Interested in wine and theater? Come to a staged reading of playwright Andrea Stolowitz’s Successful Strategies next Tuesday the 24th at Artist Repertory Theater in Portland. The event is part of Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, a city-wide celebration of new works.

Successful Strategies runs on both January 23 and 24, but I’ll be there on the 24th sampling a couple of my current wines at intermission. After the performance on the 24th, Stolowitz and I will hold an informal debrief of the play with more tasting. Best of all, it’s free. Please come, and RSVP to jrippy@artistsrep.org if possible (not required). ART is located at

Successful Strategies is an adaptation of a romantic farce of the same name by 18th century French dramatist Pierre de Marivaux. Stolowitz has taken this classic play and set it in Oregon wine country at the brink of a precarious harvest, where two very different couples intertwine in unexpected ways. It’s funny, poignant and very much wine related as the characters sort out the roles that art, science and luck play in our attempts to make wine and make love stay.

This staged reading is directed by Dámaso Rodriguez and features actors Jen Rowe, Michael O’Connell, Sara Hennessey, Josh Weinstein, Andrew Bray, Jana Lee Hamblin and Darius Pierce.

Playwright Andrea Stolowitz is a two-time Oregon Book Award winner whom I met through a mutual friend in 2013 when she was researching and writing the first draft of the play. Andrea worked with me up to and during the harvest that year to get more experience in the finer points of growing and making wine.

At the time we talked about this kind of event at some point, now it’s here and I hope you can join us on the 24th, if only to hear about the backstory of Andrea’s surprise upon meeting the vineyard owner on the prowl for migratory birds. Yes, he shows up in the play.