Much of Fertile Ground rooted in Clark County

When she was a Vancouver high school kid, Anne Zander nurtured a standard type of teen fantasy: Singer Brian Litrell of the Backstreet Boys would magically appear in her bedroom at night, understanding her so much better than anyone else, and — well, there you are.

Zander is 33 years old now, and she’s lived and worked as an actress, comedian and writer all over the world — including appearing in a French feature film (called “The Man From Oran”) and earning a master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London — but there remains this little piece of her that never quite grew up and out of adolescent fantasies and feelings, she said.

When you’re a child, the Mountain View High School graduate mused, you’re desperate to grow up. Then you become an adult and wish you could be a child again.

Now living in Portland with her husband, Zander hosts her own monthly comedy-improv experiment called “Dear Diary,” in which willing victims read from their actual teen journals and a troupe of improvisers bring their secrets to cringeworthy life on stage. That’s at 7 p.m. every second Wednesday (the next one is Feb. 13) at a venue called Kickstand Comedy, upstairs from Siren Theater at 315 N.W. Davis St., in Portland. Admission is pay-what-you-will, but Zander said that may change.

Meanwhile, you can catch Zander exposing a heightened version of her own intense teen self in “Juicebox,” her celebrated one-woman show. It’s one of dozens of plays, films, dance performances and readings in Fertile Ground, Portland’s annual grassroots festival of theater arts. Fertile Ground runs from Jan. 24 to Feb. 3 at numerous Portland venues; visit http://fertilegroundpdx.org/ for all of the details.

Zander said her mother (retired attorney and former Columbian garden columnist Marjorie Speirs) didn’t follow the standard parental line; she encouraged her child’s artistic side and never tried limiting Zander to “doing something sensible.” Zander recalls getting laughs during some childhood comedy performances — and realizing that the stage is her true comfort zone. Since then, she’s done lots of serious theater, as well as comedy.

In drama school, Zander said, you get to explore characters who are totally unlike you. But after you graduate and enter the real world of audition and rejection, you start getting pigeonholed by your appearance and track record. Any “bubble of supportiveness and experimentation” is gone, she said; “It becomes, where do you fit in? Do you check this box or this box?”

Constant rejection was so hard, Zander said, that she stepped offstage and taught English overseas. But it wasn’t long before she found herself writing a play and trying a stand-up comedy workshop, too. Clearly, abandoning performance wasn’t going to take. Eventually, Zander enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which is where she studied clowning.

“Juicebox,” which Zander subtitles “an imaginary memoir,” is not exactly a clown show, she said. Her nameless character wears clownlike makeup but sure doesn’t spend the hourlong performance pantomiming in silence. She’s a teen girl, Zander emphasized: “She spends a lot of time emoting, and not emoting quietly. I think she expresses herself in all the ways I couldn’t express myself, yet,” back in the day.

To really juice up the melodrama, Zander added, her show includes a late-1990s pop soundtrack that aims to relight your torch for your own personal Backstreet Boys — or whomever you used to secretly pine for, and maybe still do.

Zander said “Juicebox,” like adolescence itself, is “ridiculous yet relatable.” Late-breaking news: Just this week, “Juicebox” earned industry clearinghouse Broadway World’s No. 1 recommendation of shows to catch at Fertile Ground: “Don’t miss this face-first dive into the most awkward, exciting, endearing, hilarious and horrifying elements of pubescent fantasy and obsession.”

Fertile Ground

This is the 10th anniversary for Fertile Ground, a festival focused on what it calls “Portland’s lush creative culture” — so it’s satisfying to note how much of the festival’s juice actually comes from Clark County. Festival director Nicole Lane is a longtime Camas resident and so is Gary Corbin, a playwright, festival producer and box office coordinator.

Fertile Ground is “where patrons can come see works in development, works at small venues, works of every type,” Lane said. “It’s a training ground for playwrights and producers and smaller organizations. There are mid-size and larger producers in the festival as well. We give them an umbrella to show their work and to learn with us. It’s an incubator.”

Fertile Ground spans many Portland venues and spills over into Lake Oswego, Ore., and Milwaukie, Ore.; could it ever spill north, too, to a venue such as downtown Vancouver’s Magenta Theater? That’s not a new suggestion, Lane said, and she’d love to see it happen; the barrier, both physical and mental, is the Interstate 5 Bridge.

“It’s just tricky to get PDX folks over the river,” she said.

Stranded in Portland

In Gary Corbin’s latest short work, “Streaming Jesus,” a lady who fears going outside but still craves both human and heavenly connection finds satisfaction online.

“She gets her people fix and her religion fix by streaming Jesus on the internet,” Corbin said. And that’s where she’s charmed by a money-grubbing preacher, while her dutiful daughter waves red flags.

Corbin said his 10-minute play speaks to a theme: “the disconnect.” That theme elicited nearly 30 submissions to a blind, juried contest to get into “Daisy Dukes Shorts Night,” an anthology of nine very short plays staged as part of Fertile Ground by a writers group called PDX Playwrights; Corbin is one of its administrators.

Also selected for “Daisy Dukes” this year is “A Cowboy, A Clown and The Muse” by Louise Wynn, another Camas playwright. How, Wynn asked, can writers get past writer’s block? “Maybe a dream” where those characters appear, “with water-squirting lapel flower and lariat and scalpel at hand?”

“Daisy Dukes” will run twice during Fertile Ground on Jan. 25 and Feb. 1. If you really like these micro-plays, consider coming back for an even zippier run at the same idea, “Crazy Dukes Instant Play Festival.” That features works generated by prompts at the Jan. 25 (Friday night) show, written and rehearsed at lightning speed over the weekend, and presented without scripts Jan. 27 (Sunday night).

“It’s theater on the high wire with no net,” Corbin said.

This year’s Fertile Ground festival also features a full-length, semi-satirical comedy-drama by Dale Stanford Payne of Vancouver that’s based on current, local events. Payne’s “The Sequelz” follows a literary visitor to Portland who gets stranded during the post-election riots in November 2016; he holes up in the Pearl District and gets an education in language, political correctness, love and traffic jams.

This production of “The Sequelz” will be a staged reading — that is, a minimally staged production featuring actors with scripts in hand. It runs twice, on Jan. 25 and Feb. 3.

“I really do encourage everyone to check out the whole festival,” Zander said. “You will be amazed at how much there is.”