The 2010 Fertile Ground Creative Festival expands in its 2nd year, encompassing new genres (dance, comedy, poetry, music, visual art) and over 50 separate world premiere projects to create a rich and inspiring sneak peek into the newest work being created by Portland artists and performers. The festival will run from January 22 to February 1.
The second annual Fertile Ground Creative Festival will feature Portland artists from age 8 to 80 (literally) working with organizations as diverse as Whitebird Dance, Artists Repertory Theatre, the Attic Gallery Workshop, Miracle Theatre, Polaris Dance, Portland Center Stage, Simple Machines, Oregon Children's Theatre, Shaking the Tree, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and the Working Artists Network.
There will be ballet dancers collaborating with poets (OBT's "__"), karaoke memoirists (Jimmy Radosta's Triskadekaphilia), playwrights inspired by novels (Many Hats' Truth and Beauty) and dancers inspired by schoolhouse fires (Artists Rep's The Hillsboro Story) indie rock bands (Polaris Dance's xCHANGE³) and their coming out experience (Tere Mathern/Minh Tran at Whitebird Uncaged).
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).
Some of the best projects are collaborations: with the elders at an assisted living facility (Everything New is Old), undocumented immigrants in search of the American Dream (American Sueño), between shadow puppet drama and thematic dance (Bugged. with the light that lingers), and at-risk youth trying out new avenues in creative expression (PlayWrite's collaboration with New Avenues for Youth).
It will be uncommonly musical, thanks to world premiere musicals staged by Portland composer/collaborators (The Only Way Out is Through, Fighter Girl: The Musical, Don't Let the Pigeons Ride the Bus, A/Broad for All Seasons).
There will be steam punk Pinocchios and circus freak Alices. Mythic crying women and world leaders with a mission. Lesbian Godfathers and reluctant monks.
To wrap it all up, Portland Center Stage will give all of Portland the opportunity to commission instant plays and choreographies and contribute to the finished creation (Sprout).
It's an astonishing breadth and variety of work, compressed into ten of the darkest and wettest days of the Portland calendar. So you COULD mope around your house or...
Festival Passes are available for $50 through the Fertile Ground website, www.fertilegroundpdx.org, or any of the participating arts organizations. The Festival Pass will grant admission to all 50 plus participating festival projects, plus admission to the after hours parties with the artists taking place at Curious Comedy for 10 days of the festival.
Or participants can purchase a festival button for $5 that grants them a discount on single tickets to all festival affiliated events and many local restaurants and businesses.
Single tickets for all festival events will be purchased directly through the relevant participating theater companies. Dates, venues and ticket purchase information for each project are available on the Fertile Ground Website at www.fertilegroundpdx.org/calendar.
What Makes Fertile Ground Unique. Several arts organizations across the nation host "new works festivals" (including PICA's T:BA Festival, Seattle's On The Boards and Portland's own Portland Center Stage, whose JAW Festival in July has been cultivating new work for over 10 years). Nearly all of these festivals present "staged readings", works-in-progress curated by the artistic aesthetic of one company's artistic staff. In contrast, the Fertile Ground Creative Festival will present a collection of projects ranging from in-progress improvisations to fully staged world premiere productions, curated through multiple aesthetic perspectives ranging from Portland's oldest and largest to its newest and smallest arts institutions, and ranging from adaptive re-use of some of the English language's classic children's tales to the very newest ideas exploring the intersections of dance, theater, art, music and media.
Fertile Ground was launched by the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (the service organization for Portland theater artists and organizations) to provide a platform for Portland theater artists to showcase their commitment to new work; and to invite visiting artists and audiences to discover for themselves that Portland truly is fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and daring acts of performance.
Complete Festival project details can be found on the attached Complete Event Descriptions. Further information on the people and projects of the festival can be found on the Fertile Ground blog at www.fertilegroundpdx.wordpress.com. A Festival Calendar is available at www.fertilegroundpdx.org/calendar.
