Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Ashland, Oregon

Founded in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is the only large theater in the United States to present its entire season in rotating repertory. In 2008, a resident company of 80 actors and a staff of 450 will present 776 performances of 11 productions in three theaters over a 39-week season, with as many as nine plays in production at once. 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, which seats 601; and at the intimate New Theatre, which seats 270–360. Annual attendance exceeds 370,000 and 20% of the audience is comprised by students.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will present 162
performances of five Shakespeare plays-The Tempest,
Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer
Night's Dream, and Coriolanus - plus related classroom curricula and 420 actor workshops, pre-and post-show discussions, classes, and teachers' programs for 300 schools in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

http://www.osfashland.org/

Photo courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2007 The Tempest. Dan Donohue as Caliban. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.