FERTILE GROUND PICKS: BUNNIES, BELLIES, WINE

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works is a handy way to binge-watch a lot of new local theater talent in the Portland area. This year’s festival starts in earnest Thursday, Jan. 19, and ends Jan. 29.

Full information can be found at fertilegroundpdx.org. We caught up with some of the talent as they prepared to put on their work at Portland venues. Some of the highlights:

‘Bunny’

“She came into my life and it’s never been the same,” says Frango il Magnifico, the magician who uses a potion to turn his bunny into a female contortionist with polyester ears. Prismagic’s wordless show blends comedy with circus arts, including acrobatics and old school contortion. It tells the heartwarming romantic tale of one hipster and his bunny-with-benefits.

Petra Delarocha, the actress playing Bunny, says she is inspired by Pixar animations such as “Monsters Inc.”

“I don’t know whether I love her, or if she’s ruining my life,” says il Magnifico.

“But the story is all about believing in yourself and awakening your inner strengths,” says the actor Frank Brislawn, dipping briefly out of character.

For an encore, ask Bunny to do a binkie.

7:30 p.m. Jan. 25, 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Jan 25, Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., http://www.curiouscomedy.org, $15

‘Uncommon Sense’

Bianca McCarthy says the Echo Theater Company show uses nonlinear narrative and vignettes to explore themes of social justice through physical theater.

“We’re looking at using limitations for creativity,” she says, referring to Echo Theater Company’s “Cartwheeling Uphill,” which uses “mixed-ability performers,” including using wheelchair dancers as aerial artists, and performers of nontraditional size, shape and physical ability.

It also includes Sister: Grit’s “What We Have Been Given,” Tempos Contemporary Circus talking about the inner critic and Sir Cupcake’s Queer Circus, which explores mythology, grand gestures and “wicked magic.”

McCarthy promises you won’t go away feeling guilty and privileged, “you will go away feeling inspired and hopefully full of hope.”

8 p.m. Jan. 20, 21, 27, 28, 1 p.m. Jan. 22, 29, and 4:30 p.m. Jan. 22, Echo Theater, 1515 S.E. 37th Ave., http://www.echotheaterpdx.org, $25, $18 youth (12-under) and seniors (62-over)

‘Scars’

This is Richard Berg’s dramatization of his own novel “Scars” by Notre Dame Press, which was based on his interviews with soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. Part of that work was done at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in 2012.

The show has seven characters played by Lakewood Theater actors. It follows a young Oregonian combat medic who comes home to his filbert orchard and his mother, girlfriend, best friend and great-aunt, who is a nun.

“We want to use this play for therapy purposes,” says Berg, who is a psychologist and a priest. “We’re going to film it and share it with therapy centers around the country.” (In the therapy context the soldiers will read the characters and switch parts to develop empathy.)

Roccie Hill, who adapted the book for stage, will be in Portland for the opening.

7 p.m. Jan 24, Lakewood Theatre Company, 368 S. State St., Lake Oswego, http://www.lakewood-center.org, 10

‘I Am An Actress … A Passion Play’

Melanie Moseley is directing the one-woman show that stars her high school buddy Jane Comer. Jane is a trans woman.

“She always wanted to be an actress but was always working backstage, in the background,” says Moseley. Jane plays herself and her mom. “Her message is about the boxes we put ourselves in, about coming out of the box and finding your passion.”

Moseley is not sure when Jane transitioned. “Sometime between the 1980s, when we were doing theater together at the University of Oregon, and six years ago, she transitioned.”

“We spent a lot of time looking at ambience and how to transition from character to character. For that we’re looking at using images projected on to a wall.”

2 p.m. Jan 21, 22, 28, Multnomah Arts Center, 7688 S.W. Capitol Highway, http://www.multnomahartscenter.org, $10

‘Atlantis’

“Atlantis” is a fully-staged folk opera by The Broken Planetarium set in underwater Manhattan in the near future (with rising sea levels and all that). People have gills but they are arguing with each other about how to fit in.

The set designers have had fun representing water and skyscrapers, but you’ll be there for the original music. Writer Laura Christina Dunn based the story of a young woman who has a platonic, creative relationship with an older artist on herself. The older artist lives above water but begins to forget things as dementia sets in. Dunn was happy to get the all-singing, all-dancing Natasha Kotey as the lead.

8 p.m. Jan. 19, 22, 10 p.m. Jan 20, 1:30 p.m. Jan. 21, Clinton Street Theater, 2522 S.E. Clinton St., http://www.cstpdx.com, $20, $15 student/senior

‘Into the Night: An Exploration of Life, Love & Loss’

Ashley Lopez is a trained opera singer and a tribal fusion (belly) dancer, and she uses her platform to explore impermanence of life. She was grew up in San Jose and sang at Opera San Jose for a year before dancing took over her life — she has toured in 20 countries. (Portland is a world center for belly dancers.)

Lopez’s dance piece by The Allegro Dance Company explores loss, including ideas based on interviews with real people, including a stage four cancer victim. The main theme is impermanence — as W.B. Yeats said, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

7:30 p.m. Jan. 28, 3:30 p.m. Jan 29, BodyVox Theater, 1201 N.W. 17th Ave., http://www.bodyvox.com, $30, $55 VIP, $20 student/senior

‘Successful Strategies’

This staged reading of Andrea Stolowitz’s play (directed by DÃ maso Rodriguez and presented by Artists Repertory Theatre) is an adaptation of a farce by French playwright Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1783). “Successful Strategies” is about the rise of Oregon winemakers.

Stolowitz says after her last heartfelt and wrenching play about returning female Marines, she wanted to do a comedy and not have to write a plot. “You invest so much in all the characters, I needed something lighter, I wanted something I could adapt,” she says. So she looked into the Oregon wine industry’s rise in the 1960s, and saw a parallel between the difficulty that early vintners had selling their wine, and the life of an artist.

She connected with winemaker Vincent Fritzsche of Vincent Wines, did her research and made her characters, updating the Marivaux for pinot noir country.

Fritzsche says making wine is less predictable than, say, being a chef. Stolowitz insists the gap between bottling and marketing is very much like writing a play.

So can one review kill a bottle of wine? “More like make it,” Fritzsche says, “They focus on superlatives, they’re not trying to trash things.” Did you hear that, critics?

7:30 p.m. Jan 23, 24, Artists Repertory Theatre Alder Theatre, 1616 S.W. Alder St., http://www.artistsrep.org, free

‘Nansen of the North’

Time to move past your tired old Scott of the Antarctic/Leif Eriksson/Nanook of the North anecdotes? Portland Story Theater has a new show called “Nansen of the North.” Lawrence Howard narrates the story of Fridtjof Nansen, Arctic explorer. The Norwegian was stranded in Greenland in the 1880s and survived with the local Eskimos. He taught subsequent polar explorers how to explore and how to survive. Actor-writer Howard uses no props as he tells Nansen’s story with pure wordpower. Chilling.

8 p.m. Jan 20, 21, 27, 28, Fremont Theater, 2393 N.E. Fremont St., http://www.portlandstorytheater.org, $15; $18 day of show, $5 Arts for All