Fertile Ground, Day #8

How The Light Gets In



The playwright owned that this one was far from finished.  And, yes, I can see that it needs to be shaped a bit more before it can be staged.  But it was a good way to try out the dialog in front of an audience.  And the dialog was remarkably funny, considering that the main protagonist had breast cancer.







Voodoo Snowball



The man at the door was startled when I gave my name, because it was the same as the playwright's.  I rolled over all of my dad's relatives in my mind, to see if I could fit him in, but came up with nothing - going back to my great-grandfather, in Canada.



But, just to be sure, I studied his profile.  He's got a prominent nose, but a straight one, without the crow's beak hook that gave my long-dead ancestor his name.  So I doubt that we're related.




This one was standard fare about a dysfunctional family.  And also not nearly done.

Fertile Ground, Day #7

Out of the Blue

A family drama, about two families, both of them broken and mourning.  And with a connection that could join them together.

Fertile Ground, Day #6

Two readings today, Alaska, a monologue by a kid on an impromptu tour bus in Seward, and Strangest Yellow, a near monologue by a woman trying to recover from a miscarriage and the break-up of her marriage, by starting a vlog.  Only a near monologue, because she keeps getting interrupted by the ghost of her dead unborn baby, played by a man three times her size.  And I'm wondering: how the heck could they stage that?

Fertile Ground, Day #5

Petite Dames


Set on a plantation in Louisiana in late 1865.  A plantation that, in some unexplained fashion, had ended up as a refuge for slaves who had escaped from their owners and had hidden there until emancipation.  And were now charting out their new lives, now that they could come out of hiding.

The play was charitable towards whites, which was kind.  But not totally believable.  I know that it's unfair to compare the time just before reconstruction with the time that came after it, but I have problems accepting that a white person in Louisiana in 1865 would accept interracial marriage, or honestly consider that a black person might be his equal.

Matter is Mother

Set on a garbage-strewn beach at a ritzy time-share resort.  A series of vignettes in which the monologist became, in turn, a beer-guzzling dad, a resort maid, a realtor, a tourist, a small child, a soulless materialist inside the belly of the beast, and, finally, the beast herself - the Ur-Mother, who spawned all life, and now spends all of her time gobbling down all of the garbage that we dump in the ocean, as well as all of the worst parts of ourselves.

Fertile Ground, Day #4

Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov
Northwest Classical Theatre Collaborative

This one was a bit of a stretch for a festival that's intended for new works.  But it is, at least, a new adaption, if only because the director couldn't find an existing translation that wasn't hopelessly old-fashioned, and so commissioned (wrote?) his own.

The language may have been new(ish), but the plot was unchanged.  No happy endings here.  And by the end I was emotionally drained.

Cellar Door Roasters

A meet-up with other sketchers at a coffee shop near Ladd's Addition.


It had an intriguing machine - a coffee roaster, set up next to the door so that it could vent out the window.  I did two different views of it, one in color and one in black and white.

(There was a curtained doorway in one corner, which led to the stairway to the second floor apartments.  So the residents of the building have round-the-clock access to the coffee shop.

Fertile Ground, Day #3

 Portland’s Mini Musical Festival


Not so much a play, as a musical.  Or rather, a string of mini-musicals.  Spawning from reality TV, work friends, attempted suicide, high-school sweethearts.  I got an impression of a class assignment, where the teacher had pulled random situations out of a hat and had handed them out to his music composition students, saying: "Here, make a musical out of this."

They were all interesting.  Some were old-fashioned conventional musicals, while others were pushing the envelop a bit.