Review: FERTILE GROUND 2025 ROUNDUP #2 at Various

We’re heading into the last weekend of Fertile Ground 2025. Here’s what I’ve seen this week. (If you missed my first set of reviews, you can find it here.)

Harvest of Woman

Olga Kravtsova’s HARVEST OF WOMAN is performance art, dance, and sculpture exhibit all rolled into one. Dark, enigmatic, and more than a little scary, this was an early workshop of a show that’s headed for a full production this summer, so it provided a rare chance to see behind the scenes of a work in progress.

Drawing inspiration from the Slavic archetype Woman Fortress, Kravtsova takes on different roles that women have played throughout history – bride, mother, maid. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say “roles that women have been forced to play,” as they mostly seem eager to break free of their confining circumstances (there’s a revenge scene featuring a bullwhip that is equal parts thrilling and terrifying). 

One of the reasons I love Fertile Ground is that it gives audiences the chance to experience something new and different. HARVEST OF WOMAN is most definitely that. It’s strange and unsettling, and I won’t claim to have understood everything, but I did feel it all very keenly. I look forward to watching how the show evolves toward its full production.

Camp Fire Stories

Initially, I misread the title of Murri Lazaroff Babin’s new solo show as “Campfire Stories,” anticipating the types of spooky tales that typically accompany s’mores. The reality was much more, well…real…and, as reality usually is, much more complex and moving.

CAMP FIRE STORIES is about Lazaroff Babin’s relationship to a Concow, the small town in Northern California where he grew up and which was destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. Like all relationships, this one is complicated. As a kid, young Murri didn’t know anything other than this impoverished community. As an adult, he sought to distance himself from it. The show asks, “How do you mourn a home that you never wanted to be from in the first place?”

Lazaroff Babin is the type of performer who seems to wear his heart on his sleeve, embodying all of his characters (including his younger self), with openness and compassion. This show will tug on your heartstrings, make you laugh, and likely prompt you to reexamine your own relationship to wherever you call home.

If you missed it at Fertile Ground, check it out at various fringe festivals across the country this summer.

Everybody’s Eyes Are on the First

Wow! There’s pretty much nothing more exciting to me than a smart, funny new musical with catchy tunes and a big heart. EVERYBODY’S EYES ARE ON THE FIRST is exactly that. This musical, created by the ridiculously talented young team of Teague Shattuck and Naama Friedman is billed as “Hairspray meets Rent in the age of social media.” That’s strangely exactly right.

Rudy and Rhonda, two boomers who run the R&R home shopping channel, find themselves in hot water after airing some ill-advised infomercials. They hire Sloane to help them appeal to the younger generations, and he suggests they get a new transgender host. So they bring on Rafi, a struggling trans actor, in the hope that he will be able to turn things around. Everyone has lots of feelings about the situation – Rafi wants to help make the world more welcoming for trans people; his girlfriend, Mag, is concerned he’s selling out; Sloane is desperate to prove himself; Rhonda feels threatened; and Rudy, well, he’s happy to go along with anything.

EVERYBODY’S EYES ARE ON THE FIRST has everything – comedy, tragedy, sex, dance breaks. In many ways, it’s the perfect Golden Age-style musical for today. There is one more Fertile Ground performance – it’s sold out, but you might be able to get in off of the waitlist. In any case, Portland audiences will have the chance to see it (plus choreography) late this summer, so keep your eye out.

The Mask I Wear

Growing up in Phoenix, Actor Jonathan goes to a lot of auditions but doesn’t get many roles, and those he does get usually involve typecasting (e.g., “the thug”) because he’s Latino. But he’s a trained professional actor, and what he really wants is to play Hamlet. As he sits in the waiting room of yet another casting office, he encounters Johnny H, an actor with no training but who has been successful by embracing the stereotypes, and Jon-something-or-other, an aspiring young actor plagued by self-doubt. Through these characters, writer and performer Jonathan Hernandez explores the roadblocks he has faced throughout his career and the difficult choices he’s had to make.

Hernandez is known for his vulnerable performances that simultaneously make you laugh and also rip your heart out. THE MASK I WEAR does both of those things.

This was an advanced workshop, and I hope that means the show will be getting a full production. This is a show that needs to be seen. There is one more performance – Friday, April 18, at 9pm at 21ten Theatre.

Every Pretty Thing

What do you do with the detritus of a failed relationship? In EVERY PRETTY THING, co-created by Alanna Fagan and Ken Yoshikawa, the answer is, “Hold a garage sale!” In this devised performance, Fagan tries to regale the audience with fanciful stories about the historical and cultural significance of the items for sale, but reality keeps breaking through – these were things she purchased with or received from her ex, who she is clearly not yet over.