Blue Roses
my play at Fertile Ground this year
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Today I’m writing about my latest play to appear in the Fertile Ground New Works Festival. This will be the third in a row, since I moved back to Portland. The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works is a citywide, multi-week performing arts festival taking place in venues throughout Portland, Oregon and the surrounding areas. This. year the festival runs from April 10th through the 26th. Blue Roses will be produced at 21Ten Theatre on April 18th, 19th, and 20th.
Our wonderful director is Louanne Moldovan. She’s passionate about stories, is an actor as well as a director, and co-founder of Cygnet Productions. This will be our third collaboration on one of my plays.
Blue Roses is a haunting new drama that illuminates a buried chapter of American history through the lives of two women history tried to forget: Rosemary Kennedy and Rose Isabel Williams, sisters of John F. Kennedy and Tennessee Williams. Though separated by class, power, and public mythology, both women were subjected to lobotomies in the mid-20th century—procedures intended not to heal, but to silence.
Set against the rigid social expectations of the era, Blue Roses explores what happens when women are deemed “too much”: too emotional, too inconvenient, too difficult to manage. Rather than centering the towering male figures who dominate history books, the play insists on the interior lives of the sisters—their intelligence, humor, frustration, and longing for autonomy.
By placing Rosemary Kennedy and Rose Williams in conversation across time and circumstance, Blue Roses asks urgent questions about control, consent, and the price women pay for nonconformity. The play is both intimate and political, refusing sentimentality while honoring resilience.
Briana Ratterman plays Rose Isabel Williams, Jessica Tidd plays Rose Marie Kennedy, and Michael J. Teufel plays the lobotomist Dr. Freeman. Shareen Jacobs and Emma Greene portray the two nurses’ aides.
Michael J. Teufel and I go back a long way. After I saw him as Tom in The Glass Menagerie, I asked if I could write a one-man play for him. It was called Playing Tom, about a young actor playing Tennessee Williams (and finally becoming him). A couple of years ago, I suggested we do it again, but update it twenty years. This time it was all Tennessee, which Michael does so well. It’s called A Window into Tennessee, and we produced it in last year’s Fertile Ground. Here is a video: A Window Into Tennessee
Now he has commissioned me to write another one man show for him, and it will allow him to sing and play the piano as well as act.
If you’re in the Portland area, I hope you will take advantage of the many offerings of the Fertile Ground Festival, and especially my Blue Roses. Our ensemble is excellent. At the table read, they sounded as if they had already rehearsed it. Some hadn’t even met each other yet. I can only imagine how good they’ll be at the staged reading after four rehearsals.
Performance Dates: April 18th at 5:30pm, April 19th at noon, and April 20th at 7:30pm.
Location: 21Ten Theatre, 2110 SE 10th Ave, Portland, Oregon
Tickets: https://fertilegroundpdx.ludus.com/index.php (search for Blue Roses) Tickets are inexpensive, but if you want to see it and can’t afford it, let me know. I’ll get you in for free.
On the other hand, if you have a bit extra to give, please donate to our Crowdfundr (we’re two thirds toward meeting our goal, and less than a month away from our first performance) https://crowdfundr.com/campaigns/c2fbN3
So exciting! Congratulations Sandra!
I'll be there on 4/20/2026!!