Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Angus Bowmer and the outdoor theatre, the keystone of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival he created.
Genre	repertory theatre
Begins	Each February
Ends	Each November
Frequency	annual
Location(s)	Ashland, Oregon
Inaugurated	1935
Attendance	400,000 (annual)
Budget	$32 million (annual)
Website
osfashland.org

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is a regional repertory theatre in Ashland, Oregon, United States. Each year, the festival produces eleven plays on three stages during a season that lasts from mid-February to early November. From its inception in 1935 through the end of the 2016 season (excepting the war years 1941–1946) the Festival has presented all 37 of Shakespeare's plays a total of 308 times and beginning in 1960, 341 non-Shakespeare plays for a total of over 30,000 performances. It has completed the complete Shakespeare canon of 37 plays in 1958, 1978, 1997, and 2016. The Festival welcomed its millionth visitor in 1971. Its 10-millionth in 2001, and its 20-millionth visitor in 2015. A complete list by year and theater is available at the Main article: Production history of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

A season at OSF consists of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays produced in three theatres. Three plays are staged in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre, three in the Thomas Theatre, and five in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. OSF also provides a broad range of educational programs for middle schools, high schools, college students and theatre professionals. While OSF has produced non-Shakespearean works since 1960, each season continues to include three to five Shakespeare plays. Since 1935, it has staged Shakespeare's complete canon three times, completing the first cycle in 1958 with a production of Troilus and Cressida and completing the second and third cycles through the works in 1978 and 1997. Since 2000, there has also been at least one new work each season from playwrights such as Octavio Solis and Robert Schenkkan.

The Festival presents 750 to 800 performances of eleven plays in three theaters from February through early November each year, to a total audience of about 410,000 each season. The company of nearly 1400 people consists of about 675 paid staff and 700 volunteers. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is listed as a Major Festival in the book Shakespeare Festivals Around the World.

In addition to the plays, beginning in 1951 a free outdoor "Green Show" drawing audiences of 600 to 1200, often including non-playgoers, has preceded the evening plays from June through October from a modular steel stage with a sprung floor for the dancers, a removable wheelchair ramp for handicapped performers, and built-in storage facilities that eliminate carting equipment from and to distant storage facilities six days a week. Originally, it offered Elizabethan music and dancers. From 1966 till 2007, it consisted of three Renaissance-themed shows in rotation inspired by the plays showing in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. Live music was supplied by the Terra Nova Consort and other guest musicians and modern dance was performed by Dance Kaleidoscope. In 2008, the Green Show was revamped. The nightly shows now vary widely with performers such as a dance group from Mexico or India one night, clowns doing ballet on stilts the next, and a classical music quartet on another. A fire show, juggler, or magician might be seen along with improv, metal, or rock-n-roll variations on Shakespeare. Individual performers, groups, choirs, bands, and orchestras may present Afro-Cuban, baroque, blues, classical, contemporary, cowboy, funk, gospel, hip-hop, jazz, mariachi, marimba, poetry, marionette, renaissance, or salsa, sometimes combined in unexpected ways.