Fertile Ground Festival offers up the perfect platform for workshopping two original works created by Brianna Barrett, Hamilton Barrett, and John Maggi.
A Unique 3-Night Theater Experience
Brianna has written TV pilots and screenplays but only recently turned her attention to playwriting. A little bit different kind of beast.
The challenges she set up for herself were really complicated! Here’s how she describes this take on dating, sex, friendship and bad karaoke:
36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations offers a noteworthy commentary on gender and sexuality by staging three separate performances in which all the actors take turns playing different characters in the show—wearing the same costumes and reciting the same lines as someone else the night before. In order to give people the “full experience,” intrigued theater attendees are able to attend the show once, twice, or all three times for the price of one ticket.
You’ll see, if you take in more than one performance as Brianna suggests, that the entire play is gender neutral! And then? Stick around, because the fun is not over yet.
A brief intermission and then? On to #BadDecisions.
...a raucous, foul, hilarious, bizarrely endearing musical about a group of friends who make one bad decision after another while trying to create a night that they will never forget—and probably never remember.
Brianna returned to Portland after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2012. She will donate $1 from every ticket sold to the OHSU Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Support Network.
Brianna fills us in a bit more on the works and the cast:
Both of our plays include music, though #BadDecisions is the one that is more traditionally a musical. Music and lyrics written by John Maggi, whose previous credits include writing the music for a NYC production of Moliere’s The Misanthrope, as well as an original musical This is Not My Life which saw its world premiere in Washington DC last summer. It stars Rachel May Thomas, who has also previously starred in recent local productions of Into the Woods, Urinetown: The Musical and Les Miserables, and Kimo Camat who’s credits span everywhere from Colossal at The John F. Kennedy Center in DC, to Young Frankenstein at Lakewood Theater.
First Table Read with Cast and Brianna
36 Perfectly Appropriate Mealtime Conversations also stars local musicians Cory Tonna and James Lawrence (from the Skidmore Bluffs, a band that Oregon Arts Watch called “impressive… lovely… celestial” at last year’s Fertile Ground festival). [1]. The play itself features a humorous take on the likes of Whitney Houston, Aerosmith, The Righteous Brothers, and Meatloaf.
DATE/TIME: January 29th – 7:00 pm January 30th – 7:00 pm January 31st – 7:00 pm VENUE: Clinton Street Theater 2522 SE Clinton St. Portland OR 97202 TICKETS: https://www.boxofficetickets.com/bot/wa/event?id=296363
I busted into the rehearsal of both shows last weekend at The Clinton Street Theater to talk about the works and had a chance to grab a little video from #BadDecisions. That’s Andy Roberts running through one of the songs, “My Post-Fratboy Life”.
L-R: Hamilton, Brianna, John
And our conversation. Who knew theatre-life could be so much fun!
LINKS
Fertile Ground Festival HERE
Follow Brianna HERE.
Clinton Street Theater HERE.
- A Very New Pickathon in 2022 - August 13, 2022
- Pickathon returns to Pendarvis Farm! It’s not just the artists that’ll be new. - August 3, 2022
- July is BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color) - July 14, 2022
Leave A Comment