Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Ashland, Oregon

Founded in 1935 during the Great Depression, Oregon Shakespeare Festival is celebrating its 75 th anniversary and continues to presents their entire season in rotating repertory. A resident company of 79 actors and 450 other artists and artisans will present 766 performances of 11 productions in three theaters over a 37-week season, with as many as five different plays performed in a single day and nine plays in production at any one time. Four plays by Shakespeare and seven plays by other classic and contemporary playwrights will be performed on the outdoor Elizabethan Stage, which seats 1,200 and is the oldest existing full-scale Elizabethan stage in the Western Hemisphere; in the Angus Bowmer Theatre that seats 601; and at their intimate New Theatre that seats 270-360. Annual attendance exceeds 4000,000 and students make up 20% of the audience.

As part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival will present 158 performances of four Shakespeare plays: Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, as well as two plays that launched the Festival 75 years ago, Henry IV: Part I and Measure for Measure. Activities will include related classroom curricula, actor workshops, post-performance discussions, tour, Prologues, and teacher training classes for underserved schools located in Oregon and California. The Festival will work with low-income elementary-, middle-, and high-school students who participate in its School Visit Partnerships, Bowmer Project for Student Playgoers, and Ashland Schools project.

Visit them at: www.osfashland.org