World Premiere of READ MY LIPS Will Come to Fertile Ground

Read My Lips – A Fable of Art and Resistance, a new play by Portland-based playwright Jed Sutton, will be presented as a staged reading at Ethos Music Center on April 18 and 25 at 7:30 PM as part of the 2026 Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.

Produced by Foxhole Projects LLC, the piece brings to life an extraordinary moment when art, protest, and survival collided. Starring Zachary Ray Sherman as Gregg a charismatic artist and ACT UP leader, Alexander Henriquez as Ray an artist with a gift for the absurd and little time left, Solmaira Trujillo as Pat, Ray's mother and reluctant activist, Phoebe von Reis as Sarah a founding member of ACT UP and documentarian, Nolan Spinks as Alex the cub reporter with a secret, Afua Banful as Jean an artist and pioneering videographer, Q Driskill as Douglas the curator and strategist, Douglas Goodrum as Cardinal O'Connor and Patrick Alex's editor, and Rachel Baker as Tom a defiant parishioner and Mayor Koch, Randall Terry (portrayed by puppets created by Rachel Baker). Supremia Bostick - Music Director, Fyre Daway - Technical Director, Maya Brown - Stage Manager.

Set at the height of New York's AIDS crisis, Read My Lips – A Fable of Art and Resistance revisits the artists who created ACT UP/NY's final major protest —“Stop The Church” was a die-in at St. Patrick's Cathedral opposing Cardinal O'Connor's campaign to stigmatize AIDS patients and distort public health policy. Sutton's play transforms this historic act of civil disobedience into an urgent fable about creative resistance and the reclamation of narrative power. Rachel Baker's puppetry adds a sly touch of the ridiculous, cutting the villains neatly down to size.

When artists refuse to be silenced, art becomes a radical act of care - showing how art can be both a weapon and a lifeline.

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