Q+A
NICOLE LANE, FERTILE GROUND
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR. PHOTOGRAPHED
AT SAINT SALVAGE IN SOUTHEAST
PORTLAND. PHOTO BY MISTY TOMPOLES.
A Green Thumb for Theatre
Does Portland have a fringe theatre
festival? Well, yes and no. We have
our own twist: The Fertile Ground
Festival of New Works, a non-juried
showcase of all-local performing art
works that turns seven this year and
remains, as ever, full of surprises.
Festival director Nicole Lane (who
daylights as Artists Repertory Theatre’s
marketing and public relations
director) talks to A.L. Adams to give
Artslandia the lay of the land.
INTERVIEW BY A.L. ADAMS.
FERTILE GROUND’S GROWTH
The original notion seven years ago from
PATA (the Portland Area Theatre Alliance)
was to start a fringe theatre festival — like
so many other cities have — in Portland.
We launched an exploratory committee
and quickly learned that the traditional
fringe festival model doesn’t necessarily
benefit local actors, directors and theatre
companies at all; in fact, it often competes
with their work! So we asked, “How can we
create a fringe festival model that highlights local artists instead?”
30
Fertile Ground started with roughly
20 projects; about half of them from
“biggish” producers offering world premieres, plus readings and workshops.
Over the next few years, we grew to 50some events, with the bigger producers
thinking of Fertile Ground as a good time
to offer their world premieres in theatre
and dance. Soon, new artists and producers began to see Fertile Ground as
nurturing, safe place to share their work,
too, which brought aspiring playwrights,
choreographers, filmmakers, musicians,
clowns, dancers and actors clamoring to
create a work for the next Fertile Ground.
Now that’s what I call exciting!
Then there’s another in-between incarnation of polish: newish producers who want
to grow and refine. Augi Garred brought
his show Sexy Nurd to Fertile Ground for
three years, staging three different versions and trying out different production
elements. That was his process, and now
there’s talk of him doing some rendition
nationally. Eleanor O’Brien, who’s taken
a variety of her shows to a Canadian film
festival, also workshopped several different
ARTSLANDIA AT THE PERFORMANCE JANUARY | FEBRUARY
versions of her polyamory-themed show
Lust & Marriage. Aleks Merilo’s Exit 27
from two years ago went on to New York,
to a fringe festival and a bigger house,
and it might go further. So while the
festival is growing, some projects within
it are growing too.
THIS YEAR’S OFFERINGS
Clowns! Comedy! Dance! Music! And a
whole lot of all kinds of theatre at many
stages of development! Fertile Ground 2015
will offer roughly 90 “acts of creation” from
47 producers, many of whom are new producers. We have a singer/songwriter who’s
basically going to do a musical, a storytelling play. Somebody else is doing a book
release and bringing in Theater in the Park
to play out excerpts of that book. One play
in particular, The Snowstorm [at CoHo],
seems destined for the next level. We’ll also
have resources and workshops for producers
about producing, box office organization,
marketing and PR.
This year especially, we have a lot of artist/
producers and small producers working on