OSF Announces First Ever Combined Digital and Live Season For 2021

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) announced today the Festival's 2021 season. The combination of multi-format programming is a celebration of OSF's continued commitment to presenting world-class theatre on its stages and its recent foray into groundbreaking digital programming, introducing fans, supporters, and new audiences worldwide to the company's award-winning artistry. The 2021 season features classics and new works streaming from the OSF archives, imaginative and illuminating new works presented on OSF's digital platform, O!, and a Fall 2021 live season on OSF's campus in Ashland, Oregon, extending into January for the first time with OSF's first winter special. All live performances will be subject to health department guidelines and government restrictions on large gatherings.

"2020 marked a paradigm shift in which OSF was catapulted into different ways of creating and supporting artists and art-making. In launching our digital platform, O!, nearly a year ago, the initial goal was to provide an exploratory space to intersect theatre with other forms of media," said Nataki Garrett, OSF artistic director. "Now joined together with a compelling schedule of Fall and Winter onstage programming, O! has evolved into a marquee fourth stage, where new and innovative projects will play alongside some of OSF's most beloved and well-known productions."

"I could not be more excited and honored in partnering with Nataki to introduce this extraordinary combination of digital and onstage programming as the OSF 2021 season," said David Schmitz, OSF executive director. "This unique first-ever multiformat season reflects OSF's commitment to innovation, agility, and progress throughout the most extraordinary global circumstances we are all facing. And we are eager to get back to creating live performances when the health authority and governmental restrictions allow us to do so."

The 2021 digital on-demand streaming season includes a limited-run schedule for favorites from the OSF archives beginning with Julius Caesar bya??William Shakespeare, directed bya??Shana Cooper; Manahatta bya??Mary Kathryn Nagle, directed bya??Laurie Woolery; and Snow in Midsummer by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, based on the classical Chinese drama The Injustice to Dou Yi That Moved Heaven and Earth and directed by Justin Audibert. Tickets are now available for all three productions at www.osfashland.org. More streaming productions curated from OSF's digital archives will be announced in the coming months.

"Along with our archival streaming shows, O! will continue to present exciting new programming-digital theatre, film, and immersive projects-throughout the year, bringing OSF's celebrated artistry of OSF into homes around the world," added Garrett.

OSF 2021 On Stage programming includes a repertory of four productions: August Wilson's How I Learned What I Learned, featuring Steven Anthony Jones and directed by Tim Bond; the West Coast premiere of unseen by Mona Mansour, directed by Evren Odcikin; the American Revolutions world premiere of Confederates by Dominique Morisseau, directed by Nataki Garrett; and the season will culminate in OSF's first winter special, It's Christmas, Carol! by beloved OSF actors Mark Bedard, Brent Hinkley, and John Tufts.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainties associated with it, OSF will hold off announcing specific dates and ticket sales for onstage productions until there is more clarity around reopening, gathering, and social distancing guidelines. All onstage events are subject to change.

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