Fertile Ground 2026
Welcome to “The Festival Within the Festival!” We at PDX Playwrights are honored to once again uphold our reputation for creativity with an outstanding offering of new readings and performances as part of Fertile Ground. Tickets and festival passes are available beginning February 23. Our projects are highlighted below. Check out our phenomenal lineup!
Roam from a dynamic new musical to a staged reading of a gripping drama stemming from a national political crisis, solo performances, mythical explorations with comedic undertones, and the return of our zany set of plays written, rehearsed, and performed off-book in 48 hours. With 11 projects involving more than 20 playwrights in a wide assortment of topics and forms, PDX Playwrights offers something for nearly everyone. Scroll down and roam from to the exciting prospects originating from our Scenario partnership with CoHo Productions and to our flagship show, our provocative 10-minute pieces from our Epic Shorts: Public Domain contest—to mention but a few.
We’re proud of the impressive variety of voices sprouting from the grounds of PDX Playwrights. Our compelling collection of matinees, evening, and nighttime performances run Wednesday, April 15 through Sunday, April 19, 2026, at Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St., Milwaukie.
You and your support help to make this possible.
Celebrate new work with us. We hope the thrill of encountering these new plays will produce a festival within you!
Please consider purchasing a Festival Pass or Punch Card. All individual tickets to PDX Playwrights performance events will be only $15 each (with some Student Tickets available at each show for $7.50). Most of these shows will be presented in a lively staged reading or concert reading format. A few, such as “Epic Shorts: Public Domain,” are fully produced. Our shows will appear at Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St., Milwaukie. Pass purchases and single tickets are on sale now at the Fertile Ground ticket link here! Roam the fertile soil. Our shows are listed below in order of performance (and by first performance for shows with more than one performance).
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 at 5 PM and FRIDAY, APRIL 17 at 8 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
SILENT STORM – by BRAD BOLCHUNOS
An offbeat assortment of one-act plays form a comedic and dramatic trip through time—and a slightly biting and bizarre take on here and now. Medieval fantasy role-playing threatens to get out of hand for Spencer in Double Vision. Video posturing with artificial intelligence calls intention, and reality, into question in Autocorrect. A resourceful traveler confronts a wary steward of knowledge amid a dangerously desolate landscape where hope hangs by a thread in Silent Storm.
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 at 6:30 PM and FRIDAY, APRIL 17 at 6:30 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
LIVING THE DREAM – by LAUREN MUELLER
A bold and inquisitive new play about January 6th from the viewpoint of the idealistic young Democratic staffers trapped inside the Capitol. In a contest between loyalty and what’s right and wrong, team leader Inshata is forced to ask herself how much sacrifice a system can reasonably demand of those who often remain invisible within it. At a time of growing uncertainty about the future of our democracy, this play asks audiences to consider how collective disengagement from the realities of the congressional workplace has shaped the system we now inherit.
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 at 8 PM and SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 6:30 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
X & Y – by GENDERBOMB
From the trans performance collective, Genderbomb, comes the premiere of X&Y. Through dance and dialogue, the players get lost in the worlds of marriage, work, childhood, and war. Asking, where and how do we get stuck in the context of one another? What did your mother do for you? When’s the last time you called? And, most urgently, why, after all we’ve suffered and all we’ve seen, do we try to do it again?
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THURSDAY, APRIL 16 at 5 PM and SATURDAY, APRIL 18 at 12 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
CIRCUS ON THE STREETS – by SARAH STEIN
Presented by Sarah Stein in a one woman show, Circus on the Streets takes audiences back to the bustling streets and colorful characters of the Lower East Side of New York City during the 1920s and 30s as seen through the eyes of her family. The show is vibrant and nostalgic as she shares her experiences growing up in the streets, the adventures of trips to Coney Island and the joy of the children’s favorite radio programs. The show is an inspiring blend of laughter and grace as Sarah shows, how with humor and cunning, Jewish immigrants made the best of the hard times. It also includes slides and recorded music of that period.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 16 at 6:30 PM – ONE PERFORMANCE
PANGLOSSIAN – by SHAWN HUDSON
Panglossian (Pan-gloss-e-an) is a cautionary tale about the dangers young adults face living up to Christian, family, and societal expectations. A young couple, Seth and Kodi, find their way back to church after years away. In order to stay in good standing with their church they hastily get married to avoid living in sin. Unprepared for the challenges ahead, the couple struggles to communicate their needs and conform to their marital roles.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 16 at 8 PM and SATURDAY, APRIL 18 at 5 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
SCENARIO: PSEUDOS – by MIA TIERNEY AND BESS KLEIN
Pseudos is a series of poetry and short plays dealing with the tiny but essential untruths that construct our perception of reality. From memory and reconciliation to childhood and trickery, playwright Mia Tierney and poet Bess Klein explore these harmless falsehoods and what happens when they unravel.
Pseudos originated at the 2026 Scenario workshop PDX Playwrights co-hosted with CoHo Productions.
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FRIDAY, APRIL 17 at 5 PM and SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 12 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
JUSTICE – by TIFFANY ESTEB
Sarah is a lawyer at the top of her game. She defends tech companies against those who sue for damages caused from harassment on their sites, all in the name of freedom of speech. Then she is harassed herself, and has to face the world she helped to create. Justice is a solo show that explores the meaning of freedom.
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PROMPT SHOW FRIDAY, APRIL 17 at 9 PM (AFTER SILENT STORM ) – ONE PERFORMANCE
TAKE THE LEAP: FREE KICKOFF EVENT FOR THE 48-HOUR PLAY FESTIVAL – by PDX PLAYWRIGHTS
On Friday night, YOU provide prompts for six local playwrights who are randomly assigned actors and given exactly 48 hours to write, direct, and fully stage a short play for the following Sunday night. Please see the SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 8 PM entry for LEAP (Ludicrously Expedited Acts of Playwriting), Portland’s premier instant play festival.
REMINDER: This listing is for the rambunctious and fun (and free) PROMPT SHOW, but the ticketed performance is on Sunday.
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SATURDAY, APRIL 18 at 2 PM and 8 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
EPIC SHORTS: PUBLIC DOMAIN
DIRECTED BY KELSY CARSON
As part of our annual lineup of Fertile Ground performances, PDX Playwrights will once again be hosting our ever-popular Epic Shorts event! This spectacular series of curated stories will showcase a handful of 10-minute plays based around this year’s chosen theme, “Public Domain.”
Public domain refers to the body of artistic work not explicitly protected under copyright law. This can occur for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to) an expired copyright. Each play explores this theme in a unique and creative way for a full show of eclectic storytelling. We appreciate the talent within the work submitted, and congratulate the following selected playwrights for this year’s lineup:
- Private Lives in the Public Domain by Bill Lynch
- Subjects Unknown by Tom Smith
- Adaptation by Nancy Campbell
- Intermission: Life Upon the Wicked Stage by Terence Joseph Quinn
- Circle Two Blues by Kathleen Caprario Ulrich
- Vote BAux by Deborah Chava Singer
Director Kelsy Carson says she can’t wait to bring them to life on stage.
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SATURDAY, APRIL 18 at 6:30 PM and SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 2 PM – TWO PERFORMANCES
GOLD STAR – by BRIA KAM and MONTETRÉ
Gold Star follows Shay, a broke and recently heartbroken lesbian whose friends launch a viral campaign asking men to compete to be her first, turning her private life into a public spectacle and raising $50,000 overnight. As suitors line up and Shay searches for her “perfect” man, the experience forces her to question desire, identity, and how much of herself she’s willing to perform for survival. When her ex-girlfriend unexpectedly reappears, everything Shay thought she wanted is thrown into question.
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SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 5 PM – ONE PERFORMANCE
UNLOOPING PENELOPE – by SILVER FAGAN
Penelope, of The Odyssey, has somehow altered the fabric of time with her endless weaving and unweaving. Her all-too-familiar rhythms and repetitions are interrupted by the unlikely arrival of two modern queer travelers into her mythic realm. With a multivocal language of poetic strangeness meeting and mixing with playful humor, this staged reading examines the ways women and queer people respond to the threats of patriarchy, the complex legacies of family and friendship, and how we get stuck—and unstuck—in tangles of trauma and time.
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SUNDAY, APRIL 19 at 8 PM – ONE PERFORMANCE
LEAP: THE 48-HOUR PLAY FESTIVAL – by PDX PLAYWRIGHTS
48 hours, six playwrights, one unforgettable night! PDX Playwrights presents LEAP (Ludicrously Expedited Acts of Playwriting), Portland’s premier instant play festival. On Friday night, YOU provide prompts for six local playwrights who are randomly assigned actors and given exactly 48 hours to write, direct, and fully stage a short play for the following Sunday night.
Inspire a completely improvised theatrical showcase, then return to see how our dramatists bring your suggestions to life while pushing their skills to the limit. Your ticket for Sunday’s show includes both Friday’s prompt show AND Sunday’s final performance.
LEAP: 48-HOUR PLAY FESTIVAL – TICKETS
Where’s that overall ticket link again, you ask? Why, it is right here: Tickets to events from PDX Playwrights, among all of the wonderful Fertile Ground offerings.
Thank you for your interest and support of new work through Fertile Ground, the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, and PDX Playwrights. We can’t wait to see you at “The Festival Within the Festival!”