Irina Lavrinenko
Irina Lavrinenko and Astra Davalos founded Fool House Art Collective in 2020, breaking away from the more traditional Scarlet Sails theater.
- About three dozen volunteer performers
- First show staged in a dog park
- Hitchcock-style mystery in a gas station
- Its own venue, The House Studio
- Fertile Ground 2026: Pillows after Zhanaydarov
“Absurdism attracts me because it creates a strange, uneasy feeling that goes straight from the text to the body.”
The troupe counts about three dozen volunteers with roots in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and makes physical, experimental and immersive theater in Russian with English translation. Its first show was staged in a dog park; later came a Hitchcock-style mystery in a disused gas station, a documentary play built from interviews, Jazz for an Hour after Florian Zeller and Vvedensky's Christmas at the Ivanovs at BITFest 2025. In December 2025 Lavrinenko directed two New Year shows: one for immigrant families and their children, and Neutrennik, Alexandra Obmanets's play for adults from the Lyubimovka new-drama festival.
The troupe runs its own studio, The House Studio on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway; grants including one from the Oregon Cultural Trust paid for professional lights, and a black box is next. At Fertile Ground 2026 she directed Pillows, after Olzhas Zhanaydarov, a show for all ages that was banned in Russia.
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