‘The only significant reduction of the percentage of Shakespeare in the festival’s seasons happened 53 years ago’
By Susan Stitham
Letter writer Don Skillman notes in the Rogue Valley Times (April 15, “OSF has drifted too far from its roots”) that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has long been a magnet for tourism with its consistently high-quality productions. As for many others, OSF was a major reason for our family’s move here from Alaska and we too are alarmed at its current precarious financial situation. We strongly believe that our theater deserves whatever support this community can give.
Mr. Skillman states that OSF “has drifted … far from its roots”— presumably those “roots” are the “brilliant interpretations of the Bard in the majority of presentations, and elegant period costuming.” Apparently, he missed the many productions I’ve seen over the past decades in which OSF continues to underscore Shakespeare’s continuing relevance with “brilliant interpretations” set far beyond the Bard’s 17th century “period,” such as “Comedy of Errors” set in Las Vegas and Texas, “Taming of the Shrew” on the Atlantic City boardwalk, and (a personal favorite), the heavy metal “Hamlet” with Danforth Cummins.
In particular, Mr. Skillman posits that OSF is “no longer a Shakespearean festival” since there are only two Shakespeare plays in the 2023 season. I first began to hear this complaint from friends and neighbors several years ago, when it was blamed on the new OSF director, Nataki Garret.
Although those who know me understand that numbers are not my friends, that accusation just didn’t sound right to me. So I did some research to check my own recollection.
Here’s what I discovered: For the first two decades from 1935, under founder Angus Bowmer, what became a five-play season consisted of 100% Shakespeare, but in 1959 Bowmer included the first non-Shakespeare play.
This practice continued until 1970, when the season expanded to 10 plays, only four of which were the Bard’s. In 1979, the season grew to 11 plays, where it stayed until the Great Pandemic
The proportion of Shakespeare to other playwrights held steady for the next 20 years through three artistic directors until Bill Rauch’s 11 years at the helm, when it alternated between three and four Shakespeare plays per year.
Nataki Garret’s first season, the pandemic-cancelled 2020, also contained four Shakespeare plays. In the post-pandemic season of 2022, there were three Shakespeare plays out of nine, and in the five-play season of 2023, two are Shakespeare standards.
So, let’s do the math. The only significant reduction of the percentage of Shakespeare in the festival’s seasons happened 53 years ago.
As for the plays written by other authors presented by OSF over the years, certainly not every play has pleased every audience member, including me, but I’m confident that those of us fortunate to have experienced such extraordinary theater as “Equivacation” (2009), “All the Way” (2012), “How to Catch Creation” (2019), and last season’s “Confederates” will never forget the magic. And I know you could add other productions to that list.
Finally, to address the financial crisis which is sparking the current appeal, let us remember that, when she arrived in 2019, before the devastation of COVID-19, Nataki Garrett faced a $4 million dollar deficit resulting from the cancelled performances of the previous wildfire seasons, exacerbated by what had apparently been a history of over-spending.
In addition, as with many other institutions, the pressures of the pandemic revealed substantial cracks in basic structures which had been papered over by ongoing successes, but which can no longer be ignored. When the music stopped, the juggled plates came crashing down; now we must pick up the pieces.
If anyone reading this happens to know a billionaire who might invest in something more positive than, say, Twitter, that would be great. In the meantime, I encourage others of more modest means to join me in doing what we can to save our valley’s jewel. At the very least, I hope we can bury the canard that OSF is no longer celebrating Shakespeare.
Susan Stitham, an Ashland resident since 2010, volunteered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival until the pandemic and teaches Shakespeare classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Southern Oregon University.
