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UPCOMING EVENTS
PDX PLAYWRIGHTS IN FERTILE GROUND
Hot off the crazy launch, performance, and recording of the Zoom INstant Play Festival in early December, we are preparing all our more than 15 short plays — including Epic Shorts and Experimental Plays, as part of the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works Jan. 28-Feb. 7. See the full festival lineup here http://fertilegroundpdx.org/2021-festival/ … and stay tuned!
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DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED:
CROSSROADS AT CHAMBERSBURG – by Fred Cooprider
A one-act based on an actual meeting between John Brown and Frederick Douglass before Brown raided Harpers Ferry.
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PAST EVENTS
NATIONAL SCOUTS: TROOP 274 — by John McDonald [Acts I and II]
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.
Hot off the successful launch less than 48 hours ago, playwrights and actors and audience members return to witness our splashdown of five short plays so freshly written and rehearsed they are still steaming! We successfully launched into the ZOOMosphere the night of Friday, December 4, with our five intrepid playwrights, 18 brave actors and directors, and a witty audience who helped us generate and randomly select a prop (poinsettia), action (blame), line (“Don’t squeeze the pipes so hard”), and theme (whack-a-mole). See our performers teeter on the brink of off-book craziness as they perform the results, written by Katie Bennett, Stan Matthews, John McDonald, Karen Polinsky and Rachael Carnes. The event will be recorded for presentation in the Fertile Ground Festival of New Work, with this event’s live-streaming beginning January 31!
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, Katie Bennett, Rachael Carnes, John McDonald, Karen Polinsky, and Stan Matthews, will write and submit their scripts for review by Saturday afternoon, then rehearse and direct 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 6. Fertile Ground will present the recording of the wild results during the festival. Crazy!
HWY 8 by Lisa Collins and SENIOR PROM by Anthony Gray Finocchiaro
Two one-act plays reach our table Tuesday, a drama in a small town and a comedy in a senior center.
- HWY 8 – by Lisa Collins
Life is predictable and boring in Eudora, Arkansas until a rumor gets around the small town about an attempted sexual assault in the home of one of the finest church-going and respectable families. - SENIOR PROM — by Anthony Gray Finocchiaro
Two senior men, one big and loud, the other soft and frail, and two senior women, one tough and opinionated the other quiet and frail—and a take-no-prisoners assisted living nurse—battle daily on how to reconcile their lives in the autumn of their years.
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NON-SEQUITUR — by Stan Matthews
Computer nerd Sam Hammond’s neatly ordered world turns upside down when he has a fight with his mother and moves out of her house. He breaks up with his new girlfriend, Caitlin, after he discovers she has moved into his old room. His attempts to win back Caitlin, reconcile with his mother and restore order to his life take a turn to the final frontier.
Because of national elections, we did not have a meeting on this date.
SENSATIONAL SHORT WORKS – by PDX Playwrights
- NO PLACE LIKE QUARANTINE – by Stan Matthews
During the 2020 pandemic, it often feels like there is no place but home. Whether home feels like a trap or a refuge depends on the people who must share it. - WHAT A MEMORY LOOKS LIKE — by Rachael Carnes
We are at (or, if you’re an optimist, rapidly approaching) a point of no return. Soon, all that’s growing and vibrant and green may be little more than a memory. - BEACH FRONT, AFFORDABLE — by Louise Wynn
There’s no place like home, even if it’s a bench on a boardwalk in the winter. Home is finding people you can stand to be around.
TWO SHORT WORKS – by PDX Playwrights
- 7:30 BROADCAST – by Amanda Kelner
With the world somehow still in one piece, the public is demanding answers from the science community.
- SACAGASASQUATCH — by Brad Bolchunos
Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Lewis and Clark encounter something lurking in the darkest shadows of their fear.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
FIFTH TUESDAY WORKSHOP: FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN
How to Produce a Short Play on Zoom – by Joe Jatcko with Katie Bennett
Playwright and filmmaker Joe Jatcko, a loyal PDXP member now living in New York City, and author of the plays The High Captain and Alone in the Universe, will offer a one-hour workshop on how to produce a one-act play on Zoom, with some easy tricks even beginners can try! This PDXP Fifth Tuesday Workshop, designed especially for Fertile Ground 2021, is for you, whether you are new to the platform or a Zoom zealot. Joe will start with the basics, serve up a sampling of creative elaborations, and then open it up to your questions and ideas. All are welcome! Joe is looking forward to exploring the possibilities of plays online with you. The multitalented Katie Bennett joins Joe to offer additional insights.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020
REMAINS – by Madeleine Adriance
A goat whose horns are time itself. A map of the world as seen from an airplane, drawn in humanity’s final moments. Dreams of godhood; realities of decay. Thousands of years into the future, around the ruins of a crashed commercial plane, four humanoid robots search for new ways of being.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2020
COOL GRAY DYSPHORIA [Part Two] – by Olivia MacFadden-Elliott and Emma Rye
Disillusioned socialite Nicholas Prince has dropped out of Columbia and returned to his childhood home (in the Bay Area) to realize his vision as a Neo-Beats Poet. His powerful parents are torn between support and dissuasion. His friends, including his former flame Olivia, try to “dig” him. Will the power of art prevail?
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2020
COOL GRAY DYSPHORIA [Part One] – by Olivia MacFadden-Elliott and Emma Rye
Disillusioned socialite Nicholas Prince has dropped out of Columbia and returned to his childhood home (in the Bay Area) to realize his vision as a Neo-Beats Poet. His powerful parents are torn between support and dissuasion. His friends, including his former flame Olivia, try to “dig” him. Will the power of art prevail?
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
LEMON BARS – by Maren Bradley Anderson
Lemon Bars is No Exit meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on a cruise ship during the pandemic, but it’s really about lemon bars. Two women on a cruise ship are forced to share a cabin during lockdown because both of their husbands are in sickbay with COVID-19, and in an attempt to regain some control in their lives, they get drunk and break into the kitchen where cooking classes were held to make lemon bars and tres leche cake.
TUESDAY, JULY 21
OLD FRIENDS – by Fred Cooprider
A one-act set during the height of the AIDS epidemic (1980s-90s), this drama follows story of two old friends, Alan and Jack. One of them cannot accept that his son is gay.
TUESDAY, JULY 7
OUR SEPARATE WAY – by Isaac Thornton
A young child finds themself trapped between their parents and unprepared to cope as a divorce tears their family apart.
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JUNE 30, 2020
FIFTH TUESDAY WORKSHOP: DIRECTING FOR PLAYWRIGHTS – by Robb Piggot
This informal and informative workshop will cover some basic fundamentals of how a director might approach your script once it is handed off to them. From casting to blocking to stage direction to scene changes, PDXPlaywrights will get a fun opportunity through hands-on exercises and “real-world” scenarios to see what kinds of opportunities and challenges a director can expect to face when approaching a new script—and what you as a playwright can do beforehand. In addition to pen and paper or other means to take notes, please gather a few items to have with you at the workshop: index cards, markers, and spare change.
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JUNE 16, 2020
THREE SHORT WORKS – by PDX Playwrights
The evening will feature two new 10-minute plays and a one-act:
- SEXY SELFIES – by Nancy Moss
To soothe her husband, who discovers an online nude photo she took of herself, Felicity tells a lie.
- MOLEK, GREAT KING – by Karen Polinsky
A typical Jewish family in a typical American suburb holds a Zoom call to cancel the Bar Mitzvah, and inadvertently unleashes a new God. A COVID-19 comedy.
- LIFE OF A FUNDRAISER – by Isaac Thornton
Two high school students try to gather bottles for a school fundraiser only to be met with increasingly dysfunctional resistance.
JUNE 2, 2020
UPDATE: This session was canceled.
We at PDX Playwrights have opted to cancel our virtual reading session Tuesday, June 2. We value our forum as a welcoming place to courageously explore a wide range of ideas in theatrical writing. However, to cultivate and sustain that atmosphere, we also must consider the timing. In light of tumultuous national events in this country, and the sensitivity many are feeling right now, as a team we have respectfully concluded that this is not the right moment for this play. We will update our schedule as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.
MAY 19, 2020
TWO BRYN MAWR WOMEN [Act II] – by Thomas L. Mason
A young woman studying archeology and a young lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps are surprised to discover a deepening connection through their correspondence as the Vietnam War intensifies.
MAY 5, 2020
TWO BRYN MAWR WOMEN [Act I] – by Thomas L. Mason
A young U.S. Army Intelligence agent is asked to interview Katharine Hepburn in 1944 to see if she is a communist. The story is based on a real incident between two real people.
A SHORT PLAY DUET – by PDX Playwrights
The evening will feature two new short works:
- HEAD OFFICE – by Robb Piggot
Alone in an abandoned stockroom, two mid-level paper pushers desperately search for the answer as to who or what has put their company into a tailspin. But are some secrets better left unboxed?
- SAFE DISTANCE – by Brett Campbell
A one-act drama about the generational conflict that arises when a deadly virus epidemic that affects only older people strikes a near-future America beset by conflict over climate change.
(This meeting was conducted virtually).
LOVE LYRICS – by Nancy Moss
A married couple gets into a fight. Complications and accentuations ensue with the help of a singing waiter. (A test meeting of a limited size for a virtual meeting).
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MARCH 3, 2020
EVERY BODY – by Sam Wallin
Bart and Cam are happy enough scraping by in doing jobs they hate until one day Bart clicks a pop-up add and ends up dead. Fortunately, his consciousness was online at the time and he wins enough money in the lawsuit that he can afford to buy a new body (or at least a gently used one). But why stop there? Bart and Cam take that windfall and turn it into a profitable business in the lucrative new field of body leasing!
A single mother matures into an award winning choreographer while dealing with post-traumatic stress from domestic violence. Based on the life of Anandha Ray, artistic director of a critically acclaimed, internationally touring dance company for three decades. Anandha’s Shamanic Fusion Dance now develops community ceremonies and performances that move beyond entertainment, to heal personal and communal trauma. http://anandharay.com.
JANUARY 30 – FEBRUARY 9, 2019
PDX Playwrights in the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works
The astonishing plethora of PDXPlaywrights offerings in the Fertile Ground Festival of New Works may be savored here: PDXP in Fertile Ground 2020. Please join us, support your fellow theater-makers, and find inspiration in these acts of creation!
FEBRUARY 4, 2020
MOSCOW/MOCKBA – by Emma Rye and Olivia MacFadden-Elliott
An updated draft of the play presented by PDX Playwrights in the 2019 Fertile Ground Festival: Three Russian expats are grieving the passing of their father, and making the most of their circumstances in Northern Idaho. Olga, the oldest, is micro-managing the affairs of her younger sisters, desperate to have a moment to herself. A stranger from their Russian past appears on the scene to distract Marina from her doof of a husband. Inessa is finally living with her “best friend” Nataly, but it’s not all roses and sunshine. Inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters modern take on a parlor classic.
KINK – by Matt Garland
In this musical, a group of techies are assembled for a project. After work, they get acquainted at a club. When the dancers at the club pull them into drunken improv, connections are made and kinks explored. But can everyone’s kinks be aligned? And can the project withstand the turbulence?