PORTLAND, ORE.: The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, a program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA), has announced five projects that will receive GROW Awards, each of which will receive $500 and a production in the 2022 festival. The festival will run Jan. 27-Feb. 6, 2022.
The selected GROW projects are Cosmogonos from Yatnra Productions, a puppetry/animation film written, directed, and filmed by Ajai Tripathi; Heart of Stone from Fool House Art Collective, a dance performance written by Alisher Khasanov and Karen Polinsky, directed and choreographed by Alisher Khasanov and video-produced by Alexandr Beran; Knowledge of Good and Evil from Project C.O.C.O.A., a short film written and directed by Valerie Yvette Peterson; a staged reading of PLEDGE The Musical from D&M Associates, written and directed by Don Merrill and composed by Melody Bell; and a reading of The Enemy of the People from Street Scenes, written by RaChelle SChmidt and directed by Michael Streeter.
“It is truly exciting to see how the Portland Area Theatre Alliance and Fertile Ground have come together to provide a platform for new and diverse work,” said GROW panel chairperson Samson Syharath in a statement. “Having so many different voices in the room provides an abundance of knowledge and perspective. The GROW Panel is incredibly valuable in working to advance projects that are inclusive and elevate voices that are typically underrepresented. I believe that this year’s GROW Award selections will help uplift projects that align with our mission to address equity and access barriers in the festival that exist for underrepresented artists.”
Fertile Ground created the GROW Awards for the 2021 festival in an effort to increase access and decrease financial barriers that constrained new and underrepresented voices, including BIPOC, LGBTQ2IA+ and disabled artists. Three $500 awards were funds set aside by Fertile Ground for local artists and producers, and a grant from the Think System Foundation funded two more awards for the 2022 festival.
For the 13th annual festival, Fertile Ground will present online programming from 37 producers and more than 50 projects. Fertile Ground producers may also host in-person events in tandem with the online festival events; all in-person events must also have a virtual component. This new-works showcase will be offered to all area artists and returns to directing audiences to producers’ (virtual) productions.
The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, a program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA), is an 11-day arts festival held every January/February. It serves the community’s artists and audiences by offering a new works festival featuring a myriad of artistic endeavors by local artists.
