The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works is a citywide, multi-week performing arts festival taking place in venues throughout Portland, Oregon and the surrounding areas.

This year's lineup includes site specific theatre, dance, solo shows, aerial performance, puppetry, and dozens upon dozens of brand-new scripts by some of Portland's most celebrated and prolific playwrights.

Schedule of Events:

5:00pm - The Wonderful Woman of Oz by Erin Fitzgerald & David Koff

This once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience will leave you and your family laughing and amazed. Emmy Nominated voice actor Erin Fitzgerald recreates the entire "Wizard of Oz" story, playing every single role in the story with no props, sets, costumes, or special effects.

This superhuman feat required Erin to memorize 80+ pages of dialogue, create voices and body language for 27 different characters, learn how to create dozens of her own sound effects, and create a dozen, different, virtual sets in her mind, so she would know how and where to rotate between characters and "set pieces". It must be seen to be believed.

Our production is a modern, hysterical, and unauthorized re-imagining of L. Frank Baum's classic novel which took over six years of writing, refining, and improvising to develop and then perfect the script.

Rating/Recommended Age:
Safe for all ages. Understandable for ages 6+,

Performance Length:
90min + one intermission

Location: CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St, Portland, OR 97210

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7:30pm - Citizen Executioner by Erik James

The play consists of 8 episodic scenes, in which a cast of 9 actors portray 22 different characters.  Most of them real historical figures now finding themselves comically represented in their own history.

Rating/Recommended Age:
12 and up

Performance Length:
1 hour 20 minutes (average)

Location: 21ten Theatre, 2110 SE 10th Ave, Portland , OR

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7:30pm - Dave's Basement by David Wester

Let’s hide from the world! Descend into Dave’s Basement — a solo sketch comedy show that walks the line from despair to delight. Mr. Basement invites you to join his cast of characters in a concrete palace of the mind. Featuring enchantments such as: grandiosity, sincerity, amusing scenarios, audio-visual mayhem, and (at least) one person on a stage.

Nobody leaves the basement unchanged.

David Wester’s comedy has been featured in the Portland Mercury Undisputed Geniuses of Comedy, Portland Sketchfest, and Seattle Sketchfest. You may have seen him around town at The Siren Theater (as half of the duo D&D and part of Lone Wolves), Kickstand Comedy (as a Secret Aardvark host and performer), and the grocery store (as a man buying a rotisserie chicken).

Rating/Recommended Age:
18+ recommended

Performance Length:
50 minutes; no intermission

Location: The Siren Theater, 3913 N Mississippi Ave, Portland , OR

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