Oregon Shakespeare Festival

History[edit]

In 1893, the residents of Ashland built a facility to host Chautauqua events.^[2] In its heyday, it accommodated audiences of 1,500 for appearances by the likes of John Philip Sousa and William Jennings Bryan during annual 10-day seasons.^[3]


In 1917, a new domed structure was built at the site, but it fell into disrepair after the Chautauqua movement died out in the 1920s. In 1935, the similarity of the remaining wall of the then-roofless Chautauqua building to Elizabethan theatres inspired Southern Oregon University drama professor Angus L. Bowmer to propose using it to present plays by Shakespeare. Ashland city leaders loaned him a sum "not to exceed $400" (approximately equivalent to $7,459 in 2019) to present two plays as part of the city's Independence Day celebration. However, they pressed Bowmer to add boxing matches to cover the expected deficit. Bowmer agreed, feeling such an event was in perfect keeping with the bawdiness of Elizabethan theatre. The Works Progress Administration helped construct a makeshift Elizabethan stage on the Chautauqua site,^[4] and confidently billing it as the "First Annual Oregon Shakespearean Festival", Bowmer presented Twelfth Night on July 2 and July 4, 1935, and The Merchant of Venice on July 3, directing and playing the lead roles in both plays himself.^[4] Reserved seats cost $1, with general admission of $.50 for adults and $.25 for children (approximately equivalent to $19, $9, and $5 in 2019). Ironically, the profit from the plays covered the losses the boxing matches incurred.^[5]


The Festival has continued ever since (excepting 1941–1946 while Bowmer served in World War II and most of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic^[6]). It quickly developed a reputation for quality productions. Angus Bowmer's first wife Lois served as art director, creating both costumes and scenery during the formative years of the Festival from 1935 to 1940.^[1] In 1939, OSF took a production of The Taming of the Shrew to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco that was nationally broadcast on radio. The lead actress, learning at the last minute the broadcast would be to a national audience, suffered a panic attack, was rushed to the hospital, and the stand-in took over. The scripts didn't arrive on the set until three minutes before air time. The Festival achieved widespread national recognition when, from 1951 to 1973, under the direction of Andrew C. Love (1894–1987), NBC broadcast abbreviated performances each year that were carried by more than 100 stations nationally and, after 1954, on Armed Forces Radio and Radio Free Europe. The programs won favorable reviews from critics that drew audiences to the Festival from around the country. The programs led Life magazine to do a story on the Festival in 1957, bringing even more people to the plays. The NBC programs and the subsequent attention go a long way to explaining how a tiny out-of-the-way timber town in the Northwest became a theatrical and tourist Mecca.^[7]


Angus L. Bowmer retired in 1971, and leadership of the Festival passed to Jerry Turner, who widened the Festival repertory to production of classics by the likes of Molière, Ibsen, and Chekhov. When Turner retired in 1991, actor/director Henry Woronicz took control through 1996. OSF then recruited Libby Appel from the highly respected Indiana Repertory Theatre. She served as Artistic Director from 1996 through 2007. Bill Rauch succeeded Libby Appel as Artistic Director, serving from 2008 to 2019. He incorporated musicals and non-western plays into the annual selection, and sought connections between classic plays and contemporary concerns. He also started the Black Swan Lab in which 15–20 OSF actors developed new works for the stage. Inspired by Shakespeare's 37 plays, Rauch also initiated a 10-year program to commission up to 37 new plays collectively called American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, 32 of which have been commissioned and ten of these have reached the stage, several to great acclaim including Tony awards.


Bing Crosby served as an honorary director of the Festival from 1949 to 1951. Charles Laughton visited in 1961, saying "I have just seen the four best productions of Shakespeare that I have ever seen in my life." Laughton begged to play King Lear, but died in 1962 before he could fulfill the dream. Stacy Keach was a cast member in 1962 and 1963. Duke Ellington and his orchestra presented a benefit concert in 1966 that brought many luminaries to Ashland.^[1]


1952 saw the birth of a tradition following the curtain call ending the last outdoor play of each season. Company members, not just actors, each carrying a candle, silently enter the darkened theatre to the traditional English folk tune Greensleeves. A company member selected for the honor speaks Prospero's words from Act IV Scene I of the Tempest beginning, "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air…" On completion of the speech, all extinguish the flames and file silently out of the theatre.^[1]


The tradition of opening the outdoor season with a Feast of Will (originally the Feasting of the Tribe of Will) was initiated in 1956 in Lithia Park with Miss Oregon and then-state senator Mark Hatfield attending.^[1]


The City of Portland approached OSF in the late 1970s about joining the art scene there, leading to the building of a new center in Portland. In 1986, OSF was again approached about producing in the new Portland Center for the Performing Arts, leading to the launch in November 1988 of a season of five plays including Shaw's Heartbreak House and Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, the first of four productions that transferred to or from Ashland. At the invitation of the City of Portland, OSF established a resident theatre in the Portland Center for the Performing Arts in 1988. It became independent in 1994 as Portland Center Stage. Those six seasons ran November–April, allowing many OSF company members to work in both cities. In 1990–1991 Portland imported rotating repertory from OSF, a company of 10 actors performing 43 roles.^[1]


In 1986, the OSF received the President's Volunteer Action Award; in 1987 it initiated Daedalus, a fundraiser to help victims of HIV/AIDS that has continued annually ever since.^[1]


A second theatre, the indoor Angus Bowmer Theatre (see below), opened in 1970, enabling OSF to expand its season into the spring and fall; within a year, attendance tripled to 150,000. By 1976, the festival was filling 99% of its seats while offering some 275 performances of eight plays each season. In 1977, the Festival opened a third theatre, dubbed the Black Swan (see below), in what originally was an auto dealership, and attendance reached 300,000. By 1979, the year Bowmer died, the Festival was offering the now customary 11 plays a season.


In 1983 OSF won both its first Tony Award for outstanding achievement in regional theatre and the National Governors' Association Award for its distinguished service to the arts, the first ever to a performing arts organization.^[1] In 1988, the Oregon Shakespearean Festival was renamed the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.


In 1997, the OSF-commissioned The Magic Fire was presented at the John F. Kennedy Center and named by Time among the year's best plays. In 2002, the Thomas Theatre (see below) replaced the Black Swan as the venue for intimate or experimental productions in a Black box theatre. In 2003, Time named OSF as the second best regional theatre in the United States (Chicago's Goodman Theater was first).^[8]


The Festival opened the 2020 season on February 28 with performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter and the Starcatcher, and The Copper Children in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. Bring Down the House (a two-part adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays) was presented in the Thomas Theatre. However, on March 11 the Covid-19 pandemic forced closing of OSF for the rest of the season.


With the pandemic seeming to moderate, the Shakespeare Festival announced an April to December schedule of live performances for 2022 as follows. Once on This Island in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, unseen in the Thomas Theatre, How I Learned What I Learned, in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, The Tempest in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, Revenge Song in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, King John in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, Confederates in the Thomas Theatre, It’s Christmas, Carol! in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. In addition, OSF presented The Cymbeline Project, a multi-episode, digital adaptation of the Shakespeare play.^[9]


In April 2023, OSF announced an emergency fundraising campaign as the company was in financial crisis and needed to raise $2.5 million to continue the season as planned.^[10][11] By June, the fundraising effort had exceeded its goal.^[11] Artistic director Nataki Garrett resigned on May 5, 2023, with Octavio Solis stepping in to help search for a replacement.^[12] Tim Bond of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley was named new artistic director on July 6, 2023.^[13]


The complete record of all OSF plays can be found in a separate article, Production history of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

42°11′46″N 122°42′54″W / 42.1962°N 122.7151°W / 42.1962; -122.7151