Fertile Ground Festival of New Works Celebrates 10th Anniversary

The Portland-grown Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Works celebrates its 10th anniversary this January in a town of prolific playwrights, abundant actors, innovative dancers, talented designers and adventuresome producers. Since its first festival in 2009, Fertile Ground has welcomed more than 1,000 “acts of creation” from Portland’s artistic communities that thrive on stages, nooks and crannies all over the city for 11 days. The decennial will run from Thursday, January 24 to Sunday, February  3, 2019.

Fertile Ground is an incubator for new work in all forms and stages of creation, offering 11 days of theatre and dance, workshops, staged readings, readings and multidisciplinary events running at all times. Offering an astonishing breadth of creative work are seasoned theatre and dance companies alongside new art-creators of every ilk.

A full list of Fertile Ground 2019 events can be found here.

Fertile Ground 2019’s myriad of new works spans theatre in long and short form, musical theatre, circus arts, sketch and improvisational comedy, animation, a wide variety of dance disciplines, social action through arts, as well as the voices of youth, lesser heard voices, and shows that are derived from audience participation or input. In addition to seasoned producers, dozens of emerging young producers, playwrights, choreographers and animators will offer their work in this collaborative Portland showcase festival.

The 2019 Festival offers a robust lineup of works from regularly producing companies like Echo Theatre Company, Live on Stage, Lakewood Theatre and Theatre Vertigo, along with producing veteran companies like Passin’Art, Many Hats Collaboration, CoHo Productions and CompassWorks, but leans strongly into the work of emerging playwrights and producers offering works-in-progress or World Premiere work like MediaRites’ Theatre Diaspora, Deep End Theater and Fuse Theatre.