Welcome to "The Festival Within the Festival!" Nearly all of our shows now have EXPANDED pass-holder access and some have a SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATE by using a promotional code within "General Admission!" We at PDX Playwrights are honored to once again uphold our reputation for robust creativity with an outstanding offering of new readings and performances as part of Fertile Ground. We invite you to explore a vibrant garden of new work taking root: from the challenges of immigration to a vaudeville jukebox musical. With 20 plays of varying lengths among 13 shows and a wide assortment of topics and forms, PDX Playwrights offers something for nearly everyone. Roam from a wild examination of the cultural layers of bullfighting (the winning play from our workshop collaboration with CoHo Theatre) to provocative 10-minute pieces from our Epic Shorts: Strange Burdens contest—to mention but a few.
Sink your toes into this rich dramatic soil and you’ll get a sense of the impressive variety of voices sprouting in our work. Our delectable baker's dozen of matinees, twilight, and evening shows run Tuesday, April 16 through Sunday, April 21, 2024. We hope the thrill of encountering these new plays will produce a festival within you.
Tickets to PDX Playwrights performance events are only $15 each. Again, many of our shows have a special discount using a promotional code within the General Admission purchase. All of our shows will appear at Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie.
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Bone Sorrow: The Elder Tree, Cleave, and A Circle of Stones A Trio of Original Surrealist Dramas
by Nina Monique Kelly
Surrealist Playwright and Ghost Whisperer Nina Monique Kelly of "Whisper Skin Theatre" presents her newest Raw and Original Works!
The Elder Tree - A feminist retelling of the witch trials of 1500s Europe, this play follows the harrowing infestation of religious fanaticism in a once peaceful and harmonious village, through the eyes of an elderly Midwife. We witness the womenfolk resist the onslaught of perverse and erroneous accusations and embrace their attempts at reclaiming their power.
Cleave* - A girl child, intrigued by a shadowed figure that looms outside her window, desperately seeks her place in the outside world. Her mother, a cloaked figure nestled in the corner, is an entity of the undead. Having transcended her own death, she gathers herself to nurture her living child. A surrealist poem of myth, we sojourn with a poverty-struck mother and her child through tragedy, unwavering love, and ghosts.
(*Cleave: To sever from; to cling to).
A Circle of Stones - An expression of the playwright's family strife with profound, generational mental illness. We traverse through a haunting tale of three generations of women desperately seeking nurturance, love, and self realization against the bondage of mental torment.