OSF Board of Directors pick Tim Bond due to start work Sept. 1 — ‘I’m coming home’

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

William Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” For incoming Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Tim Bond, apparently a lot.

“Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve built bridges and tried to find that interconnectivity between the theater and the community wherever it is, but also just between people,” Bond said in a Zoom interview with Ashland.news on July 6.

“It’s built into my name — Bond,” he added warmly.

Bond, 64, was hired by the OSF Board of Directors to officially start in the role Sept. 1. During the interim and until Sept. 15, Evren Odcikin will serve as interim artistic director. Both will play a role in planning programming for the 2024 season. Bond succeeds artistic director Nataki Garrett, who officially exited the organization on May 31.

Speaking of his name, Bond noted his father’s name is James, for those with an affinity for Agent 007.

“He’s the original,” Bond said of his father, who was president of California State University, Sacramento.

“(Building bridges) is what my family’s always done, we like to bridge people and connect people, so I’m coming with a real eye towards the future in how we can build great relationships with each other and respect each other and try to build on that interconnectivity,” Bond said.

Bond, who has deep roots in Ashland, sat down virtually to share his philosophy as he prepares to return to the organization years after raising a family in Ashland while serving as associate artistic director at OSF for 11 years (1996-2007) under Libby Appel. He was the first person of color hired on with OSF’s administration.

“When I came on as the associate artistic director,” Bond recalled, “I had already been an artistic director and I came because I wanted to mentor under Libby Appel and to experience rotating repertory on a really broad scale in that way and to learn the canon of Shakespeare and other classics in ways that I really couldn’t in the smaller theater I was running in Seattle.”

Bond recalls it being an “extraordinary time” when he started at OSF in 1996. 

“There were actors in the company who were actors of color,” Bond said, “but on the administrative staff at the time I came on, there was really no one else there who was of color and my job was to help begin to do diversity training, and inclusion and equity training back at that time, and I jumped into it with vigor and we did some important work for a number of years while I was there that helped set the table for the Bill Rauch era and when Nataki came.”

Coming home

Bond’s first time experiencing OSF wasn’t in Ashland. It was through touring OSF plays “Sizwe Banzi is dead” and “The Island,” both one-act, companion plays written by South African playwright Athol Fugard, which came through Seattle in the mid-1980s. At the time, Bond served as artistic director of Seattle Group Theater.

“Changed my life, seeing South African work,” Bond said. “I became an activist with … South African theater, went to the consulate, and was protesting against apartheid, and it really was an extraordinary moment for me. And I always thought, ‘Gee, I need to go to Ashland and see what else they’re doing there.’’”

Bond first saw Ashland’s OSF in person in the early 1990s as part of an OSF program which brought in visiting artistic directors from around the country. 

During this visit, he saw shows, met actors, and “fell in love with Ashland.”

“It was just a magical experience the first time going to the outdoor stage,” Bond said. “Seeing those stars come out at intermission. Just hearing the magic of that language outdoors and all that. It was also great seeing contemporary plays in relationship to those.”

He said his upcoming return to Ashland is personal for him for reasons beyond the theater.

“Ashland has a very special place in my heart,” Bond said.

He raised his children in Ashland, where they attended local schools, and he still has many friends in the local community.

“It’s my home,” he said. “I’m coming home.”

Roots in education, the arts

What got him into theater? Bond said it goes back to being a kid watching Saturday afternoon musicals on TV. He enjoys musicals to this day, and has plans to incorporate them into OSF programming in the future.

As the son of educators, with his father running Cal State-Sacramento and his mother a fifth-grade teacher, he was exposed early on to arts and the importance of education.

“We had artists and poets and musicians and all sorts of people over at our home,” he said. “I had a really rich environment at our house.”

Bond got his start in theater where many do, in high school.

He grew up in the Sacramento area and, during high school, excelled in speech and sports.

“I was the captain of all my teams in high school,” he said. “I played three sports – That’s what I thought I was going to do with my life.”

After winning a speech contest, a drama teacher saw theatrical potential in him and told him he should enroll in his theater class.

“I took a drama class and got bit by the bug,” he said.

With interests in other pursuits, including journalism and political science, he wasn’t certain of a career in theater until taking a drama class at UCLA.

“That was it,” he said. “I was hooked.”

“So I started off as an actor, but I also was building sets, and hanging lights, and doing all of that,” Bond said. 

At 18, Bond worked at a company in Grass Valley, California, as an actor for one year. At age 19, he was tapped to serve as the director for the summer theater project there.

“The producer said, ‘I think you have something in you to be a director,’” Bond said. “‘I’m going to pay you to be a director and I will mentor you,’ and I was 19 years old.”

He also spent two years at UCLA before transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C. From there, Bond got his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Washington.

It was at Howard University where he developed a bent toward educational outreach in theater. Bond taught two summers there in their children’s theater program, training youth 6-18 years old to learn acting, stage management and design.

Interest in educational outreach

While working in Seattle, he continued to learn how working in the arts raises youth self-esteem and hones language, and social skills and self-confidence, and helps with math and science.

“It is an essential part of the educational process and socialization process for kids,” Bond said. “As a theater company, you’re also creating your audiences and potential artisans and administrators of the future, so it’s a key part of what theaters do, and Ashland, I think, was a company that did it the best, really had a great program, and you could see the return years later of people coming back to see shows …. It’s about turning people onto creativity, turning them onto their own imagination.

“Education allows kids an opportunity to process that experience, to not only see the shows, but have some time to talk with the actors,” he added. “That is what being a theater company in the world is all about. It’s interconnectivity, inspiring people’s creativity.”

When asked what his plans were in regards to educational outreach programming, Bond said: “To me, I don’t know any other way to do the theater and to celebrate the work that we do as artists if there’s not a component of mentorship and of some kind of theater education program or arts engagement program, whatever you want to call it, that’s about engaging with community and passing on that knowledge and getting that knowledge infused back into the organization from the next generation. So, I know that that will be an important part of what I do.”

While at OSF, he helped found the FAIR program, which stands for Fellowships, Assistantships, Internships, and Residencies.

“I started it because I felt like we had all this knowledge to pass on and this generation of new artists out there and we had resources we should be sharing back with them,” Bond said. “And we needed their ideas and their perspectives so that you don’t get stuck in whatever you know already or think you know.” 

Bond believes the exchange of ideas with a younger generation was important also to diversify and provide more inclusivity in who was brought in to train with the organization, which inevitably impacts the culture of OSF.

“That program was important to me and I know it’s kind of been on hiatus for a while, I think, and I would love to get that program or aspects of it back,” he said. “I’d love to reinvigorate the education programs and get our school visit programs and other programs that Oregon Shakespeare Festival has done in the past and also figure out what new things we can do, that would be really exciting. Anything that connects us to community and connects us with the next generation.”

Asked about the future of Southern Oregon University’s visiting Shakespeare program, which was among millions in funding cuts by SOU announced in April, Bond wasn’t certain.

“We’ll have to look at all those programs and figure out how we can phase them back in a way that’s sustainable and that’s meaningful,” Bond said.

Hokama: ‘In good hands with Tim’

Bond said he and Tyler Hokama, who is serving as interim executive director of OSF, will be in continuing discussions about how to do that. Hokama also joined in on the interview from his OSF office in Ashland.

“I’m coming in at a time when most of what’s planned for next season is already in motion,” Bond said, “and I know that it’s a more austere season in the sense that … we need to rightsize the budgetary constraints of the company and make sure we’re staying within our means. And so it’s a year of recovering and sort of regathering before the 90th season, which would be the ‘25 season.

“We’ll have Shakespeare, we’ll have hopefully something musical, but some smaller works that are going to be in there that are going to celebrate the company, but not overspend our means, is what I can say right now.”

While no concrete details were shared about the 2024 season, Bond said there’s “every hope and expectation” of having the 2024 season. Bond and Odcikin collaborate closely on shaping the coming season.

Hokama praised Bond and said he’s encouraged by OSF’s direction going into the 2024 season.

“I think we have a good structure in mind and Tim is going to help decide what context fits with the next structure,” Hokama said. “I think we’re in good hands with Tim.

“The nature of this business is you have to be involved in both sides for it to work, right? It is not just a divide and the ED (executive director) does one thing and the AD (artistic director) does another. It has to be interweaved in how we collaborate and cooperate and make this business work. That’s my philosophy.”

Bond agreed that working in partnership together is best.

“Tyler and I are just getting started with each other, but I think it’s going to be a grand relationship,” Bond said.

Bond emphasized his own philosophy coming to the role will be to continue his belief in theaters as “places of belonging” and “being inclusive of many different voices and perspectives and cultures.”

“The interconnectivity of those together tell the human story,” he said. “And the human story is what we do. We … hold onto the history …  the political machinations of our society and we deal with what makes us humans and connected.”

Bond said he looks for plays that have great language and poetry, and that are “heightened.”

“I like plays that have great themes, larger themes that are tapping into large universals but also really celebrating the specific voices and cultures of the writers that they’re from,” Bond said. “To me building (a theater) company is about building community.”

‘Shakespeare will be a very key component’

Bond said, generally, OSF has incorporated Shakespeare works into 30% of its plays. His job will be to figure out budgetarily how to put programming back together again and how to rebuild its audience.

“Shakespeare has huge ideas in those plays, and really sets the table for the rest of the shows every season around those Shakespeare productions,” Bond said. 

“Shakespeare will be a very key component to what we do and the other shows around the Shakespeare will also tap into large themes … so that it feels of an entire whole, but there’ll 

be a huge variety of different plays and, hopefully, some musicals still, that are family-friendly that we will look into figuring out how to afford.”

Bond said it’s uncertain whether OSF can hold large musicals right away, unless there is interest in underwriting it, but he sees room for them in the future.

“I think there’s ways to get back to doing some of that,” he said.

Bond said he also loves plays that incorporate music, which could be expected to be on the list in the future, though he didn’t specify which ones.

“We’ll look at ways to keep all of that lively and fun and, you know, really celebrating the voices of the mosaic of different cultures that make our country and the globe what they are,” he said. “I’m very interested in international voices and world culture — and Shakespeare was, too.”

As far as is known, Bond said, Shakespeare never left England, but wrote about plays that took place all over the place, with people from all over the world.

“So, (I) just want to continue to expand that idea of the globe and world culture,” he said.

Bond comes to OSF on the heels of highly publicized security issues faced by Garrett and other OSF staff.

When asked to respond to Garrett’s security issues during her tenure, including exposure to death threats in 2022, Bond called it “unfortunate” and “troubling.”

Bond declined to comment on scenarios Garrett faced, but did note his own experiences where he was sure he wasn’t cast in roles due to the color of his skin while he studied at UCLA.

“My goal coming in is going to be to help heal those wounds and the relationship between OSF and the Ashland and Southern Oregon community,” he said.

Bond also acknowledged the financial crisis faced by OSF as well. The organization has raised at least $3 million of its approximately $10 million goal, according to an interview with OSF Board Chair Diane Yu on July 6.

Hokama believes having he and Bond in place at OSF will bring a “positive trajectory” for the organization, and in that “fundraising will come.”

“I’m joyfully optimistic with Tim now joining the organization for his homecoming, as he put it,” 

Hokama said. “I think that’s very appropriate … I think we’ll see that as a hugely positive sign for us together.”

Bond noted the impact of COVID-19 that has impacted theater numbers around the country.

“You’ll always have constraints as an artistic director and as a director,” Bond said. “You want as few as you can have, but the reality always is, there’s more than you wish there were. That’s true no matter where a company is at a particular moment. I think there is not a theater in America right now that is not undergoing stresses and (constraints)  of coming out of COVID and trying to get audiences back at the numbers and being as robust as we had before. I know that that’s beginning to happen in Ashland … in good ways, so that gives me a lot of hope.”

Bond’s goal will be to continue to attract audiences to fill the seats of plays, to create plays that are “grand and expansive and amazing,” and that also stay within the means of the organization, through donors and ticket sales.

He hopes to build bridges with OSF members and described his artistic director approach as “hands-on.”

“We’re not going to be able to go back to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival of 15 to 20 years ago immediately,” Bond said. “But we are going to begin a very focused, strategic sort of plan to see how we can begin to build ourselves back up, the key to it being really having a robust, rotating repertory experience for our audience.” 

Bond said after a full career elsewhere, he’s ready to come back to a place he still considers to be home and help “heal” the theater company as it tries to recover.

“I care about OSF deeply — I think it’s a really important company, it’s a national treasure … I wanted to heed the call to come back and see what I can do to help,” he said.

Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at hollyd@ashland.news.