Welcome to “the festival within the festival!” We at PDX Playwrights are honored to uphold our reputation for robust creativity with an outstanding offering of new staged readings for Fertile Ground. Scroll down to venture into an enchanting garden, an array of work taking root. With 22 plays of varying lengths and an assortment of topics and forms, PDX Playwrights offers something for nearly everyone. Many productions feature more than one showing. Locavores with an appetite for creativity should consider a Festival Pass – and designating PDX Playwrights in the pulldown menu at the end of the pass purchase lends support to our talented participants without any extra cost to you!
Plays are listed below in order of performance. Sink your toes into this rich dramatic soil and you’ll get a sense of the impressive variety of voices sprouting in our work. Events will appear appear Friday, January 25, through Sunday, February 3, 2019.
All PDX Playwrights performance events are only $10 and and all will appear at our familiar venue, Hipbone Studio, 1847 E Burnside.
Tickets will be available at the door and are now available in advance via the PDX Playwrights Presents (PDXP Presents) page via Box Office Tickets! Once there, simply scroll down the page to locate the show and date you want. You may also order by phone: 800-494-8497 (TIXS). We look forward to seeing you!
7 p.m. Friday, January 25
(also 9 p.m. Friday, February 1)
Daisy Dukes Shorts Night — by Louise Wynn, Eve Johnstone, Tracey Locke, Katie Bennett, Lisa Collins, Nina Monique Kelly, Gary Corbin, Lisa Carstens, and Paul K. Smith
Produced by Brad Bolchunos
Directed by William Barry
Tickets: $10 | Online
Back by popular demand, for the fifth year in a row, PDX Playwrights offers a juried selection of “very short shorts” (hence the name) performed by an ensemble cast. These plays explore the theme “The Disconnect” in wildly different, compelling ways. Don’t miss this urgent and thoroughly modern collection of fresh work from Portland’s finest playwrights! A Cowboy, a Clown, and The Muse by Louise Wynn; Birdfeeder by Eve Johnstone; Drop Out by Tracey Locke; In Season by Katie Bennett; Pass the Jam by Lisa Collins; Quilted Skin by Nina Monique Kelly; Streaming Jesus by Gary Corbin; Toaster by Lisa Carstens; and Predator & Prey by Paul K. Smith.
9 p.m. Friday, January 25
(show 7 p.m. Sunday, January 27)
Crazy Dukes Instant Play Festival Launch — by … YOU!
Produced by Katie Bennett
Tickets: $10 | Online
The kickoff of PDXP’s third Crazy Dukes Instant Play Festival! This festival-within-the-festival-within-the-festival is guaranteed to be the very newest, freshest work performed at Fertile Ground 2019. How do we know this? Because the work is getting created DURING the festival! Think of it as theatre on a highwire with no net. Six talented playwrights will obtain three or four prompts and will be randomly assigned two to six cast members on the night of PDXP’s Daisy Dukes Shorts Night and after-party. The playwrights will then write, rehearse, produce and perform 10-minute plays within 48 hours. Come help kick off the creative process by offering your suggestions of actions, themes, lines of dialog, or props that MUST be included in all six plays. Then audiences can come back and see the results on Sunday night, January 27. Guaranteed crazy — and guaranteed amazing!
7 p.m. Saturday, January 26
(also 12 p.m. Sunday, February 3)
A Holding Tank — by Tracey Locke
Wild Bill — by Johanna Courtleigh
Tickets: $10 | Online
Two one-acts filled with drama and comic relief by two emerging female playwrights on the Portland scene. In Johanna Courtleigh’s one-woman show, Wild Bill, Lurleen is called to the hospital after her brother Bill has suffered a serious bicycle accident. Bill is in a coma, and doctors hope that hearing a familiar voice will help him regain consciousness. Estranged for years, as she attempts to connect with him, truths from their history begin to emerge. In Tracy Locke’s A Holding Tank, five strangers are trapped in a bar. The only exit is guarded by an ancient song-and-dance bartender. How hard could it be to escape?
9 p.m. Saturday, January 26
(also 5 p.m. Sunday, February 3)
The Sequelz — by Dale Stanford Payne
Tickets: $10 | Online
On his way to modernizing the words of Shakespeare, playwright Mauricio is stranded in Portland by the post-election riots of November 2016. Under the aura of Leonard Cohen’s death and amidst the civil unrest, he finds shelter with an extended family in the Pearl District, where he listens to new voices of Politix, Friendship, Gender, Hip-hop, Political Correctness … and Love. Will Mauricio negotiate this well enough to carry on the road ahead? While wondering: Will California really solve Portland’s traffic jams? Did Shakespeare actually write all 37 plays? Can zombies become friends with vegans?
12 p.m. Sunday, January 27
Moscow/Mockba — by Olivia McFadden-Elliott and Emma Rye
Tickets: $10 | Online
This reimagining of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters follows the Patrushev sisters through a summer of upheaval. Having emigrated from Moscow, Russia to Moscow, Idaho as children, the grown sisters are now stagnating after the death of their father. Their lives are not quite what they had imagined they would be: Olena, the eldest, is holding the family together by a thread; Marina is married to a man whom she thinks is a fool; and the youngest, Inessa, won’t look for a job. New housemates and house guests arrive to throw their lives into a very different rhythm. This play examines both the comedic and tragic aspects of what it means to never be quite satisfied.
2 p.m. Sunday, January 27
(also 7 p.m. Friday, February 1)
The Bad Hour — by Karen Polinsky
Directed by Nina Monique Kelly
Tickets: $10 | Online
The Bad Hour, a modern-day Western, is a fictionalized version of a hostile takeover of a bird sanctuary in the badlands of Oregon. Two dangerous outlaws, and three lonesome perplexed bystanders trapped in the crosshairs, choose sides in a last stand between violence and hope. Darkly funny, The Bad Hour, written by Karen Polinsky and directed by Nina Monique Kelly of Whisper Skin Theatre, explores the dangerous ambiguities and unbreachable divisions in our current political climate.
5 p.m. Sunday, January 27
(also 7 p.m. Saturday, February 2)
5×4: A Collection of Short and One-Act Plays — by Redmond Reams, Brad Bolchunos, Maria Choban and Brett Campbell
Tickets: $10 | Online
PDX Playwrights presents a one-act musical and four dramatic comedies from four of our most active and accomplished playwrights.
Redmond Reams offers two comedies about children offering fantastic solutions for the dilem-mas of coping with modern anxieties. In Summer School Backstory, two schoolchildren take their teacher prisoner because they suspect her of collaborating with a foreign power. In A Whole New World, toddlers speak to their experience of foster care and yearnings to be adopted — and to belong. Brad Bolchunos’ “Secret Decoder” series offers two off-kilter shorts about miscommunication. A family outing takes a twisted turn into activism in Uncivil Disobedience, and a solstice ritual channels unforeseen consequences in Incommunicado Bravado. In Maria Choban and Brett Campbell’s Posing as Sodomite, it’s 1895 and Oscar Wilde is about to make the biggest, noblest mistake of his life. Only his good friend George Bernard Shaw can save him – but he has an agenda all his own.
7 p.m. Sunday, January 27
Crazy Dukes Instant Play Festival — by PDX Playwrights
Tickets: $10 | Online
Produced by Katie Bennett
Back for a third crazy year, this “festival-within-the-festival-within-the-festival” is guaranteed to be the very newest, freshest work performed at Fertile Ground 2019. How do we know this? Because the work is getting created DURING the festival! Think of it as theatre on a highwire with no net. Six talented playwrights will have obtained three or four prompts and will have been randomly assigned two to six cast members on the night of PDXP’s Daisy Dukes Shorts Night and afterparty (Friday, January 25). The playwrights will have written, rehearsed, and produced 10-minute plays in 48 hours ready for performance. Guaranteed crazy – and guaranteed amazing!
7 p.m. Friday, February 1
The Bad Hour — by Karen Polinsky
Directed by Nina Monique Kelly
Tickets: $10 | Online
In this fictionalized version of the January 2016 occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, five diverse characters, alone and misunderstood, ask if the future of America depends more on rad-ical free-thinking, or nurturing common ideals. (Please see January 27 for full description.)
9 p.m. Friday, February 1
Daisy Dukes Shorts Night — by Louise Wynn, Eve Johnstone, Tracey Locke, Katie Bennett, Lisa Collins, Nina Monique Kelly, Gary Corbin, Lisa Carstens, and Paul K. Smith
Produced by Brad Bolchunos
Directed by William Barry
Tickets: $10 | Online
A juried selection of “very short shorts” (hence the name) performed by an ensemble cast explores the theme “The Disconnect” in wildly different, compelling ways. (Please see January 25 for the full description.)
7 p.m. Saturday, February 2
5×4: A Collection of Short and One-Act Plays — by Redmond Reams, Brad Bolchunos, Maria Choban and Brett Campbell
Tickets: $10 | Online
PDXP presents a five short dramatic comedies from four of our most active and accomplished playwrights, ranging from Oscar Wilde’s biggest mistake to regime-toppling toddlers and comic miscommunication. (Please see January 27 for the full description.)
9 p.m. Saturday, February 2
I’m a Slut, Sababa — by Caitlin Beckwith-Ferguson
Tickets: $10 | Online
A hilarious, thought-provoking play about sexuality, gender, and feminism in Judaism and Israel, I’m a Slut, Sababa tells the stories of five Israeli women. While all are Jewish, each has a unique perspective shaped by widely divergent lifetimes and experiences. Local or immigrant, young or old, religious or secular, all five are feminists; they believe in the power of women. Based on interviews with twenty Israeli women, the play is open and honest in its exploration of female sexuality through themes of empowerment, validation, control, desire, and self-awareness.
12 p.m. Sunday, February 3
A Holding Tank — by Tracey Locke
Wild Bill — by Johanna Courtleigh
Tickets: $10 | Online
A sister struggles to revive her long-estranged brother from a coma, and five strangers struggle to escape from a bar by a song-and-dance bartender. (Please see January 26 for the full description.)
2 p.m. Sunday, February 3
KAIT — by Rebecca Petchenik
Tickets: $10 | Online
In a near future, true artificial intelligence is discovered in an animatronic sex doll after it kills its violent and abusive owner. The doll’s original programmer and her attorney come to the rescue to save the doll from destruction at the hands of the state and from the clutches of a greedy robotics corporation.
5 p.m. Sunday, February 3
The Sequelz — by Dale Stanford Payne
Tickets: $10 | Online
During the 2016 Portland riots, a writer finds shelter in an extended family and hears new voices of Politix, Friendship, Gender, Hip-hop, Political Correctness … and Love. (Please see January 26 for the full description.)
7 p.m. Sunday, February 3
I’m a Slut, Sababa — by Caitlin Beckwith-Ferguson
Tickets: $10 | Online
A hilarious, thought-provoking play about sexuality, gender, and feminism in Judaism and Israel, exploring themes of empowerment, validation, control, desire, and self-awareness. (Please see February 2 for the full description.)
Thank you for your interest and support of new work through the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, Fertile Ground, and PDX Playwrights. We can’t wait to see you at our “festival within the festival!”
