Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival of new plays offers audiences an enormous variety

The Fertile Ground Festival of new plays in development has become a staple of the Portland theatre scene since it first began in 2009.

This year’s festival has expanded to 17 days, the longest festival yet, to take in the 80-some different productions that run through April 26.

We talk with the festival director, Tamara Carroll, and Kristin Tehrani, who helped create “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical.”

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end this week with the Fertile Ground Festival. The showcase of new plays and works in development has been a part of the Portland theater scene since it started in 2009. This year’s festival is the longest yet. It stretches for 17 days with about 80 different productions.

Tamara Carroll is the festival director. Kristin Tehrani helped create one of the productions. It’s called “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical.” It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Kristin Tehrani: Nice to be here.

Tamara Carroll: Thanks for having us

Miller: Tamara, first – I gave the number of 80 something productions as a part of this festival, but can you give us just a sense for the range, the variety of productions?

Carroll: Yeah, the range is both genre, but also, as you were saying, stages of development. So in terms of stage of development, we have staged readings of scripts. Some are musicals in development that are sharing a script and then like a few songs – I think that’s probably Kristin’s situation – and fully-staged world premieres. And then there’s clown, there’s performance art, movement, dance and a lot of theater.

Miller: What’s the idea of the pieces and development side of this? For example, how much might a work change from what someone might see tomorrow night at a reading, and what the piece might end up being two years from now?

Carroll: Oh, tremendously. So part of the reason that we have these development opportunities is that you really don’t know what is going to work until you add the ingredient of the audience, or till you hear it out loud, or till you start to put it on its feet. You make all kinds of discoveries. I was working on a production last year that we brought back for Fertile Ground this year and it changed hugely. And that was just a one-person show.

Miller: So Fertile Ground itself, audience goers could see the development of a single piece if they go to successive years?

Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. We have, I’m gonna forget the number, but at least half a dozen-ish shows this year that were part of the festival last year. And then one of the shows at Artists Repertory Theater, “Apple Hunters!” started as this one offstage reading in Fertile Ground, I think three years ago, something like that. And now it’s world premiere as part of Fertile Ground.

Miller: What’s the selection process like? I don’t know if it’s more challenging or different … Given just the different life stages that these works are in, I imagine that the selection process is challenging.

Carroll: Actually, the best thing about Fertile Ground is that there is no selection process. All are welcome. So, anybody who has a show that they want to put up, there is a small registration fee which is to cover administrative costs. And then we advertise. We are the sort of marketing platform for the festival as a whole, but we do not…

Miller: You are not gatekeepers.

Carroll: We are not gatekeepers. That’s exactly right.

Miller: A kind of theatrical Wild West.

Carroll: That’s exactly what it is.

Miller: You said this is the best part of it. So what does that mean for what audiences are potentially exposed to?

Carroll: Yeah, it means that you don’t know. The “wild west” is such a great metaphor for it because I like to use the phrase adventurous viewing. There are folks who have shows that are in a house, in a found space, and some are extremely established like Artists Repertory Theater, a long-standing professional theater. And some are like, “I have always wanted to tell this story, so I’m gonna figure out how to put it on stage.” And it might be pretty rough, to be honest, but that’s part of the adventure

Miller: Caveat emptor, caveat watcher.

Kristin, this is a good time to go to you. I mentioned the title of the piece that your life was the inspiration for, and you’re a co-producer of this now. It’s called “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical.” So before we get to the subtitles, the Bollywood musical part, let’s address the first part, “When I was a Mexican.” What were you told growing up about your birth father?

Tehrani: Well, thanks for jumping right into the point, Dave. [Laughter] So as you said, the story is inspired by, it’s taken some liberties from my real-life story. For my life, until I was 50 – so most of my life, I’m now over 50 – I identified as Latina, Hispanic. Sometimes specifically I would say Mexican, which is what I was told. I believed that I was Mexican. That was the family history, family story.

At the age of 50, I took a DNA test and found that that, in fact, was not true. And the story follows that journey.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to part of a song from this musical in progress. This song is called “Everyone Has a Family.”

[“Everyone Has a Family” playing, a song from the musical “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical”]

Miller: The song really does help us hear sort of both sides of the title of this new work altogether. The lyrics start, “Everyone has a family. Everyone has someone they can say, ‘Hey, she looks like me.’” What does this song mean to you?

Tehrani: Well, I think that is pretty much … That’s a great question. I wasn’t prepared for that question. I think the words kind of say it for themselves, really. I grew up in a family where I’m the only one that has the features that I have: the dark hair, the dark eyes. In an unrelated, longer story, I also have a different last name. So, I think that’s what it says, like what it feels like to feel that difference.

Miller: You said you called yourself Latino or Hispanic. I’m wondering how deeply you identified with Mexican culture growing up and into your adulthood?

Tehrani: That’s a great question because I identified as much as I possibly could, honestly. I would identify it in a census record. I was born Hispanic Latino, but I also recognized that although I may have said I’m Mexican, I didn’t know what that meant culturally. I wasn’t culturally raised by cultural or biracial [people].

Miller: You were raised in a white family?

Tehrani: Correct. Yeah. So that’s why I say I would generally say I’m Latina or I’m Hispanic because that felt more genuine and accurate than to say I was Mexican

Miller: I do understand that there are liberties, that this is sort of a fictionalized theatrical production but with some basis in reality. But with that caveat, in the musical before your character takes a DNA test, someone tells her, “Be careful with this. I’ve been here long enough to see what happens. ‘Oh, I’m just curious. I just wanna find my roots. I just wanna connect with my family. It’s what they all say. Everyone sounds like a commercial. All fun and games, till the results roll in.’” And [this character] says, “then the demons come out.”

Did you have any of those concerns yourself before you took the test?

Tehrani: I didn’t actually. I didn’t have those concerns. I felt pretty comfortable, but also curious. I kind of called it, I was in a trust but verify kind of place. I trusted that what I believed was true, but let’s just go ahead and verify it. There was enough information that made me want to verify it.

Miller: Can you tell us about the moment that the results came in? What did it say, first of all?

Tehrani: It said that I was South Asian. I was of Indian descent and 50%. So very solidly 50% South Asian.

Miller: What went through your mind when you saw that?

Tehrani: [Sighs] It was a surprise, for sure. I didn’t expect it and at the same time, I was like, “OK, there we go, now we know.” So it was both a surprise and at the same time, “OK, good, clarity.” So it was a mix of a lot of things, and then there was more to come after that.

Miller: Including turning that somehow into a Bollywood-style musical. How did that happen?

Tehrani: Well, my partner, my co-producer Alisha Christiansen, she and I have a mutual friend. So we’ve known of each other for probably a couple of decades. And a few years ago, she and I were at a 50th birthday celebration of this mutual friend. We were in Hawaii. What tends to happen when you’re on vacation with a bunch of girlfriends and having a great time, there are lots of stories over the course of five days. One of the stories that came up is me sharing with the group, my story of identity and discovery. And Alisha, being the brilliant creative playwright that she is, was fascinated by the story. During that time, we all kind of mused and played around with the idea, “Well, what if this is a musical? What would we do?”

Fast forward a couple of years later – actually last year – Alisha decides to write the story. She decides, with my permission, “Hey, how do you feel about this?” So I jumped on board. She is the primary writer. And through a couple of readings, table readings, we were encouraged to keep going, basically. We had some support from our now choreographer. And it just kind of grew from there.

It took on a life of its own, and she’s familiar with Fertile Ground. So we applied for a grant with the Fertile Ground Festival. I’ll let Tam go back to that, about the grant process, but we are one of seven, I think, recipients of the GROW Grant, and that’s what got us here today.

Miller: Tamara, what is the GROW program?

Carroll: Yeah, the GROW program was started for the 2021 festival, when a lot of theaters were sort of reckoning with and trying to think about how they were going to include voices and representation that hadn’t been cultivated or welcomed. So that is very much what the program still is. It started out as a straight, sort of mini -grant program. Here’s $500 to folks whose stories we don’t see on stage often enough or who are artists who are part of communities whose stories aren’t represented, who aren’t given as many opportunities.

And this year, we’ve expanded that program a little bit to include – in addition to a project grant to produce a show in the festival – a mentorship component. Folks who are recipients of that or participants in the program are given guaranteed space in a festival venue. So they have like a little bit of additional production support and they have a mentor who’s someone who works in the field that has some alignment with their discipline or their subject matter.

Miller: We asked folks on Facebook what they love about live theater. We got some great responses.

Melissa Martin wrote, “Being able to appreciate the hard work, energy and talent of fellow human beings in person.” Jayne Stravaig Cravens wrote, “It feels so fresh and so much more intense than a screen. And the audience’s reactions.” And Tasha Danner wrote, “Being in the same room with others experiencing the myriad of human emotions expressed on stage. There is an electricity and excitement that exists when one knows it could all fall to pieces, unlike in a film which has been edited and shot at multiple angles.”

Kristin, let’s listen to another song from the new musical. This is called “The Sisters You Choose.”

[“The Sisters You Choose” playing, a song from the musical “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical”]

Miller: Kristin, do you have a sense for how it would have been different for you if you’d gotten this news, done this DNA test at a different point in your life? You said you were 50. I’m wondering if you’d been 40, 30 or 20?

Tehrani: You know, I actually have thought about that a lot. And I don’t know the answer to that, quite honestly. I think in every one of those stages of my life, it could have gone either way, honestly. What I feel about finding out at the age of 50 is just kind of the life experience, the maturity and the groundedness that I had that I would not have had at 40 or 30, that just sort of takes the results more in stride.

I guess I’m fumbling with my words a little bit to say that I think any age would have had its pros and cons. But definitely, with age comes more wisdom and maturity to be able to accept what comes next.

Miller: “When I Was a Mexican: A Bollywood Musical” will be at the basement of Lincoln Hall at PSU. There are three performances next Wednesday, April 22 at 7 p.m., Saturday, April 25, at 5:00 p.m. and Sunday, April 26, at noon.

Kristin Tehrani and Tamara Carroll, thanks so much for joining us.

Carroll: Thank you.

Tehrani: Thanks for having us.

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