TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2021
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – by William Shakespeare
One-hour Adaptation by Alisha Christiansen
Fairies, Lovers, and Players converge in the forest. Mayhem ensues. The Bard’s traditional twisted plot lines, but faster.
The event is offered free, but donations are always appreciated.
At 7 pm Pacific Time, please join us using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82686054959?pwd=aW13VHpjUi9CSFlhZmx6amozS1IrUT09
Meeting ID: 826 8605 4959
Passcode: 230158
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,82686054959#,,,,*230158# US (San Jose)
Dial by your location
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kb56fD0dlI
NOTE: When our readings or workshops are conducted as virtual sessions, usually actors have been pre-cast by the playwrights. Fellow writers, actors and listeners are warmly invited to participate and offer their reactions, insights, and feedback. We leave it up to the playwrights whether they wish to have their script available before and/or during the read. The timing of the script access, if any, is based on the playwright’s preference. If there is an advance posting of the script or other materials they will be here: https://www.pdxplaywrights.org//scripts/
UPCOMING EVENTS
TO BE ANNOUNCED
PLEASE NOTE: There will be no reading on Tuesday, December 21. Please stay tuned to our website and newsletter announcements for readings in 2022, and information about our participation in the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works in January and February. Happy Holidays!
More to come! Additional submissions are being reviewed by our team. Please stay tuned…
PAST EVENTS
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2021
ZOOM INstant PLAY FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE – by PDX Playwrights
Hot off the launch less than 48 hours ago, playwrights and actors and audience members return to witness our splashdown of six short plays so freshly written and rehearsed they will still be steaming! We will have launched into the ZOOMosphere the night of Friday, December 3, with our six intrepid playwrights, brave actors and directors, and a witty audience who helped us generate and randomly select a prop (an icon), action (hair flip), line of dialogue (“He wondered what other work the devil might have for him”), and theme (No good deed goes unpunished). Watch our performers teeter on the brink of off-book craziness as they perform the results, written by Maren Anderson, Valerie Asbell, Irvin Jones, Peter Korn, Stan Matthews and John McDonald. The event will be recorded for presentation in the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work in January 2022.
.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2021
ZOOM INstant FESTIVAL LAUNCH – by PDX Playwrights
Be part of the creativity! Join us and help to suggest prompts for our daring playwrights, then watch as we randomly assign attending actors to them as we launch the ZOOM INstant Play Festival. We will assemble virtually for the launch. From attendee selections we will obtain four required prompts—an action, theme, line of dialogue and prop. The playwrights, Maren Anderson, Valerie Asbell, Irvin Jones, Peter Korn, Stan Matthews and John McDonald, will write and submit their scripts for review by Saturday afternoon, then rehearse their 10-minute plays and present them for performance as a raw, live event recorded and assembled into one collective take 7 p.m. Sunday, December 5. Fertile Ground will present the recording of the wild results during the festival. Crazy!
.
NOVEMBER 30, 2021
FIFTH TUESDAY WORKSHOP: WRITING FOR THE EAR AND WHERE IT LEADS – by Richard Toscan
Insights from successful radio drama and fiction podcast writing carry into all kinds of dramatic writing. This informal, interactive discussion will be led by special guest Richard Toscan, whose workshop Writing for the Ear is just one facet of a robust career as a dramatist, author, producer, story editor, and teacher in the United States and England. We’ll explore not only what makes audio drama work well, but also touch on structural issues in stage plays and the critical importance of subtext in scripts by considering examples drawn from theatre, film, and recent television pilots. Join us!
Rick Toscan’s audio dramas have been broadcast by the BBC (Radio 1 & World Service), ABC (Australia), CBC (Canada), and in the US by Pacifica and NPR. He was executive producer and story editor of the original Star Wars radio series for Lucasfilm, the BBC, and NPR – the first contemporary audio drama to attract a major national audience in the US. Other audio adaptations include work by Raymond Chandler, Damon Knight, Ed Bullins, and docudramas on the Vietnam War and psychoanalytic case histories. He was an Armstrong Award nominee for Creative Use of the Radio Medium and a founding member of First Stage, the Los Angeles new play development program. His workshop, Writing for the Ear, on podcast fiction was offered nationally by San Francisco Bay Area’s Play Café in 2021 and will be offered again in 2022. He consults on audio drama writing and production and is currently a writer-producer with Pod People. For many years he was Dean of the USC School of Theatre. His handbook, Playwriting Seminars 2.0, is a widely used resource in the field.
.
NOVEMBER 16, 2021
LIGHT THROUGH THE CELLAR DOOR – by Barbara Hume
A new drama, both historic and topical, set in 1989 in St. Louis County as a state supreme court ruling jeopardizes female reproductive health. Three generations of women struggle with their past choices and current challenges. In this family, a passionate crisis of disparate viewpoints reveals the strength it takes to be vulnerable with those we love.
.
NOVEMBER 2, 2021
LOVELY QUARTET: SHORT PLAYS by Louise Wynn, Fred Cooprider, John McDonald and Katie Bennett
Join us for fun and feedback as a three playwrights bring forth their latest drafts of 10-minute works selected by PDX Playwrights. They are being developed among works to presented for Fertile Ground 2022 under our theme, “Love Over Everything.” [Another play in the lineup was included in the previous session.]
- ANOTHER SILLY LOVE STORY – by Louise Wynn
A mismatched man and woman grapple with the conventions of romantic comedy. - A DAY AT THE OFFICE – by Fred Cooprider
A novice at love seeks advice from an old veteran of the love wars. - FORMULAS OVER DRINKS – by John McDonald
Toby is at a crossroads in his life when Jake throws him a lifeline in the way of friendship. Though they have different jobs and different lives, maybe their stories are not so different at the end of the day. - TRU ADORATION – by Katie Bennett
A tale of passion, instruction, and romantic love vs. love of art.
.
OCTOBER 19, 2021
HOT TIMES – by Nancy Moss
Save Our World, an ecological group Erin and Tom belong to, has a central governing core willing to kill; Erin wants in.
The reading was followed by a short play:
ETERNITY OR LONGER – by Stan Matthews
Fred Doyle is queued up to die and convinced his wife can tell him about the disturbing things he sees in the corner of his eye.
OCTOBER 5, 2021
SPEAK MY WORDS, TELL MY TRUTH – by Lorenz Qatava
We Are (Act One) is a poetic fantasia on the words and life stories of five Black Gay writers whose lives spanned the past century. It is presented by five color-coded characters who symbolically represent Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, E. Lynn Harris, and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Through imagined intergenerational dialogues with each other and with a contemporary young Black gay man, we learn how their words transformed American culture, race relations and acceptance of homosexuality. With On the Verge (Act Two), the story unfolds to a chosen family of Black gay friends reacting to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. During an end-of-year celebration, they all reflect on lessons of the past and on the individual and collective challenges ahead.
.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2021
COOL GRAY DYSPHORIA – by Olivia MacFadden-Elliott and Emma Rye
Disillusioned socialite Nicholas Prince has dropped out of Columbia and returned to his childhood home to realize his vision as a writer. His powerful parents are torn between support and dissuasion. His friends, including his former flame Olivia, struggle to cope with his tectonic emotional shifts. Will the power of art prevail?
NOTE: This is a full revision of a work that graced our table in 2020.
.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2021
THE NIGHTBLOOM: A Gay Desert Fairy Tale – by John McDonald
Isaiah is a poor street urchin who stumbles upon a genie with aggressive wit and tendencies toward flirting. When they’re thrust into the prince’s inner court, can they compete or will they wilt under the desert sun?
.
AUGUST 31, 2021
FIFTH TUESDAY WORKSHOP: READY, SET, GO! FERTILE GROUND 2022 – led by Karen Polinsky
Our new lead producer Karen Polinsky will share what you need to know to produce a piece for this year’s virtual pre-recorded Fertile Ground Festival, running Jan. 27 – Feb. 6. If your script is selected to be among the works presented by PDXP, you’ll also find out what you need to do to create a quality recording. From the ZOOM INstant Festival to ten-minute dramas and comedies, we need you to keep Portland’s theater scene alive and growing! Join us on Zoom to find out how.
.
AUGUST 17, 2021
ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY – by Michelle A. Guerrero
Angels, demons, unrequited love, light and shadow begin to take flight in this tribute, based upon the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
.
AUGUST 3, 2021
AN EVENING WITH OSCAR AND NOEL – by Thomas Mason and Craig Mason
Two theater icons meet in the afterlife. Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward, one pilloried for being gay and the other the ultimate symbol of cool sophistication. Hear what they have to say on all manner of things, scandal, play writing, coming out. This one-act play is definitely not in hell, but maybe in heaven, maybe in purgatory.
.
JULY 6 and 20, 2021
BLAME HAITI [Parts One and Two] – by Irvin Jones
American history rarely shows how events outside the United States helped shape the mindset of the country. On an island in the Caribbean, a slave revolt scared the living hell out of white southern Americans, especially white slave owners. This fear shaped American foreign policies. This fear shaped American politics. This fear divided the country into scared white people who became afraid of black people. That divide continues today. Why? Blame Haiti!
CONTENT ADVISORY: This play contains scenes of threatened violence and hate speech. Please take care of yourself while attending this session, and after.
.
JUNE 29, 2021
FIFTH TUESDAY WORKSHOP: WRITING INCLUSIVELY – with Ashwini Prasad
PDXP is excited to offer this important and timely workshop by Ashwini Prasad, an organizational change transformation specialist with a focus on anti-racism, anti-oppression, culture and leadership, and author of the new book How to Write Inclusively. Prasad will guide us in our quest to write equitable scripts, telling relevant stories about what we do know and researching what we don’t. PDXP is committed to cultivating aware scriptwriting in an inclusive atmosphere that is safe for all. The change we want to see begins here. Join us.
.
JUNE 15, 2021
GREENHOUSE – by Amanda Mehl
When a devastating infertility diagnosis plunges gardener Maddie into despair and debt, she turns to the one thing she can control: her plants. But fixing up her grandmother’s old greenhouse unearths a surprising secret — a rare treasure that could be the key to solving all of her problems. If she can get it to bloom.
.
JUNE 1, 2021
THE PLAY ABOUT THE BOYS – by Christopher Lord
On the evening/night of the 2016 summer solstice, four senior gay men—a married couple and two brothers—meet for a birthday celebration on Coronado Island, California. During the evening each man is visited by the spirit of a man from his past, and all men are changed.
.
MAY 18, 2021
PLEDGE: THE MUSICAL [Part Two] – by Don Merrill
A musical comedy about a pledge drive at an imperiled college radio station in Arkansas. The diverse crew of this NPR affiliate confronts the personal and political conflicts of our times in banter and in song.
.
MAY 4, 2021
PLEDGE: THE MUSICAL [Part One] – by Don Merrill
A musical comedy about a pledge drive at an imperiled college radio station in Arkansas. The diverse crew of this NPR affiliate confronts the personal and political conflicts of our times in banter and in song.
.
APRIL 20, 2021
ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE – by Joe Jatcko
In a deep space office building, co-worker relationships are strictly forbidden … but not for the usual reasons. All activities that lead to increased oxygen consumption (particularly those that might be carried out between romantic partners) are punishable by an increasingly alarming set of punishments. When a hapless office drone falls uncontrollably in love, he’s forced to face the consequences—and worse, the fact that she isn’t remotely interested in him.
.
APRIL 6, 2021
CELL EXTRACTION – by Peter Korn
Some guys just like to fight. Others live for a good beating. Hector is about to confront which category he belongs in, or if he can escape both.
Content Advisory: This play contains scenes of violence and abuse.
.
MARCH 16, 2021
PERSUASION [PART TWO] – by Tamar Shai Bolkvadze
This adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is set in a “breakaway town” in Portland’s South Blocks in 2036.
.
MARCH 2, 2021
PERSUASION [PART ONE] – by Tamar Shai Bolkvadze
This adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is set in a “breakaway town” in Portland’s South Blocks in 2036.
.
JANUARY 28-FEBRUARY 7, 2021
PDX PLAYWRIGHTS IN FERTILE GROUND
Our amazing assortment of 15 short plays — including Epic Shorts and Experimental Plays and the ZOOM INstant Play Fest, were part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works Jan. 28-Feb. 7. Fertile Ground offerings were to be live-streamed through February 15! See our page here PDXP in Fertile Ground 2021, see the full festival lineup by checking out the festival site: http://fertilegroundpdx.org/2021-festival/
.
FEBRUARY 2, 2021
OUT OF THE BLUE – by Marshall Welch and A. Nannette Taylor
When Deidre engages in a conversation with a barista, she begins to discover things are not all what they first seem. A one-act play.
.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2021
NATIONAL SCOUTS: TROOP 274 — by John McDonald [Act III]
Jason Montgomeries is down on his luck. Moving back home after having failed in a prestigious writing course, Jason is drafted into helping his younger brother’s National Scouts troop–including going to Jamboree deep in the woods for a week. He is ill-prepared, depressed, and really not National Scout material. But if his friend and next door neighbor Tony believes in him, maybe he’ll find a way through.
THE SOUND OF LONELY – by Karen Polinsky
Can Rozie and Gil save their friend Brody from despair? His spirits were low before the pandemic. Now he’s in too deep.
.