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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Bad Ass Japanese Pimp
A Solo Show by Rob Katsuno
Directed by Cassie Greer
with
Whose Lion Is It Anyway and Underlings
by Brad Bolchunos
A solo show and a set of short works by two distinctive playwrights:
Bad Ass Japanese Pimp: A Solo Show by Rob Katsuno - Rob, a Japanese-American, struggles to overcome his habit of choking when angry or put on the spot, repeatedly derailing his life's progress. Enter Ana, a Brazilian, igniting romantic sparks and cross-cultural hilarity. When they marry, Rob's susceptibility to pressure and anger returns with a vengeance. Marital tension escalates until an explosive crisis. Can Rob discover the key to navigating stressful situations and getting his life on track?
Plus: Two offbeat comedies by Brad Bolchunos, developed with Northwest Theatre Workshop:
Whose Lion Is It Anyway? - When a professional tamer confronts an adolescent lion about the steep consequences of misbehavior, they walk a tightrope between assumptions they’ve made about each other —and themselves.
Underlings - Captured by the Justice Jockeys, apprentice supervillains of the Harbingers of Havoc plot their escape. But even with a budding criminal mastermind in their midst, can they figure out how to overcome self interest?