OSF's Miriam A. Laube Receives Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) actor Miriam A. Laube has been named a Distinguished Achievement recipient of a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship. Laube will receive $25,000 as a fellow, while OSF will be awarded a $7,500 support grant.

Funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the Resident Actor Fellowships program is designed to support actors' professional and artistic development, to enrich relationships between actors and nonprofit theatres and to ensure continued professional commitment to live theatre.

Under the fellowship, Laube will study the classic forms of Ovid's poetry and Indian classical ragas to create a song cycle based on Ovid's Heroides in collaboration with women actors of the OSF acting company. She will undertake courses at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Francisco, private study with Myra Melford, associate professor of Music at UC Berkeley, and John Fyler, professor of English at Tufts University, and travel to India to do an intensive course in Indian classical music in conjunction with Theatre Mitu. Laube hopes her work will foster a connection with a South Asian community who might be drawn to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

"I am thrilled and honored to be a recipient of the Fox Fellowship in partnership with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival," Laube said. "I look forward to having the opportunity to investigate and study other forms of art that will enrich and inform my own creative process. I especially look forward to creating a piece with the women of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Company who were an original inspiration for the Fellowship. I want to thank TCG, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and especially Bill Rauch and Scott Kaiser for their support on this journey."

OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch said, "Miriam Laube played the female lead in The Clay Cart, the Sanskrit epic I directed as my very first show as artistic director. She was associate director when I directed The Pirates of Penzance, OSF's first-ever Gilbert and Sullivan, a production that we recreated together for Portland Opera. Whether playing Medea or producing our annual AIDS benefit, Miriam is one of the Festival's most accomplished artists and inspiring company leaders. I am proud to be her colleague and eager to see all that will come for her and for our company through this extraordinary new opportunity."

Laube has worked with OSF for 11 seasons as an actor, director, educator and fundraiser. Acting in professional theatre for 21 years, she has performed in productions at The Guthrie Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater and Dallas Theater Center, among others. Laube will play the role of Cleopatra in Bill Rauch's 2015 production of Antony and Cleopatra and has appeared in the world premieres of Family Album and Party People, as well as OSF's acclaimed production of Into the Woods currently running in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre.

"We're absolutely thrilled that Miriam has received this prestigious award, which will enable her to pursue her artistic passions on an international scale," said Scott Kaiser, OSF's Director of Company Development. "She's an astonishingly gifted performer who, in her 11 seasons at OSF, has distinguished herself as a true repertory actress, playing widely varied roles in world premieres, musicals and classic plays such as Maruca in Party People, Miss Ritter in She Loves Me, Rosalind in As You Like It and Vasantasena in The Clay Cart. The Fox Fellowship will allow Miriam to continue to grow as an actress and an artist, and I have no doubt that the entire company, and our audiences, will benefit from her creative pursuits."

For this ninth round of Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships, grants totaling over $200,000 were awarded through two categories:

• Extraordinary Potential recipients are early- to mid-career actors who have demonstrated a strong interest and commitment to continued training. Each fellow receives $15,000, with up to an additional $10,000 available to relieve student loans. The host theatre companies will receive grants of $7,500 in support of these residencies.
• Distinguished Achievement recipients have demonstrated considerable experience in professional theatre with a substantial body of work. Each fellow receives $25,000 awards. The host theatre companies will receive grants of $7,500 in support of these residencies.

The William & Eva Fox Foundation was established in 1987 by Belle Fox in honor of her parents, who founded the Fox Film Corporation. The Foundation has awarded more than $2.8 million in fellowships to 329 actors since 1994. The Fox Foundation is the largest U.S. grant maker dedicated to the artistic and professional development of theatre actors, and one of very few that provides direct financial support to individual actors.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre, has a constituency of nearly 700 member theatres and affiliate organizations and more than 12,000 individuals nationwide. TCG offers its members networking and knowledge-building opportunities through conferences, events, research and communications; awards grants to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute, connecting its constituents to the global theatre community. TCG is North America's largest independent publisher of dramatic literature, with 13 Pulitzer Prizes for Best Play on the TCG booklist. It also publishes the award-winning American Theatre magazine and ARTSEARCH, the essential source for a career in the arts.

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935 and winner of a 1983 Tony Award for outstanding achievement in regional theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a major theatre arts organization that presents an eight-month season consisting of 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals and new works. The Festival also draws attendance of more than 400,000 to almost 800 performances every year and employs approximately 575 theatre professionals. In 2008, OSF launched American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, a 10-year cycle of commissioning new plays that has already resulted in several OSF commissions finding success nationwide.

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