artistic director was a “somewhat expedited process.” “We felt that the organization needed leadership and needed strong, capable, knowledgeable leadership as soon as we could possibly find it,” Yu says. “We were delighted that the then-associate artistic director [Evren Odcikin] agreed to serve as the interim artistic director. But we also felt we should search for a permanent artistic director as soon as we could so that there’d be greater stability and greater opportunity for the next administration to get a foothold.” T he Oregon Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1935 by Angus Bowmer, an English instructor at what was then known as the Southern Oregon Normal School (a forerunner to Southern Oregon University). Looking at the deterioriating remains of Ashland’s Chautauqua building — a lecture hall and theater built as part of a movement that brought cultural and educational programming to rural areas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — Bowmer noticed something. With the former dome ceiling removed, the building looked a bit like the sketches he had seen of Elizabethan theaters. He proposed a theater festival of just two Shakespeare plays, to be performed in conjunction with the city’s Fourth of July weekend. The city cautiously advanced him a sum “not to exceed” $400 (just under $9,000 in 2023 dollars) for the project, and the State Emergency Relief Administration provided a construction crew to build a stage and improve the site. The site of that performance space now houses the open-air, 1,200-seat Allen Elizabethan Theatre. The festival has since grown to include five theaters, and from a midsummer weekend event to a multimonth season — next year’s festival will open March 19 and close on Sept. 15. It’s also a major economic driver in Ashland and the Rogue Valley as a whole. In 2021 the Medford-based broadcast station KTVL reported that according to an OSF financial study, in 2019 the festival had an economic impact of $120 million, drawing around 120,000 tourists to the area during what was then an eight-month run. OSF was not able to provide Oregon Business with a copy of this study, nor with more recent data for comparison. But Katharine Cato, director of Travel Ashland — a branch of the Ashland Chamber of Commerce — confirmed that the festival is responsible for about one-third of the 350,000 visitors the area has historically received each year. “Things have shifted and our visitor bases certainly evolved,” says Cato, who called OSF an “important amenity” for local tourism. Notably, she says, visitors are more likely to come to Ashland in the spring and fall to avoid smoke. “We are grateful they are building back.” Cato was also optimistic about Bond’s return to Ashland, noting that he previously served on the Ashland Chamber’s board of directors and was active on a number of the chamber’s committees. “He is so engaged with the community. He raised his family here, he has roots here. He’s thrilled to, quote-unquote, be back home. So we were thrilled to have him,” Cato says. I n a sense, Bond never left Ashland. He still has a home in the area; in 2022 he directed a production of August Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned” for OSF. During his tenure as associate artistic director, he directed more than 12 productions, including Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Pearl Clage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky” and “El Paso Blue” by Octavio Solis. He also directed three plays by August Wilson and has the goal of producing Wilson’s whole 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle for the festival. Bond is also the creator of OSF’s FAIR program. An acronym for fellowships, assistantships, internships and residencies, the program was set up to create opportunities for theater artists and administrators from diverse backgrounds. “I really felt Oregon Shakespeare Festival had such an amazing staff, and an amazing history and fantastic facilities and a lot of knowledge to pass on,” Bond says. “But we were looking to figure out how we could diversify more, how we could get younger voices, and get the next generation to infuse the company with new ideas and people coming from all over the country.” He says OSF now employs a number of staff who started with the FAIR program, and that he’s met FAIR alumni in both artistic and administrative roles. “We really have seeded the American theater,” he says. According to OSF’s website, the FAIR program is currently on hiatus; Bond has a goal of reviving it as soon as possible. Former artistic director Nataki Garrett described her tenure at OSF as “four years in crisis” in an interview with the online news outlet Ashland.news. Garrett was the second woman to serve as OSF’s artistic director. She was also the first Black artistic director; Bond is the second. After she announced her departure, Garrett told American Theatre magazine that early on, donors told her she was the reason they were rescinding their donation. She was also the target of threats so serious OSF hired a security detail and contacted federal law enforcement. Ostensibly, critics—including the anonymous writers of a series of letters who called themselves “the old white guard”—were displeased by Garrett’s programming choices, notably that in 2021, the only play OSF staged was a one-woman play about the life of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Critics who signed their names to their critiques — like local columnist Herbert Rothschild—said the problem was that OSF was turning its back on the Bard. “An arts organization that originally produced only plays by Shakespeare is now producing fewer and fewer of them,” Rothschild wrote in 2022. A review of the festival’s production history, which is documented on its website, shows OSF began producing non-Shakespeare plays in the 1950s; the American Theatre story notes that Garrett’s Shakespeare-to-non-Shakespeare ratio is close to that of her predecessor, Bill Rauch. When Bond spoke with OB, the festival had not yet announced which plays it would be producing in 2024, but he said he hopes the upcoming season will be “our miracle season.” “We feel that Shakespeare will continue to be an important calling card for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s work. We’re hoping to make at least 30% of our plays still be connected to Shakespeare,” but also to incorporate more musicals and highlight the work of longtime OSF actors. In September OSF announced plans to produce nine plays during its 2024 season. They include “Macbeth” and “Much Ado We were looking to figure out how we could diversify more, how we could get younger voices, and get the next generation to infuse the company with new ideas and people coming from all over the country.” TIM BOND, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL 25
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==