’ a dance incubator and showcase
The Oregonian
January 26, 2014
Black socks and bare legs were on display at Saturday night’s iteration of “Groovin’ Greenhouse,” an incubator for new dance, now in its fourth annual run at the Fertile Ground festival.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Bon Ton Roulet at the Shakespeare Café—Post 5 Theatre—NE Portland
Dennis Sparks
Dennis Sparks Reviews
January 26, 2014
This is an amazing and very successful experiment by Huffman, combining dialogues, monologues and characters from Shakespeare’s comedies and sonnets to make an understandable story that takes place in a bar in modern-day New Orleans. It is said that the Bard was a universal storyteller, that his works could be adapted to any time and place, and this just proves the point. The great Japanese film director, Kurosawa, made Ran (King Lear) and Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and even the Hollywood musical had a turn with the Bard in West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet).
Read the article at dennissparksreviews.blogspot.com.
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FERTILE GROUND FLASH REVIEWS! #2 – SINCERELY, AT CAMI CURTIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Faddah Wolf
Portland Stage Reviews
January 26, 2014
Saturday, Day 3 at the Portland Fertile Ground Theatre Festival and your dauntless reviewer continues on. Dance performance in a dark studio at midday? If it must be (and after a few more required cups of coffee)…
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: Anger in its many-splendored forms in ‘Middle Names’
David Stabler
The Oregonian
January 26, 2014
White-hot anger. Cold, simmering anger. Dumb, incoherent anger.
“Middle Names” gives us anger in its many-splendored forms in Corey O’Hara’s new play at Fertile Ground. Directed by Nate Cohen, two young men and a very pregnant woman hole up in a steamy motel room you wouldn’t want your dog to stay in. Eliot is 17, still naïve despite being twice married and a jittery coke addict, wanted in seven states. Raymon is tall, lean, cynical and about to become a father with Birchie, who is exhausted and bloated.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground Review: ‘Heirloom’
A.L. Adams
Oregon Artswatch
January 26, 2014
Certain elements of the human experience, beloved and necessary in real life, are too often dismissed or derided in post-modern art. For instance, try to show femininity, youth, sensuality, social commentary, or humor to seasoned contemporary dance connoisseurs, and just see what they say: “OB-vious,” they may drone. “Commercial,” they might hiss. (Which is to say, “appealing,” which is to imply, “appealing to the lowest common denominator.”)
Read the article at oregonartswatch.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: “Pep Talk” digs deep with the audience for real inspiration
Jamie Hale
The Oregonian
January 24, 2014
Building a show on the foundation of undying positivity can be tricky. Audiences like to feel good about a show, but they don’t always like a feel-good show. With “Pep Talk,” Hand2Mouth Theatre manages the tough task of putting on a feel-good show that comes across as neither mawkish nor naïve, and they do it with flying colors.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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FERTILE GROUND FLASH REVIEWS! #1 – BON TON ROULET AT THE SHAKESPEARE CAFÉ AT POST FIVE THEATRE
Faddah Wolf
Portland Stage Reviews
January 25, 2014
Let us face facts, dear theatre-going reader: there is NO WAY IN BLOODY HELL to see, let alone write a decent review for everything that is in our beloved Fertile Ground Theatre festival. Not unless you clone me and then force feed each of us a cocktail of speed drugs like a foie gras goose. And that ain’t happening. So the compromise you get is me dragging my sorry, middle-aged butt into many drafty theatres and rickety old metal folding chairs and then quickly penning a few paragraphs of review for you. Usually over a Belgian ale and frites. Feel my pain, dear readers. Feel it.
Read the article at portlandstagereviews.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: New Orleans on Mardi Gras with Will Shakespeare
David Stabler
The Oregonian
January 25, 2014
Three pairs of lovers walk into a bar.
OK, I don’t have a punchline and but who needs punchlines when you have Shakespeare? We’re sitting at café tables in Post5 Theatre’s black box just off northeast 82nd Avenue, and the bard’s beautiful language fills the air for two hours, Friday night.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground Diaries: Lust & Marriage
Rebecca Jacobson
Willamette Week.
January 24, 2014
Eleanor O’Brien has spent a long time creating shows about sex. GGG: Dominatrix for Dummies, about her misadventures in a house of domination, was her first solo show (I reviewed it back in 2011), and she’s been honing it for a decade. In 2009, for the inaugural Fertile Ground festival of new works, she premiered Inviting Desire, an ensemble production in which the performers related their deepest erotic fantasies (Ben Waterhouse saw a version a few months later). She’s since mounted other versions of Inviting Desire that have riffed on sexual freedom, group sex and polyamory.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: ‘Remme’s Run’ uses technical wizardry in true tale of frontiersman Louis Remme’s epic race to Portland
The Oregonian
January 24, 2014
At “Remme’s Run,” one of several brand-new shows to kick off Portland’s Fertile Ground festival on a cold, blustery Thursday, costumed ushers asked ticketholders to write suggestions on the back of their programs and hand them in after the show.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground: The End of Sex? Ah, there’s the rub
Bob Hicks
Oregon Arts Watch
January 24, 2014
Craig Jessen’s new comedy imagines the consequences of a sex super-drug. It ain’t all roses and chocolates.
Read the article at oregonartswatch.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: ‘The End of Sex’ is a sexy play with a big heart
Deborah Kennedy
The Oregonian
January 24, 2014
Anyone who thinks the mid-lunch orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally” is edgy, think again. Craig Jessen’s, “The End of Sex,” running now through Feb. 15 at Theatre Vertigo, makes Meg Ryan’s expertly faked ecstasy look like child’s play. Not only is there a scene in which four characters climax at once – to the tune of “Ave Maria” – but this is the only show I’ve seen that portrays an extremely amorous pig farmer in a sympathetic light.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground 2014: We can’t sleep, we’re gonna drown and other insanity at ‘4×4=Musicals’: review
David Stabler
The Oregonian
January 24, 2014
We’re on life rafts, tipping and swaying and dancing for our lives.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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The End of Sex – Theatre Vertigo
Matthew Smith
Artslandia Magazine
What if you could experience the act of sexual congress without all the inconvenience of personal intimacy or clothing removal? What if all it took to achieve le petit mort was a dab of ointment or cream on your finger or neck no larger than what you would normally apply to a zit or cold sore? This is the premise of Craig Jessen’s new play The End of Sex now in its world premiere run at Theatre Vertigo under the direction of Brian Wooley.
Read the article at artslandia.com.
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Fertile Ground Review: 4×4=Musical
Animals, dolls, and hammy humor = all-ages fun…with a dash of panache from the founder.
A.L. Adams
Oregon Arts Watch
January 23, 2014
Last weekend, 4×4=Musicals had a cheeky kickoff, as curator Mark LaPierre summoned “dance translator” Lane Hunter to the stage to help with the opening announcements. Hunter promptly whipped off his pants and began pliéing and pantomiming to the crowd. But this was a mere shadow of the silliness to come.
Read the article at oregonartswatch.com.
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Fertile Ground Field Guide 2014
Ally Bordas
Portland Monthly
January 23, 2014
With the sun shining, it’s easy to hope spring comes early. When it comes to performance, though, spring always does by way of the Fertile Ground festival of new works.
Read the article at portlandmonthlymag.com
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The Short List
Jason Vondersmith
Portland Tribune
January 23, 2014
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works begins Jan. 23; last week the Tribune wrote a story about some of the groups involved (www.portlandtribune.com), but here are some more…
Read the article at portlandtribune.com
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The End of Sex (Theatre Vertigo)
More onstage orgasms than at Rocky Horror
Rebecca Jacobson
Willamette Week
January 22, 2014
The tagline is irresistible: “sex without sex.” That’s what this new drug promises, the ability to slather your elbows or knuckles or ears with a wonder cream that temporarily remaps sexual sensation. “Why does my ass feel like my clit?” asks one character, bewildered as she backs into the counter—and then keeps massaging herself against it.
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Ripe For The Picking
Harvesting Fertile Ground’s best bets.
Willamette Week
January 22, 2014
Navigating the annual Fertile Ground festival can feel like cultivating a phenomenally overgrown garden. There are a few things you want (kale, raspberries, butterflies), but also many you don’t (weeds, slugs, all that extra zucchini). That’s the thing about the 11-day spree of new local works: Because it’s an uncurated festival, anyone can mount a show. Presenters range from some of the city’s bigger theater and dance companies to troupes that disappear once the fest closes. The result is a dizzying range in style, subject and, well, quality. Still, at only $50 for an unlimited festival pass (events are also individually ticketed), you learn to deal with some mealy tomatoes alongside the perfect plums.
Read the artciel at wweek.com.
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5 things to do in Portland this weekend, January 24-26
Jamie Hale
oregonlive.com
January 23, 2014
4. Fresh Theater: The Fertile Ground festival is all about new works in theater and art. Starting today and running through Feb. 2, the festival will feature work from up-and-comers and veterans alike. There are plenty of shows to choose from, so check out our guides to the festival.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Curating the Uncurated The Mercury’s Fertile Ground Picks
Allison Hallett
Portland Mercury
January 22, 2014
In the six years since it was founded, the Fertile Ground Festival has come to serve as a deadline for the entire performance community: In January, New Work Will Be Made. So It Has Been Written.
Read more at portlandmercury.com.
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Aliens, Slideshows, Liza Minelli, and Other Joys of Fertile Ground 2014
TJ Acena
pqmonthly.com
January 22, 2014
Fertile Ground, Portland’s annual festival of new performance-based art, starts this weekend. If you are not familiar with Fertile Ground, get hip to it — you’ll find theatre, staged readings, musicals, comedy, puppetry, and dance numbers from a very wide array of Portland companies. Many of the things you’ll see are world premieres and some only go up once — so, there are no previews and no reviews, meaning that you need to trust your guts and go boldly into the unknown.
Read more at pqmonthly.com.
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The big weekend, Portland Opera’s 50th year, much more
Barry Johnson
Oregon Arts Watch
January 21, 2014
Playwrights West, the illustrious gathering of mostly Portland playwrights, has joined forces with Artists Repertory Theatre for a series of new play readings this winter and spring, Flash Reads. The first two on the schedule are part of Fertile Ground.
Read the article at oregonrtswatch.org.
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Fertile Ground City‐Wide Festival of New Work is back.
Dmae Roberts
stageandstudio.com
January 18, 2014
Dmae talks with festival director Nicole Lane and two of the groups features: Playwrite with executive director/founder Bruce Livingston and Passin’ Art Theatre with director Jaye Austin Williams of American King Umps.
Listen to the podcast and more information at stageandstudio.com.
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Before FG14 begins, participants and press check each other out. The result: controlled pandemonium
Bob Hicks
Oregon Artswatch
January 19, 2014
Last week A.L. Adams and I went speed-dating. We sat next to each other at a big table, and the lines were so long we didn’t say a word to each other or even make eye contact until the whole sweaty ordeal was over. So many potential relationships. So little time.
Read the article at oregonartswatch.com.
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Zany, sci-fiesque ‘Waterman’ from Action/Adventure Theatre back for Fertile Ground Festival this year
Holly Johnson
Oregon Music News
January 16, 2104
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Work in Portland provides a generous arena for original local talent, and as part of the event, Action/Adventure Theater has taken advantage of being different and daring with The Waterman, a musical first produced last year at the fete. Created by comedians Sam De Roest and Kyle Acheson, who also perform in the piece, Waterman earned some stellar reviews when it first opened in 2013, and went on to premiere on television in May of last year on a community access network.
Read the article at oregonmusicnews.com.
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New works of theater, dance and comedy fill Portland’s stages every January.
Oregon Arts Watch
Travel Portland
Early birds, script-chasers, workshop-watchers and culture vultures already know: Fertile Ground Festival (Jan. 23 – Feb. 2, 2014) is where you go to see Portland’s newest performance works first.
Read the article at travelportland.com.
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Fertile Ground grows local arts
Jason Vondersmith
The Portland Tribune
January 16, 2014
Writers, producers, actors, dancers and all their performance kin are looking forward to the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, a 11-day, citywide event starting Jan. 23 that has earned the reputation of being the perfect proving ground.
Read the article at portlandtribune.com.
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Generations struggle in play’s changing world
Ellen Spitaleri
The Portland Tribune
January 15, 2014
“Entanglement,” the second play in New Century Players’ current season, racks up several firsts: it is the first time the group has put on a play by a local author; it is the first time NCP has been part of Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival; and it is the first time director Colin Murray has worked with the group.
Read the article at portlandtribune.com.
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Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival Nurtures New Theater Works, And Musicals Are Part Of The Scene
Holly Johnson
Oregon Music News
January 14, 2014
It’s a great panacea for the dark winter months. And it’s grown right here in Portland soil. Fresh works, theater pieces in progress, experimental staging, world premieres, multi-disciplinary entertainment and more mark the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work, which takes place in venues throughout Portland every January and February. From musicals to comedy acts, dance concerts to dramas, from works presented at major theater companies to bare-bones fringe offerings, it’s all here for the sampling. Presented by the Portland Theatre Alliance, the home-grown fete gives fledgling playwrights, composers, directors and producers a chance to be seen and heard. Seventy five productions Jan. 23 through Feb. 2 are offered during this sixth annual event of frenzied local creativity.
Read the article at oregonmusicnews.com.
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Fertile Ground: Your Guide To Portland’s 11-Day Festival Of New Plays, Musicals, Dance, Comedy
David Stabler
oregonlive.com
January 14, 2014
Fertile Ground isn’t just a fringe festival. It’s not just a play festival. It’s also not easy to get your head around.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Forty Schools Featured At Preschool Forum, Portland Opera Concert, Family History Workshops: Lake Oswego Events
Vickie Kavanagh
oregonlive.com
January 14, 2014
Lakewood Fertile Ground Festival: The Lakewood Theatre Company presents four original plays in conjunction with Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, a citywide festival sponsored by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance that focuses on new work in the arts.
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Speed Dating At Fertile Ground: Portland Creatives Pitch Their Best Ideas From The Annual Festival Of New Work
David Stabler
oregonlive.com
January 10, 2014
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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Fertile Ground Festival of New Work 2014 to Kick Off Jan 23
broadwayworld.com
January 4, 2014
Read the article at broadwayworld.com.
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PoMo Picks: January 2014 (Including ART’s FG show The Monster Builder)
portlandmonthlymag.com
January 2, 2014
Read the article at portlandmonthlymag.com.
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Portland’s ‘Second Season’: Late Winter’s Best In Theater, Music And Dance With Fertile Ground, Sam Shepard And More
David Stabler
oregonlive.com
December 30, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
The Oregonian’s Marty Hughley reviews H2M’s “Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart” and calls out some of his FG13 favorites for his wrap article on this year’s Festival.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
February 3, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com!
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Portland Society Page.com weighs in with coverage of the 2013 Fertile Ground Festival.
Elisa Klein
Portland Society Page
January 30, 2013
Read the article at portlandsocietypage.com!
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“Particularly for a world premiere, Ward’s script is impressive.” says Aaron Scott of CoHo Productions’ “International Falls,” among many other accolades.
Aaron Scott
Portland Monthly
January 29, 2013
Read the article at Portland Monthly!
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“Every January, when the weak among us consider moving to sunnier climes, the local theater community launches a compelling reason to stick around…”
Portland Mercury
January 28, 2013
Read the article at Portland Mercury!
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With C.S. Whitcomb’s staged reading of “The Seven Wonders of Chipping” at Artists Rep, Willamette Week’s Enid Spitz says: “This is not the reading for theatergoers seeking to feed their disillusionment or indulge their misanthropic tendencies. It will, however, prompt a chuckle and (dare I write it) pull at your heartstrings.”
Enid Spitz
Willamette Week
January 28, 2013
Read the article at wweek.com.
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Full review of CoHo’s “International Falls,” plus coverage and short reviews of “The Huntsmen,” “R3,” “4×4=8 Musicals,” “The Seven Wonders of Chipping,” and “Feral.”
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 27, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com!
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Reviews of “Feral” and “Ribbons of War” come in on ArtsWatch.
A.L. Adams
ArtsWatch
January 27, 2013
Read the article at orartswatch.org!
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On “Feral” a play by Bruce Hostetler on homelessness in Portland, Willamette Week’s Rebecca Jacobson writes, ”
in its best moments Feral is an impassioned piece of theater that serves as a humane, sobering and occasionally wry reminder of the scope of human experience.”
Rebecca Jacobson
Willamette Week
January 27, 2013
Read the article at wweek.com!
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On the workshop production of Stacey Hallal’s “Ruby Rocket,” Willamette Week’s Enid Spitz says, “The man-eating, whiskey-drinking private detective makes up for any deficiency in suaveness with plenty of spunk.”
Enid Spitz
Willamette Week
January 26, 2013
Read the article at wweek.com!
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Barry Johnson writes full review of Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s “R3,” a new adaptation of “Richard III,” directed by Gisela Cardenas saying it is a production he still feels.
Barry Johnson
ArtsWatch.org
January 25, 2013
Read the article at ArtsWatch!
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We love this ArtsWatch post! Direct from the producers…few provocative quotes from the productions that will make your head spin…AND why this Festival is so much fun…
A.L. Adams & Barry Johnson
ArtsWatch
January 24, 2013
Read the article at ArtsWatch!
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Care to jump into the fray with crowd-sourcing 50-word reviews to post and read? Each FG13 show will have a post with all related links, reviews and comments on www.portlandtheatrescene.com.
Win Goodbody
Portland Theatre Scene
January 24, 2013
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Collecting food for thought, Portland Monthly’s “Culturephile” went out and “asked the producers to send us an anticipatory question that they’d like the audience to enter their performance with—a question that somehow sets up the show, hints at what’s to come, or frames how they’d like us to think about the work.”
Aaron Scott
Portland Monthly
January 24, 2013
Read the article at Portland Monthly!
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Awkrad by auGi Garred produced by Robert Gray Middle School and featuring students get a feature write up!
examiner.com
January 24, 2013
Read the article at examiner.com!
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“Fertile Ground is Portland’s Unruliest Arts Festival” reads the Portland Mercury headline.
Alison Hallett
Portland Mercury
January 23, 2013
Read the article at portlandmercury.com!
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Willamette Week celebrates Fertile Ground’s 5th Birthday saying, “The Festival pass remains a bargain at $50. Presenters include heavy hitters as well as freshly hatched companies, and works range from bare-bones readings to fully staged productions.” The WW article features solid reviews of several shows.
Rebecca Jacobsen
Willamette Week
Jan 23, 2013
Read the article at wweek.com!
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Stage & Studio’s Dmae Roberts does an in-dept interview with Susan Mach the playwright of TWO plays having World Premieres at the same time in Fertile Ground.
Dmae Roberts
Stage & Studio KBOO
January 22, 2013
Read the article at stagenstudio.com!
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A festival pass will run you $50, which is pretty damn good considering that even if you only stick to the festival’s upper canopy (!! the plant puns are just irresistible)…
Alison Hallett
Portland Mercury
January 17, 2013
Read the article at portlandmercury.com!
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Fest it up with chocolate, jazz, old-time music and performing arts: downtown and Northwest weekend entertainment roundup…
Sara Hottman
The Oregonian
January 18, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com!
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Marty Hughley writes about Fertile Ground talking about how the Festival stretches artistic fitness, an overall look and he makes some recommendations, too.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian, A&E
January 18, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com.
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A a sneak-peek at some of the fabulously queer theatrical works coming to local stages with Fertile Ground.
Julie Cortez
PQ Monthly
Jan 17, 2013
Read the article at pqmonthly.com
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KZME’s “ArtlecticPDX” host Dennise Kowalczyk talks with Festival Director Nicole Lane about Fertile Ground and what’s hot for this year’s festival.
KZME
January 9, 2013
Listen at kzme.fm!
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Dmae Roberts of “Stage & Studio” featured Fertile Ground on KBOO. She spoke with Richard Moore (music/lyricist of “Rain! The Musical”), Robert Guitron (Polaris Dance Theatre’s “Groovin Greenhouse”) and Festival Director Nicole Lane…all about FG13 and some music, too!
Dmae Roberts
KBOO
Listen at stageenstudio.com!
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Part Time Playhouse, a local black box theatre on live television, at Metro East Community Media, broadcast a Fertile Ground 2013 Preview Special. The show featured performance excepts from RIBBONS OF WAR by Andrew Fridae, THE GODMOTHER by Sandra de Helen, FORTUNE COOKIES by Donna Barrow, HAIL! by Sally Stember, and interviews with Miriam Feder of PDXPlaywrights and Festival Director Nicole Lane.
Archie Washington
Host & Producer
Part Time Playhouse
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The SE Examiner covers Fertile Ground with a eye on events at SE venues like Theatre Theatre, Milepost 5, Hipbone Studio, Bob White Theatre Warehouse, Shaking the Tree Studio and featuring the “Ripen” series at Milepost 5!
SE Examiner
January 11, 2013
Read the article at southeastexaminer.com.
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More Fertile Ground love from The Oregonian, saying “Fertile Ground is a great way to catch promising creative projects as they come together, as well as one of the city’s unsung entertainment bargains.”
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 9, 2013
Read the article at oregonlive.com!
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The Oregonian kicks off local press about Fertile Ground.
By Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 4, 2013
Read the coverage at oregonlive.com!
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“Sometimes it seems like Portland’s soggy winters are good only for growing mold and mushrooms, as everything else pulls into its shell or a good book. But these dark days of introspection also nurture one of Portland’s most verdant arts festivals: Fertile Ground. ”
Editor’s Pick
portlandmonthlymag.com
Decmber 26, 2012
Read the article at portlandmonthlymag.com
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT
Nicole Lane
Festival Director
nicolealane@comcast.net
360.601.4298
Portland’s 5th Fertile Ground Festival flourishes
almost 90 acts of creation in theatre, dance, multidisciplinary arts
from 50 Producers at venues across Portland for 10 days
…and, as always, growing…
PORTLAND, OREGON – Advance Release – November 24, 2012 – Now in its fifth year, the Portland-grown Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Work continues to flourish planted in a town of prolific playwrights, abundant actors, innovative dancers, talented designers and adventuresome producers. With many returning companies as well as new producers, FG13 brings dozens upon dozens of new artistic works from Portland’s teeming jungle of artists to light to thrive on stages, nooks and crannies all over Portland for 10 days from Thursday, January 24 to Sunday, February 3, 2013.
Shining out through the winter darkness, Fertile Ground offers an astonishing breadth of creative work for the stage, compressed into 10 of the darkest and wettest days of the Portland calendar. Many major theatre companies, dance companies and more are participating, presenting new work as a world premiere or a piece in development with a myriad of workshop productions of theatre and dance, staged readings, readings and multidisciplinary events at all times of the day. In addition to seasoned producers, dozens of small, local producers, playwrights and choreographers are also choosing to offer their work for this collaborative Portland showcase festival.
TICKET INFORMATION
Single tickets for all festival events are purchased directly through the producing companies.
→ All access Festival Passes are only $50 and are available on the Fertile Ground website: www.fertilegroundpdx.org
FG13 PROGRAMMING INFORMATION
Event listings ATTACHED. Beginning in December, a printed Festival Guide will be available in theatre lobbies around town and production descriptions, locations, times and ticket information will be accurate on the Fertile Ground website: www.fertilegroundpdx.org
Key producers this year include Artists Repertory Theatre, CoHo Productions, Hand2Mouth Theatre, Portland Playhouse, Third Rail Repertory Theatre, and more along with many emerging theatre companies, individual playwrights and chorographers. For FG13, MilePost5 presents a group of works called “Ripen,” Polaris Dance Theatre presents the “Groovin Greenhouse” again with a variety of choreographers and dance groups, and PDX Playwrights presents a phenomenal 17 staged readings. Full project listings are attached.
Fertile Ground Festival of New Work 2013
Presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance
Dates: January 24- February 3, 2013
Venue: City-wide, check website or Festival Guide for locations
Tickets: All ticket information at www.fertilegroundpdx.org
Individual Event tickets sold through each producer can be accessed through www.fertilegroundpdx.org
Festival Passes: $50 – www.fertilegroundpdx.org
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Work is presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance. Festival organizers are comprised of individuals who strongly believe in showcasing Portland’s vibrant creativity.
PHOTO LINK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fertilegroundportland/
What Makes Fertile Ground Unique. Several theatre companies across the nation host “new works festivals” and nearly all of these festivals present “staged readings,” works-in-progress curated by the artistic aesthetic of one company’s artistic staff. They are also typically exclusive to genre. In contrast, the Fertile Ground Festival presents a non-curated collection of fully staged world premiere productions in theatre and dance, as well as workshop and staged reading productions, and more. Fertile Ground is about process as well as product in creative development. This festival is the collaborative work of our local artistic community expressing the mother lode of creative capacities, in a quintessentially Portland manner.
Fertile Ground was launched by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (the service organization for Portland theatre artists and organizations) in 2009 to provide a platform for Portland theatre companies to showcase their commitment to new work, but the Festival has grown to embrace many forms of new works in art allowing Portland’s arts lovers to discover Portland’s truly fertile ground for creativity, innovation and daring acts of performance.
Fertile Ground 2012 is a program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance and is currently sponsored by The Oregonian/OregonLive.com, Artslandia, KINK Radio, KBOO Community Radio, KZME Radio, and with cultural tourism support from Travel Portland and the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
# # #
“Joseph Fisher’s ebulliently sordid (I Am Still) the Duchess of Malfi is less an updating of John Webster’s original Jacobean revenge drama than it is a romp in its macabre sandbox. The plot and characters have been jumbled and streamlined into a violently dissonant two-act that winkingly borrows tropes from camp and noir.”
by Matthew Korfhage
Willamette Week
January 18, 2012
Read it HERE
Famished (Portland Playhouse) – “Eugenia Woods nibbles away at our neuroses. Given the amount of ink spilled on our other basic desires—sex, love, wealth and power—the number of plays that address hunger is surprisingly small. This is not true of any other art form; there have been books about eating as long as there have been books (see Genesis) and food, in its still-running form, was the subject of the earliest human paintings.”
by Ben Waterhouse
Willamette Week
January 25, 2012
Read it HERE
“Although you may have thought the vampire craze had long since reached critical mass and collapsed under its own bulging excess, it appears the trend has not yet been staked in the heart Walking the line somewhere between the chaste, no-biting-till-marriage vampires of Twilight and the fuck-anything-that-moves vamps of True Blood is Bite Me a Little, a vampire musical by local playwright and composer Arlie Conner.”
by Penelope Bass
Willamette Week
January 26, 2012
Read it HERE
Groovin’ Greenhouse – “Fertile Ground is best known for its showcases of new theater works, but the festival also nurtures dance in development in its Groovin’ Greenhouse series.”
by Brett Campbell
Willamette Week
January 31, 2012
Read it HERE
“Artists Repertory Theater’s staged reading of Claire Willett’s ambitious history science theater follows works like “Proof,” “Dr. Atomic,” “Copenhagen,” in seeking connections between universal phenomena and human behavior. ”
by Brett Campbell
Willamette Week
January 31, 2012
Read it HERE
“Readers Theatre Repertory’s staged reading of David Berkson’s melancholy comedy runs a real risk: an initially unsympathetic, self-pitying narcissist protagonist gains self-knowledge from a dying child, with lots of literary references. But every time bathos or sentimentality threaten to swell, Berkson punctures it with deft humor.”
by Brett Campbell
Willamette Week
January 31, 2012
Read it HERE
Big Plastic Heroes (SexyNurd Productions) – “Storytellers auGi and Slash Coleman borrow Triangle Productions’ new theater space, the Sanctuary, for a night of storytelling based around the idea of heroism. The two halves of the show are anchored by stories from Coleman and auGi, respectively, plus supplemental stories from two other local performers (on the night I attended, Andrew Bynum nearly stole the whole show with an account of becoming a US Marine).”
by Alison Hallett
The Portland Mercury
February 1, 2012
Read it HERE
“In the middle of a vast land of Fertile Ground grows a forest. And in this forest are many things both wondrous and terrible: an innocent sleeping beauty, a brave frog prince, an intrepid, high-climbing boy named Jack, and fearsome beasts both animal and man.”
by Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 30, 2012
Read it HERE
4×4=8. Yes, they know the math is wrong, but the title is still apt. Live on Stage Productions’ contribution to the Fertile Ground festival consists of eight short musicals, each performed on a 4-foot by 4-foot stage.
By Marianna Hane Wiles
Willamette Week
January 27, 2012
Read it HERE
There’s a reason fairy tales have been plumbed for art’s sake so deeply: they’re bottomless. Murky with our fears, desires and other shadowy drives, the stories of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and the like consist of just the sort of muck in which artists love to play.
By Jonathan Frochtzwajg
Willamette Week
January 27, 2012
Read it HERE
The Grand Guignol was a Parisian French theater that reveled in the kind of horror you’re not supposed to like but do. The fourth installment of Third Eye Theatre’s experiment with the genre features eye gouging, the mentally disabled and a guy who thinks he’s a glass of orange juice.
By Aaron Spencer
Willamette Week
January 27, 2012
Read it HERE
Tues. Jan.24th at 11am on KBOO 90.7 FM & Sat. Jan.28th at 11am on KZME 107.1 FM Dmae Roberts presents a ‘Making Change’ feature story of the women behind Stories: From Survivors of the Sex Trade, a performance produced by Lunacy Stageworks. And in the second part of the show, we’ll hear from Samantha Van Der Merwe about The Tripping Point, an exhibition of fairytale installations at Shaking The Tree Theatre.
By Dmae Roberts
Stage and Studio on KBOO & KZME
January 24, 2012
Read it HERE
Arts America writer Jessie Drake names and nicknames her top picks from Opening Weekend of Fertile Ground 2012.
by Jessie Drake
Arts America
January 23, 2012
Read it HERE
“…for artists and audiences alike, the festival is a sign that whether we like things salty or sweet, whether we’re after understanding or just amusement, we’re perpetually hungry for stories.”
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 23, 2012
Read it HERE
Fertile Ground to include works by Lake Oswego playwriters: Billy & Steve Rathje (“Fight Call”) and Molly Norton (guest storyteller, Big Plastic Heroes).
Lake Oswego Review
West Linn Tidings
January 21, 201
Read it HERE
“Now in its fourth year, the festival’s stated goal is to “provide a platform for Portland theater companies to showcase their commitment to new work.” Local performers have enthusiastically taken up that challenge—this year, Fertile Ground boasts more than 100 shows, staged readings, and workshop productions, including 16 fully staged world premieres (up from eight in the festival’s first year).”
By Alison Hallett
Portland Mercury
January 19, 2012
Read it HERE
“This may be the bleak midwinter in some respects, but in terms of Portland theater it’s a time of peak activity. The fourth annual Fertile Ground festival has buds of creative endeavor shooting up in dozens of sites around the city. The 11-day showcase of new, locally-generated performance includes more intriguing shows — from fully staged productions to bare-bones readings — to detail at one time.”
by Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 19, 2012
Read it HERE
“After many revisions and various permutations, their (Klay and Brent Rogers’) musical Oil Change the Musical Comedy will be presented as a staged reading with live musical accompaniment and choreography for the public to view as part of Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, a late-January event featuring new theater and dance works.”
by Holly Johnson
Oregon Music News
January 19, 2012
Read it HERE
“The Fertile Ground Festival takes over Portland for ten days every January. Above all, it’s an exciting time when artists from around the city put on new work for the Portland community to enjoy. Portland Center Stage is home to many professional theater artists, but this isn’t the only place where they can flex their acting, writing and directing muscles. Other opportunities are always out there for the aspiring actor, writer or director – even one who may be masquerading in a completely different “9 to 5″ job.”
Portland Center Stage blog
January 19, 2012
Read it HERE
“Murder, conspiracy and apocalypse! No, it’s not the latest Ron Paul slogan. As grim as the farcical presidential race has become, it has nothing on some of the bloody, unsettling and bizarre plays premiering at this year’s Fertile Ground Festival. So get out there and take in a little light entertainment—that is, if you’ve got the guts.”
by Ben Waterhouse
Willamette Week
January 18, 2012
Read it HERE
KZME Radio’s Dennise Kowalczyk talks with Festival Director Nicole Lane about this year’s Festival.
January 15, 2012
Listen HERE
Oil Change the Musical “Feisty fun, racing and romance fuel this family-friendly comedy featuring 18 diverse original songs. It portrays a slice of life in the South, with a helping of NASCAR, and features the endearing and wacky characters at an Alabama Oil Change business.”
Beaverton Valley Times
January 12, 2012
Read it HERE
“As Jimmy Durante used to say, “Everybody wants to get into the act.” Fertile Ground, Portland’s citywide festival of new plays and other performance works, makes that practicable for lots of small and even first-time theatrical producers.”
By Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
February 12, 2012
Read it HERE
“It’s a great opportunity to sample the breadth and vitality of the Portland performance scene. Here are just a few of the shows that look especially promising, with a focus on the first few days of the festival.”
By Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
February 12, 2012
Read it HERE
“In 2009, when the Portland Area Theatre Alliance started a festival to showcase the quantity and variety of new plays and other performance works being created in Portland, the name Fertile Ground might have seemed like an expression of optimism. Now it’s starting to sound like an under-statement.”
By Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
February 12, 2012
Read it HERE
“Theater digs into fruitful lives – Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival harvests talents of Northwest artists.” Interviews with Cory Huff (Redneck Mormon Thespian), Susan Mach (A Noble Failure) and David Berkson (The Penguins of Ithaca)
By Jason Vondersmith
The Portland Tribune
January 12, 2012
Read it HERE
“Fertile Ground One-Liners — Next week, Fertile Ground Festival will present more than 60 performance works. We asked playwrights, “What’s your favorite line?” and they hit us with their zestiest zingers.”
By Anne Adams
January 12, 2012
Portland Monthly Culturephile
Read it HERE
Tues Jan.17th 11am/KBOO & Sat. Jan.21st 11am/ KZME, join Dmae Roberts for a talk with playwrights Susan Mach and Claire Willett. Oregon Book Award-winner Susan Mach’s A Noble Failure is the winner of CoHo Productions’ NEWxNW Playwrighting Competition. Artist’s Repertory Theater presents a staged reading of Willett’s Dear Galileo, both as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.
By Dmae Roberts
Stage and Studio on KBOO & KZME
January 21, 2012
Find it HERE
Dmae Roberts talks with Portland comedian, musician and Fertile Ground/Second City alum auGi and award-winning PBS writer Slash Coleman about Big Plastic Heroes– Warning: Trying to be Your Idol is Dangerous.
Stage and Studio on KBOO and KZME
by Dmae Roberts
January 10, 2012
Read and Listen HERE
(Big Plastic Heroes) auGi: “I just read nerd. I try to be cool. I grew my hair out really long when I was younger because I thought I could be Sting, and frosted my hair blond which actually turned out more like hunter’s orange, the stuff they wear so deer don’t shoot them.” READ MORE
by Peter Korn
Portland Tribune
Jan 5, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT
Nicole Lane
Festival co-Director
nicolealane@comcast.net
360.601.4298
DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE HERE (270 kb pdf)
Fertile Ground’s fourth year shows abundant growth for Portland creative prowess!
More than 100 New Works
Theatre, Comedy, Dance, Animation, Events
50 Producers, 40+ Venues
…and, as always, growing…
PORTLAND, OREGON – December 14, 2011 – In its fourth year, the Portland-grown Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Work continues to flourish planted in a town of prolific playwrights, abundant actors, innovative dancers, talented designers and adventuresome producers. With many returning companies as well as new producers, FG12 brings over 100 interesting and diverse world premiere works to Portland making Fertile Ground 2012 the lushest jungle of creation yet.
With 17 fully produced theatrical world premieres, 14 dance world premieres, and a myriad of workshop productions, staged readings, readings and events at all times of the day, Fertile Ground will be thriving on stages, nooks and crannies all over Portland for 10 days from January 19 to 29, 2012.
Shining out through the winter darkness, Fertile Ground offers an astonishing breadth of creative work for the stage, compressed into 10 of the darkest and wettest days of the Portland calendar. Close to every single major theatre company and many dance companies in town are participating, presenting new work as a world premiere or as a piece in development. In addition to seasoned producers, dozens of small, local producers, playwrights and choreographers are also choosing to offer their work for this collaborative Portland showcase festival.
Audiences will meet a people like a redneck Mormon thespian, a teenage commando, a grease monkey girl in a musical, teenagers in crisis, do-gooder State Department bureaucrat, fairytales that come to life, a boy with Tourette’s, Galileo’s daughter and many more. The festival offers inventive adaptations of seminal works like The Duchess of Malfi, They, Rapunzel and King Lear. Social and political issues are explored with true stories of the sex trade in Portland and homelessness, and with plays like Famished, Café Baghdad, Word.Voice., No Good Woman, B’aktun 13, Graceland, Paraguay and others. In the dance genre, fresh dance pieces populate the “Groovin’ Greenhouse,” and Meshi Chavez and tEEth at White Bird offer completely new choreography. Also added to this year’s breadth is Portland Animation Now! where local animators share their digital artistry.
TICKET INFORMATION
Single tickets for all festival events are purchased directly through the producing companies. All access Festival Passes are $50 and are available on the Fertile Ground website. Festival “Dig It!” buttons and Festival Guides are available for free at various theater lobbies throughout Portland; button-wearers are offered discounts at the door to select performances. Production descriptions, locations, times and ticket information vary; see festival website for details: www.fertilegroundpdx.org.
What Makes Fertile Ground Unique. Several theatre companies across the nation host “new works festivals” and nearly all of these festivals present “staged readings,” works-in-progress curated by the artistic aesthetic of one company’s artistic staff. They are also typically exclusive to genre. In contrast, the Fertile Ground Festival presents a non-curated collection of fully staged world premiere productions in theatre and dance, as well as workshop and staged reading productions, and more. Fertile Ground is about process as well as product in creative development. This festival is the collaborative work of our local artistic community expressing the mother lode of creative capacities, in a quintessentially Portland manner.
Fertile Ground Festival of New Work
Presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance
Dates: January 19-29, 2012
Venue: City-wide, check website or Festival Guide for locations
Tickets: All ticket information at www.fertilegroundpdx.org Event tickets sold through each producer
Festival Passes: $50 – www.fertilegroundpdx.org
Description: More information about the Fertile Ground Festival and full event listings and descriptions can be found in the Festival Guide and at www.fertilegroundpdx.org
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Work is presented by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance. The festival organizers are comprised of volunteers who strongly believe in showcasing Portland’s vibrant creativity.
Fertile Ground was launched by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (the service organization for Portland theatre artists and organizations) in 2009 to provide a platform for Portland theatre companies to showcase their commitment to new work, but the Festival has grown to embrace many forms of new works in art allowing Portland’s arts lovers to discover Portland’s truly fertile ground for creativity, innovation and daring acts of performance.
Fertile Ground 2012 is a program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance and is sponsored by The Oregonian, OregonLive.com, Artslandia, KINK Radio, KBOO Community Radio, KZME Radio.
PHOTO LINK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fertilegroundportland/
FULL LISTINGS FOR 2012 FESTIVAL
SPECIAL EVENTS
Artists Repertory Theatre hosts Festival Kick-off Party with Fuse Ensemble
Reed College presents Dramaturgs’ Town Hall Meeting hosted by Kate Bredeson and Mead Hunter
Playback Theater PDX presents Playback Teaching Workshop
FULLY STAGED WORLD PREMIERES
Artists Repertory Theatre presents (I Am Still) The Duchess of Malfi by Joseph Fisher
Contagious Theatre & Gorilla Bomb Productions presents Fully Loaded Russian Roulette by Dug Martell, Anneke Wisner & Edward Lyons, Jr.
Portland Playhouse presents Famished by Eugenia Woods
Shaking The Tree presents The Tripping Point: An Exhibition of Fairytale Installations by Karin Magaldi,
Ellen Margolis, Andrea Stolowitz, Patrick Wohlmut, Eugenia Woods, Andrew Wardenaar, Nick Zagone, Matt Zrebski
The Accuardi Sisters presents Love Scenes by Sara Jean Accuardi
Teatro Milagro presents B’aktun 13 by Dañel Malán
Curious Comedy Theater presents David Saffert’s Birthday Bashstravaganza 2! Older & Wisier by David Saffert
SexyNurd Productions presents Big Plastic Heroes: Trying to Be Your Idol is Dangerous
Teenage Commando by auGi and The Last American Gladiator 3 by Slash Coleman
Portland Center Stage presents The North Plan by Jason Wells
Walking Shadow Productions presents They by Witkacy
Third Eye Theatre presents Grand Guignol 4: Psychosis (The Faith Healer by Matt Hanf, Bedford’s Sty by Daniel Guyton, Operation Midnight Climax by Ron Burch, The Mistaken Lover by Martha Patterson)
Unexpected Company presents One Day by Kevin Muir
Playback Theater PDX presents Playback Theater
String House Theatre presents Waxwing by Emily Gregory
Curious Comedy Theater presents Irregardless by Stacey Hallal
Playback Theater PDX presents POWER/EMPOWERMENT: The Voice of the People
MUSICAL THEATRE
Brent Rogers Creative Services, Inc. presents Oil Change the Musical Comedy book by Klay Rogers, lyrics by Klay Rogers & Brent Rogers, music by Brent Rogers
Playwrights West presents Ablaze, an a cappella musical thriller written by Matthew B. Zrebski
Vanport Square Studio presents Fight Call book by Steve Rathje, music by Billy Rathje, lyrics by Billy Rathje and Steve Rathje
Golden Fang Productions presents Bite Me a Little book and music by Arlie Conner
Live On Stage presents 4 X 4 = 8 Musicals by Diane Englert, Sam Gregory, Chanda Hall, Michael Allen Harrison, Mont Chris Hubbard, Aubrey Jessen, Jeffrey Kaufmann, Mark LaPierre, Valory J. Lawrence, Connery MacRae, Reece Marshburn, Cameron McFee, Kurt Misar and Greg Paul.
WORKSHOP PRODUCTIONS
Redneck Mormon Productions presents Redneck Mormon Thespian by Cory Huff
BaseRoots Theatre Company presents No Good Woman: The Ballad of Joan Little by Bobby Bermea
PDX Playwrights presents Three Short Plays: A Pretty Girl with Cancer by Dave Chapman, This is Temporary by Debbie Lamedman & Scrooge and Marley Have Dinner in Hell by Dave Chapman
Olio Productions Presents Trifecta: Blanche by Sascha Blocker, Voicemail devised by ensemble & 400,000 Letters by Sarah Soards Directed by Nathan Crosby
Public Folklore presents The Most Delicious Chaos: Characters From the World of Professional Servitude by RJ Hodde
Readers Theatre Repertory presents The Penguins of Ithaca by David Berkson
Hand2Mouth presents Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart created by the Hand2Mouth ensemble
STAGED READINGS
Artists Repertory Theatre presents Dear Galileo by Claire Willett
PDX Playwrights presents Double Feature: Ephemory by Miriam Feder & Dad I Hardly Know You by Gary Corbin
PlayWrite, Inc. presents Word.Voice. written by recent PlayWrite graduates
The Pulp Stage presents PULP DICTION III: Gift of a Thousand Tongues by Fengar Gael
PDX Playwrights presents A Simple Thread by Jenni GreenMiller
Standing Gard presents Graceland, Paraguay by Jason Rosenblatt
Jewish Theatre Collaborative presents Café Baghdad adapted by Sacha Reich
Dust and Dreams Ensemble presents A Live Dress by Martha Jane Kaufman
CoHo Productions presents A Noble Failure by Susan Mach (announce 11/11)
Portland Shakespeare Project presents Lear’s Follies, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear by C.S. Whitcomb
Standing Gard presents Satanic Organics by Jason Rosenblatt
PDX Playwrights presents Double Feature: Triptych Americana by Karen Alexander-Brown & Skin Garden by Jeremy Benjamin
PDX Playwrights presents Double Feature: Sacagasasquatch & Spellbinders by Brad Bolchunos
PDX Playwrights presents Double Feature: Green by Kate Belden & Fiona and the Queen of Baltimore by David Holloway
The Pulp Stage presents PULP DICTION III: Red Hands by Matt Haynes, from the screenplay by Adam Haynes
PDX Playwrights presents Jerusalem Story by Sharon Sassone
READINGS
Lunacy Stageworks presents Stories: From Survivors of the Sex Trade by survivors of the sex trade
Third Eye Theatre presents Copernicus Rising by Michael A. Rose
Sowelu Ensemble Theater presents Two Writers: Two Works – Comic Book City by Hunt Holman & A Boy Interrupts His Chores by Lorraine Bahr
PDX Playwrights presents Manful! by John Servilio
Third Eye Theatre presents The Bag Lady’s Christmas by Sharon Sassone
Passing Fool Productions presents Farm Story by Jacklyn Maddux
Portland Theatre Works presents Next of Kin by Steve Patterson and Live from Douglas by Andrew Wardenaar
LUNCHTIME
Redneck Mormon Productions presents Redneck Mormon Thespian by Cory Huff
PDX Playwrights presents Kookaburra by Amy Doherty
PDX Playwrights presents The Widow of Tom’s Hill by Aleks Merilo
PDX Playwrights presents Cate Darringer by Sally Sunbear
The Waffle Tree presents City of Roses/City of Thorns by Travis Smith and Eileen DuClos
LATE NIGHT
Penplay presents Asylum No More by Sandra de Helen
Redneck Mormon Productions presents Redneck Mormon Thespian by Cory Huff
The Pulp Stage presents PULP DICTION III: The Pulp Sampler– Operation Midnight Climax by Ron Burch,
How to Talk to Little Girls by Tina Connolly, Iced by Michael Cooper, Best Son by Paul Handley, Route Nine by Samantha Henderson, All Hallowed Puppets by Bill Ratner and The Devil Made Me Do It by Sydney Somerfield
Fuse Theatre Ensemble presents Karaoke Night! (the musical) devised by the ensemble
Brent Rogers Creative Services, Inc. presents
Oil Change the Musical Comedy book by Klay Rogers, lyrics by Klay Rogers & Brent Rogers, music by Brent Rogers
Northwest Children’s Theater presents Rapunzel ~ Uncut! adapted by James W. Moore
DANCE PERFORMANCE
Meshi Chavez presents…or be dragged. Choreographed by Meshi Chavez
White Bird presents Make/Believe. A new evening-length work by tEEth. Choreographed by Angelle Herbert. Composed by Phillip Kraft
Oregon Ballet Theatre presents Saint Säen’s Carnival of the Animals by Anne Mueller
GROOVIN’ GREENHOUSE DANCE SHOWCASE SERIES presented by Polaris Dance Theatre
Beat BangerZ presents: The Rhythm – Choreography by Damon Keller, Swunk – Choreography by Damon Keller & Erin Lee, Fragile – Choreography by Shannon Wilcox, Rockin’ to The Beat – Choreography by Hillary Hart & Erin Lee, Greenlight – Choreography by BBZ
PDX Dance Collective presents: Them and Us – Choreography by Timothy M. Johnson,,Givers – Choreography by Elise Ericksen
Portland Festival Ballet presents: Fluid — Choreography by Lavinia Magliocco
NW Fusion presents: New Works from NW Fusion – Choreography by Brad Hampton, Eowyn Barrett, Erika Boudreau and Autumn Dones
Dance Coalition of Oregon presents: Collection of Dances—Choreography by Rachel Slater, Kristine Anderson, Agnieszka Laska and The Dolly Pops
Polaris Dance Theatre presents: Dis-Cooperire –Choreography by Robert Guitron
Laura Onizuka with members of Portland Flamenco Events Performance Group present: No Soy Bailarina–
Choreography by Laura Onizuka
Agnieszka Laska Dancers present: Broken Flowers — Choreography by Agnieszka Laska
AWOL Dance Collective presents: Distant Points –Choreography by Jen Livengood, Alicia Doerrie, Jessica Hoage of A-WOL dance collective with guest Jenni Bregman, dancer and choreographer from San Francisco.
Cerrin Lathrop and Carlyn Hudson with members of SubRosa Dance Collective present: Original Works –
Choreography by: Cerrin Lathrop and Carlyn Hudson
Jennifer Camp with members of Pacific University’s Dance Ensemble present: Beneath the Surface + additional works TBA— Choreography by Jennifer Camp
ANIMATED FILM SHORTS
Northwest Animation Festival presents Portland Animation Now!
Eyeliner by Joanna Priestley
Ursula 1000 – Rocket by Eric Kilkenny
Ruby Rocket, Private Detective by Sam Niemann & Stacey Hallal
Missionary by Mike A. Smith
Old-Time Film by Barbara Tetenbaum & Marilyn Zornado
Operation: Fish by Jeff Riley
# # #
On Planet Eden – The Musical: “At first the show’s trajectory seems relatively straightforward: the aliens come, the weirdos fly away. But things get interesting when the crooked reporter turns his camera on the cult members, revealing a cornucopia of startling pasts and hidden agendas.”
Willamette Week
by John Minervini
January 31, 2011
Read the full article HERE
“Robin Hood disguised as Russell Crowe, Maid Marian in trousers wielding a sword, the Sheriff of Nottingham all decked out in exotic pink feathers and zebra skins: The traditional story of “Robin Hood” takes on a fresh flavor in this hilarious new version by james moore, written for the Northwest Children’s Theater’s entry in the Fertile Ground Festival of new works.”
Holly Johnson
The Oregonian
January 29, 2011
Read full article HERE
On Body Vox 2: “The combination of ugly movements, cliché costumes, serious expressions, and talented dancers makes for a droll and stunning performance.”
Willamette Week
by Rachael Dewitt
January 28, 2011
Read the full article HERE
“In 1968, Tonya Jone Miller’s mother got on a plane to Vietnam and walked into a dramatic unfolding of events, guided by love and family in a country devastated by war. Her mother’s story worked its way into the annals of their family, an oral history moving from one generation to the next, no less present than the characters it embodied. Forty years later, Tonya recreates this story for the stage, a personal narrative she describes as “stranger than fiction.””
The Daily Vanguard, Portland State University by Candace Opper January 28, 2011
Read full article HERE
Just Out covers Fertile Ground’s “Groovin Greenhouse” dance series at Polaris Dance Theatre this weekend and their preview contribution “Lil’ Mo Taste” choreographed by Artistic Director Robert Guitron.
Just Out
by Amanda Shurr
January 27, 2011
Read full article HERE
pdxpipeline reviews Fertile Ground participant “Captured By Aliens” – episodic series runs through Feb 12.
pdxpipeline.com
by Saundra Sorenson
January 26, 2011
Read full article HERE
“Overall the play (The Shadow Testament) was truly captivating. The cast, from the wonderfully acted supporting roles to the captivating main characters, truly did this play justice, bringing it to life in a way that few others could.”
TheClackamasPrint.com by John Simmons January 26, 2011
Read full article HERE
On “99 Ways to F*** a Swan”…”A lot goes on in Kim Rosenstock’s survey of sexual deviance, directed in its world premiere production by Megan Kate Ward. It is, unlike most plays about perversion, endlessly funny and even kind of uplifting.”
Willamette Week
by Ben Waterhouse
January 19, 2011
Read full article HERE
Ben Waterhouse calls the work in “My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow” “immersive and compelling as anything I’ve experienced. Leddy’s performance is physically strenuous and emotionally draining, her best work to date.”
Willamette Week
by Ben Waterhouse
January 19, 2011
Read full article HERE
“Porn Shops, Swans and Much More: Portland’s Fertile Ground, Weekend One”
by Suzi Steffen
2AMt (thinking outside the black box)
Read full article HERE
Fertile Ground Festival founder and co-Director Trisha Mead on her relationship with Fertile Ground 2011 and a metaphor about creation.
by Trisha Mead
2AMt (thinking outside the black box)
Read full article HERE
KBOO Host/Producer Dmae Roberts continues coverage of the Fertile Ground festival of new work with Tonya Jone Miller and her solo show “Threads: The True Story of an Indiana Farm Girl in Viet Nam.”
Stage & Studio on KBOO Community Radio
by Dmae Roberts
Listen to the interview HERE
Fertile Ground: 3 Quick Reviews
Alison Hallett
The Portland Mercury
Jan 25, 2011
Read full article HERE
“Fertile Ground festival gets started with a bright little sprout of a play, ‘Mr. Darcy Dreamboat’.”
by Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 21, 2011
Read full article HERE
“The end of the world takes center stage at Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival this year with Planet Eden: A Galactic Musical (The Truth About December 21, 2012).”
Vanessa Nix
OregonLive blogger
January 21, 2011
Read full article HERE
“There are lots of ways to subvert the mistaken notion that theater is some sort of stuffy pastime of the social elite, but likely few as emphatic as presenting a play in a soul-food joint. BaseRoots Theatre did that this weekend for its contribution to the Fertile Ground festival, a reading of a civil-rights drama called “The Green Book.””
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 22, 2011
Read full article HERE
“You pay your money and you take your chance. Always true with the in-the-moment performing arts, that’s especially so with a wide-ranging festival of new works, such as Fertile Ground, which runs Jan. 20-30 at numerous venues around the city. But when the money isn’t all that much (a festival pass let’s you indulge for around $5 per day), taking chances is half the fun.”
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 21, 2011
Read full article HERE
“Portland’s scrappy, anything goes, DIY theater fest opens tonight, launching 10 crazy days and night of marathon theatergoing.”
Mead Hunter
Blogorrhea
January 20, 2011
Read the full article HERE
“For the theatergoer weary of endless revivals of The Odd Couple and To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s a bonanza: In the next 10 days, Portland will see no fewer than 68 performances of new works of theater and dance, all of them created by local playwrights, performers and choreographers.”
by Ben Waterhouse
Willamette Week
January 19, 2011
Read full article HERE
The Portland Mercury says art springs eternal…”Each year, Fertile Ground continues to pick up momentum, even gaining mention this month in American Theatre magazine. As its scope expands, who knows what’s next? Fertile Ground Film Festival? Fertile Ground Art Walk? Whatever happens, Portland’s artistic landscape is proving to be more fruitful than ever.”
The Portland Mercury
by Virginia Thayer
January 19, 2011
Read full article HERE
“The most shocking part of “The Shadow Testament” is not that it tells the story of an insane cult right here in Oregon, nor is it that the play features a scene of full-frontal male nudity (however brief it may be). No, the most shocking aspect of this play is that it is all based on the true tale of the “Love Cult” started in Corvallis, in 1903.”
John Simmons
TheClackamasPrint.com
January 19, 2011
Read the full article HERE
“Theater allows your work to be tried on and walked around in and so, even if you don’t have a horse in this race, you can learn (by observing the process of others), how to enliven your work and be a better writer. And you’ll be supporting your fellow creatives in a town rich with starving artists.”
“Writer’s Block” blog on OregonLive.com
by Vanessa Nix
January 19, 2011
Read full article HERE
“Fertile Ground one-liners: Playwrights plug the upcoming festival with a few choice quotes, straight from their scripts. (With) a ten-day cornucopia of 70 performance works, could metaphorically plow us under if we took the old preview/review approach.”
by Anne Adams
Portland Monthly Culturephile Blog
January 18, 2010
Read full article HERE
On her show “Stage and Studio” host and producer Dmae Roberts talks with three women playwrights in the festival on KBOO Community Radio. Listen to interviews with Susan Mach (The Shadow Testament), Erin Leddy (My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow) and Camille Cettina (Mr. Darcy Dream Boat).
Stage & Studio on KBOO Community Radio
by Dmae Roberts
Listen to the interview HERE
“Next week, Portland, Oregon’s Fertile Ground Festival kicks off, ten days of new work by area artists. In my experience (and it’s my hometown, but I haven’t lived there for ten years), Portland is a really odd place to make art–cheap rents and a super hip, laid back urban core makes it a great place to live and make work…”
Culturebot
Jeremy M. Barker
January 13, 2011
Read full article HERE
“(Fertile Ground) Launched in 2009 by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, a volunteer-run service organization for local theater artists and organizations, the festival offers a veritable buffet of creative endeavor from across the city’s performing arts scene. Having branched out from plays and musicals to also include dance, comedy and various hybrids, this year’s 11-day event will feature 68 shows taking place in more than two dozen locations from the Pearl District to Tigard.”
The Oregonian, A&E Cover Story
by Marty Hughley
January 14, 2011
Read the full article HERE
“One such premiere project is the play Threads: The True Story of an Indiana Farm Girl in Viet Nam, written and performed by Portland actress, writer, foodie, and aural courtesan, Tonya Jone Miller.”
Dave Knows
Dave Knows Portland.org
January 10, 2010
Read full article HERE
“‘Til They Reach The Fertile Ground…Third annual citywide arts festival returns with impressive lineup of dance works.”
Rebecca Ragain
Just Out
January 7, 2011
Read full article HERE
“…a great way to sample the creative energy yearning to breathe free in the city…”
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 2, 2010
Read full article HERE
Polaris Dance Theatre has plans to expose Portland audiences to a wide variety of fresh moves during January’s Fertile Ground festival by curating a series of performances. From January 20 to 30, Polaris will open its downtown studio theater to other Portland-based choreographers and dance companies, hosting what it calls the Groovin’ Greenhouse.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
November 19, 2010
READ full article HERE
Trisha Mead, Fertile Ground Executive Director and Portland Center Stage’s PR and Publications Manager talks to KGW Joe Smith of Live @ 7 about PCS’ closing night event “Sprout” at the Armory.
KGW Live @ 7
Joe Smith
February 1, 2010
WATCH it here
Photo coverage of the Fertile Ground Opening Night Party at Curious Comedy
Byron Beck.com
January 26, 2010
READ full article here
Fertile Ground festival reports strong attendance for opening weekend…17 out of 32 shows had sold-out houses.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 27, 2010
READ full article here
Most of you know at least a little bit about Fertile Ground, Portland’s festival of new performance works, which has been playing on stages big and small around the city and continues to do so through Feb. 2.
Bob Hicks
Arts Scatter
January 26, 2010
READ full article here
The Oregonian’s staff and freelance critics spent most of the weekend attending the second annual Fertile Ground Festival and writing about it for us. Look no further for The Oregonian’s coverage.
The Oregonian
Staff and freelance critic insights and reviews
January 22-25, 2010
READ full article here
The festival, in its second year, is an umbrella for more than 50 shows being staged around Portland through Feb. 2, primarily theater but also dance, comedy, music and various hybrids. It’s an eye-opening showcase of the local performing arts scene’s vigor and variety, and is starting to draw audiences to its cause, which Mead sums up as “support local artists and try something new.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 25, 2010
READ full article here
Willamette Week’s News and Culture staff post reports daily on their Fertile Ground coverage.
Willamette Week
Ben Waterhouse
January 23, 2010
READ Daily Posts:
WW/Day 1: The Memory of Water, Truth and Beauty, and The Hillsboro Story
WW/Day 2: Willow Jade
WW/Day 3: Dirty Bomb
WW/Day 5: Pulp Diction and The Light That Lingers
Gerding Theater mezzanine fills the bill both noon and night. The Fertile Ground festival has way too many plays and other performances to present to fit them all into the usual evening time slots. So that’s where a space such as the mezzanine of the Gerding Theater comes in handy.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
January 23, 2010
READ full article here
This Friday marks the start of the 2nd annual Fertile Ground Creative Festival, a 10 day, city-wide celebration of new local works! Prepare to be delighted by this year’s line-up of over 50 projects and a dozen world premieres, spanning across a variety of genres and being presented by a very diverse group of talented (and hardworking!) Portland artists and organizations.
Julian Chadwick
PDX Pipeline
January 22, 2010
READ full article here
Fertile Ground Oregonian A&E Cover Story
The Oregonian
Marty Hughley
January 21, 2010
READ the full article here
Fertile Ground theatre festival: critic’s picks
The Oregonian
Marty Hughley
January 21, 2010
READ the full article here
Molly Best Tinsley spent 20 years teaching literature and creative writing at the United States Naval Academy before moving to Oregon to become a full-time writer. Since her arrival, she’s won an Oregon Book Award, co-written what’s being called the first feminist thriller, and has a short comic play about sex opening as part of the Fertile Ground Festival.
Jeff Baker
The Oregonian
January 21, 2010
READ full article here
Q: You have a reading of your play How the Light Gets In coming up at Fertile Ground Festival. Can you tell me about the play and festival?
A: Well, here’s the synopsis: “There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.”
Adam Szymkowicz
I Interview Playwrights Part 106: Claire Willett
January 21, 2010
READ full article here
While I appreciate that Fertile Ground has an open-door policy regarding participation in the festival—and I think it’s really motivated artists to pull their work together—I’m frankly feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of plays and staged readings happening over the next ten days, and the lack of any kind of curatorial focus.
Alison Hallett
Portland Mercury – Blogtown
January 21, 2010
READ full article here
Spring Awakening — The Fertile Ground festival is back with 10 days of home-grown theater and dance.
Editorial Previews
Willamette Week
January 20, 2010
READ full article here
“There is a wonderful uber-geek sub strain of comic book artists and sci-fi writers making late night mayhem (Pulp Diction), D&D geeks transformed into comic theater (Willow Jade) and nurds who think they are rock stars (SexyNurd).”
BroadwayWorld.com
January 2010
READ full article here
“Something about our city is conducive to creativity. Blame it on the weather, or the all micro-brews… Coffee? Hippies? Food carts? Whatever it is, Portland is fertile ground for artists of all forms. Thus the name of this festival amping up and poised to kick us out of our wintry doldrums.” Portland Octopus January 13, 2010
READ full article here
“Portland’s well of artistic visionaries and performers will be given a proper channel to showcase their collective and individual talents once again, as the Fertile Ground Festival invades the city for the second straight year. Expanding this time to include new genres—dance, comedy, poetry, pulp, music and visual art—the event is a veritable breeding ground for all things creative, and will feature a little something for every type of arts connoisseur.”
Ryan J. Prado,
Just Out
January 2010
READ full article here.
Ted Douglass, the host for Entercom Radio’s Metroscape program, invited Festival Director Trisha Mead on the show to talk about the breadth of the festival, its genesis and what to be excited about in this year’s festival.
Ted Douglass, host
Entercom Radio, Metroscope
January 2010
LISTEN HERE
PARTICIPANT NEWS STORIES
At the end of a week and a half of packed performance schedules, the Fertile Ground closing party clearly suffered from what those present were calling “festival fatigue.” The event was called “Sprout,” and it was a variation on what in recent years has been a playful part of a gala for some of Portland Center Stage’s donors.
Marty Hughley
The Oregonian
February 2, 2010
READ full article here
‘Mawson’s Mettle’ holds Portland audience in rapt attention. Howard’s knowledge of his subject and his unbounded enthusiasm are a gift to the audience; but those in attendance gave much back, as evidenced by the post-show crowd that enthusiastically clustered around him. It’s a great day when simple storytelling satisfies the soul like this.
Holly Johnson
The Oregonian
January 31, 2010
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Northwest Children’s Theater has triumphed gleamingly with its new musical adaptation of “Pinocchio,” the classic tale written in the 19th century by Carlo Collodi, who might recognize and approve of this version in the steampunk style (think “Mad Max,” “Delicatessen” or “The City of Lost Children”).
Holly Johnson
The Oregonian
January 30, 2010
READ full article
Robert Guitron, Artistic Director of Polaris Dance talks to Joe Smith of KGW’s Live @ 7 about their Fertile Ground project xCHANGE3.
Joe Smith
KGW Live @ 7
January 29, 2010
WATCH here
Nerds on Stage – Willow Jade Explores the World of the 20-Sided Dice
Portland Mercury
Alison Hallett
January 28, 2010
READ full article here
auGi aka SexyNurd talks about his workshop production of SexyNurd and Fertile Ground on KGW at Curious Comedy Theater.
Joe Smith
KGW Live @ 7
January 22, 2010
WATCH here
Preview: Tandem
Tandem is the debut show of the comedy duo (oh, why not) called Jean Louis, aka Stacey Hallal and Bob Ladewig. These Second City alums are hilarious, and their comedy chops are legit. And here, of course, is the fifteen dollar question, “Is sketch comedy worth trucking it up MLK for? ‘Cause I’ve got hulu at home.” Turns out, yes.
By Alexis Rehrmann
Portland Monthly Magazine
Culturephile: Portland Arts
January 19, 2010
READ full article here
Tere Mathern Dance & Minh Tran and Company
White Bird Dance – Uncaged Series
The Tere Mathern Dance / Minh Tran & Company program consists of a new work created by each choreographer for his or her own company. Mathern’s contribution is titled “PIVOT” and Tran’s “KISS.” In addition, Mathern and Tran will perform a duet called “Twine,” created especially for the occasion. Tran plans for his onstage bow after the final performance January 24 to be his last as a dancer.
By Rebecca Ragain
Just Out
January 201
READ the full article here
Oregon Arts Watch
1/21/19
by Marty Hughkey
DramaWatch: Planning for a bountiful harvest from Fertile Ground
Oregon Live
1/18/19
by Amy Wang
10 promising pieces from week one of Fertile Ground 2019, Portland’s new works festival
The Columbian
1/18/19
by Scott Hewitt
Much of Fertile Ground rooted in Clark County
Oregon Arts Watch
1/17/19
by Bob Hicks
Speed-dating at Fertile Ground
READ MORE
Oregon Live
1/18/19
By Kjerstin Gabrielson
21 things to do this weekend and beyond in Portland
Portland Mercury
by Robert Ham
1/16/19
New Voices, Powerful Growth: How the Fertile Ground Festival Is Good for Portland
READ MORE
KBOO
1/15/19
A preview of several theatre offerings for the 10th anniversary of Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival of New works
LISTEN HERE
BroadwayWorld.com
1/15/19
by Krista Garver
10 Things to See at Fertile Ground 2019
READ MORE
The Skanner
1/17/19
PassinArt “Hazardous Beauty”
The play, written by Portland playwright Bonnie Ratner, was part of the 2016 Fertile Ground Festival and has been revised and updated with new surprises for this fully produced world premiere.
READ MORE
BroadwayWorld.com
1/7/19
An Evening With the Lightkeepers: Siren Songs and The Boys of Terrible Tilly
Fertile Ground aspires to provide a forum where art lovers near and far will come to appreciate that Portland truly is fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and daring acts of performance, and Buck and Partain certainly hope that audiences enjoy learning a little bit of lighthouse history along the way.
BroadwayWorld.com
1/7/19
Lakewood Theatre’s offerings
Willamette Week
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson
1/4/19
Get Ready for Clowns, a Teenage Richard III and Barbara Streisand in Local Theater
Here are some of the productions we’re most excited about through March 2019.
The Oregonian
by Heather Wisner
12/27/18
10 Portland dance shows to help ward off cabin fever this winter.
Don’t let seasonal Netflix-watching turn you couch-shaped. From January through March, there are plenty of performances, home-grown and imported, to get your body and brain in gear again, and remind you why it’s great to live in a metro area.
Conde Nast TRAVELER
by Rebecca Misner
12/20/18
Now in its 10th year, Fertile Ground is a dynamic 11-day event dedicated to new work in the arts and it features world premiere dance, theatre and comedy projects, staged readings, and workshops, all by local artists.
BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
12/10/18
10th Anniversary FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL OF NEW WORKS Comes to Portland Next Month
BroadwayWorld
by News Desk
10/10/18
Oregon-based writer/performer Gigi Rosenberg is taking her solo show, Firstborn, to New York City, as an official selection of the United Solo Theatre Festival.