Fertile Ground 2025 presents the premiere of THE POISON SQUAD

Fertile Ground 2025 presents the premiere of

None but the brave can eat the fare.

WHO: The Fertile Ground festival of new works

Written and directed by Anthony Orkin | Original music by Curtis Cooper

WHEN: April 12 at 12 PM, April 13 at 7:30 PM

TICKETS: $10 https://fertileground.tix.page...

ABOUT THE POISON SQUAD

The Poison Squad is a musical comedy based on a true story, about men used as guinea pigs in a quasi-experiment on the effects of untested preservatives on the human body. In the early 1900's, Dr. Harvey Wiley, head chemist at the Department of Agriculture, wanted to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act, and he needed some colorful evidence to persuade Congress.

Well, these poor boys gave it to him. Formaldehyde, borax, sulfites and sulfates, all went down their gullets, with spectacular results. Filled with catchy melodies and toxic meals, The Poison Squad is a steampunk trip through one of the greatest legislative battles in history, whose results we’re still living with today!

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Curtis Cooper has been a professional percussionist since1970, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began musical theater in 2002 with the Marin Opera, and became musical director at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg, CA in 2006. He was choir director at the Church of Divine Man, Berkeley, CA, 2001-2011. Curtis is the author of children's books & the composer of the Opera: The Ballad of Johnny Rose.

ABOUT THE PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT

- Before it, there were no lists of ingredients on food packages.

- Republicans hated the law, yet Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, supported it because he'd seen our soldiers killed by tainted meat during the Spanish-American War.

- In addition to regulating food, the law forbade the addition of addictive drugs to patent medicines and soft drinks. Yes, Coca-Cola used to have cocaine.

- Getting the law from conception to passage took almost thirty years, a process the FDA calls the 7 C's: change, complexity, competition, crusading, coalescence, compromise, and catastrophe.

- The law led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which today regulates almost everything we put into or onto our bodies.

ABOUT FERTILE GROUND

Fertile Ground is an annual city-wide festival highlighting new work from Portland’s creative community in myriad art forms and offering dozens of Portland-generated “acts of creation” for audiences to experience each year. Where other new works festivals are typically curated by one entity, this festival is collaboratively shaped by community participation, uplifting a variety of aesthetic voices.

Projects can range from fully staged world premieres, to theatrical workshops and play readings, to ensemble, multidisciplinary and collaboration-driven work, to a variety of dance, comedy, film events and more.

Unlike a typical fringe festival, Fertile Ground features the new work of our LOCAL artists, performers, and resident theatre companies, ensuring that the artistic and financial benefits of the festival stay in Portland.

The festival will take place April 4-19, 2025

ABOUT THE COHO THEATRE

For the past 26 years, CoHo has nurtured and supported Portland area theatre artists through a model of theatrical co-production, championing exceptional local artists and deepening the theatrical landscape of the community. Inspired by the vision of previous Producing Artistic Director, Philip Cuomo, their mission is to empower a robust and sustainable producing community in Portland by providing emerging artists with essential creative resources, opportunities, and networking support, centering marginalized and oppressed voices in order to foster a more liberated theatre culture in our city.