Oregon Shakespeare Festival Allen Elizabethan Theatre Opens 6/16-18

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival invites audiences to "be our guest" for a Falstaffian romp through merry old Windsor; a heroic, Homeric journey home to Ithaka; and a revelatory musical journey of self-discovery when its outdoor theatre opens the weekend of June 16-18. The Allen Elizabethan Theatre will feature The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Dawn Monique Williams; The Odyssey, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman; and Disney's Beauty and the Beast, directed by Eric Tucker. Previews begin June 6, and all three shows will run through the weekend of October 13-15.

OSF's popular Green Show will debut on June 16 in the Festival's newly renovated brick courtyard, complete with a new stage and overhead shade structure. The Green Show features free live entertainment on the Courtyard Stage six nights a week at 6:45 p.m. throughout the run of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre productions. The 2017 Green Show schedule is available at osfashland.org/GreenShow. Performers appearing this summer include Theatre Wallay from Pakistan; native artists including Ty Defoe, Painted Sky Northstar Dance and Phoenix Sigalove; master hoop dancer Kevin Locke, Urban Jazz Dance, Acrobuffos, Embodiment Project and many more.

The Ashland Lions Club will celebrate the opening of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre on Friday, June 16 at 6:00 p.m. with its Feast of Will, an evening of food and entertainment featuring a full dinner of BBQ chicken or vegetarian lasagna, coupled with music by the Jefferson Bag Pipers and Siskiyou Singers. The Lions Club donates profits to projects benefiting Lithia Park and many other organizations. Tickets are $15, and available online, at the OSF Box Office or by phone at 800-219-8161.

The Merry Wives of Windsor opens at 8:00 p.m. Friday, June 16. Legend has it that Queen Elizabeth I was so enamored of Falstaff that she commanded Shakespeare to write a Falstaff play in which he was in love, with the result being The Merry Wives of Windsor. Director Dawn Monique Williams will underscore the comedic escapades of Falstaff and Mistresses Ford and Page with a pulsing 1980s soundtrack sure to strike a chord with a certain generation of playgoers. "A pair of young lovers find one another and break all rules of custom," explains Williams, "and inspire the anachronistic soundtrack of life in Windsor, reminding us there is urgency in feeling 'forever is going to start tonight' when you are experiencing a 'total eclipse of the heart.'" Costumes will take the form of Elizabethan-era silhouettes while also suggesting the colorful floral patterns and "big hair" of the 1980s, according to costume designer Ulises Alcala.

The Merry Wives of Windsor creative team includes Regina Garcia (scenic design), Ulises Alcala (costumes), Jennifer Schriever (lighting), Paul James Prendergast (composer and sound designer), Darcy Danielson (vocal arranger and director), Lavina Jadhwani (dramaturg), David Carey (voice and text director), Valerie Rachelle (choreographer), Sarah Lozoff (assistant choreographer), Monique Holt (sign coach/ASL translator), Philippa Kelly (dramaturgy consultant) and U. Jonathan Toppo (fight director). Gwen Turos is production stage manager.

The cast includes K.T. Vogt as Falstaff, Vilma Silva as Mistress Page, Paul Juhn as Master Page, Jamie Ann Romero as Anne Page, Amy Newman as Mistress Ford, Rex Young as Master Ford, Catherine Castellanos as Mistress Quickly, Sara Bruner as Sir Hugh Evans, Jeremy Peter Johnson as Doctor Caius, Tony DeBruno as Justice Shallow, Cristofer Jean as Slender, Will Dao as Peter Simple, teenager and ensemble, William DeMeritt as Fenton, U. Jonathan Toppo as Bardolph and ensemble, Al Espinosa as Pistol and ensemble, Christopher Salazar as Nym and ensemble, Hyunmin Rhee as John Rugby and teenager, Howie Seago as Host of the Garter, Tatiana Lofton as William Page, Robin and teenager; Yvette Monique Clark and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp as neighborhood wives; and Jennie Greenberry, Sean Jones and Emily Ota as teenagers of Windsor.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is supported by Sponsor Jed and Celia Meese Foundation and Partner Julie Strasser Dixon and Rocky Dixon.

The following night, Saturday, June 17 at 8:00 p.m., frequent OSF guest artist Mary Zimmerman (The White Snake, Guys and Dolls) brings her adaptation of The Odyssey (from Robert Fitzgerald's translation) to the outdoor stage. Zimmerman first adapted The Odyssey while in college, where she staged a production that included Christopher Donahue, who plays Odysseus in the OSF production. Zimmerman then staged the show at the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago, before it moved on to the Goodman Theatre and other major regional theatres around the country. It has been 17 years since Zimmerman last staged The Odyssey.

"I thought the play would sit really well outdoors," Zimmerman says. "With the ancient form of storytelling being in nature, it feels very compatible with the Elizabethan stage."

She adds, "The Odyssey is about the longing for home, with home having a kind of profound symbolic resonance. It's been observed by Joseph Campbell that we think of the hero as wanting to go out and have adventures, but very often the hero's journey is the reluctant hero who is trying to get home. E.T. wants to get home. Dorothy wants to get home. And Odysseus just wants to get home. That's the goal of life, is to get back home. For me, in this case, home is the final reunion of death which we all are working towards, in which we reunite with the whole, from which we separated at the moment of coming into consciousness. And now we go back into the whole, which is the soul of the world."

The cast includes Christopher Donahue as Odysseus, Kate Hurster as Penelope, Christiana Clark as Athena, Armando Durán as Aeolus and Laertes, Briawna Jackson as Helen, Amy Newman as Muse and Calypso, Daniel T. Parker as Zeus and Cyclops, Armando McClain as Alcinous, Miriam A. Laube as Circe, Vinecia Coleman as Arete, Moses Villarama as Hermes, Benjamin Bonenfant as Telemachus, Richard Howard as Eumaeus, Danforth Comins as Poseidon and Antinous, Howie Seago as Menelaus and Tierisias, Britney Simpson as Nausicaa, Catherine Castellanos as Eurycleia and Odysseus's mother, Jon Cates as Eteonus and Eurylochus, Galen Molk as Elpenor, Christian Bufford as Perimedes, William Ruiz, a.k.a. Ninja as Neomon, Connor Chaney as Hullman, and Daniela Cobb as Melatho. All cast members are also performing ensemble roles.

The Odyssey is supported by Sponsors The Chautauqua Guild, Yogen and Peggy Dalal, and The Goatie Foundation; and Partners Lynne Carmichael, Kelly Bulkeley and Hilary Krane, Kevin and Suzanne Kahn, and Trine Sorensen and Michael Jacobson.

The final opening weekend show at 8:00 p.m. Sunday is Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Director Eric Tucker is artistic director of the Bedlam Theatre in New York, a company known for small-cast, high-energy re-imaginings of classic works by Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare and others. Similar to his productions at Bedlam, Tucker invites audiences for Disney's Beauty and the Beast to partner with the performers in using their imaginations to complete the picture.

"There is great magic in simple storytelling," Tucker says. "I feel that for adults, kids and people of all ages, there is a power in the kind of play which requires that we activate our imaginations, so that the story unfolds in a magical yet simple way."

Scenic designer Christopher Acebo echoes that sentiment: "The idea is that we are not only in a provincial town, not only in a castle, but we are in an abandoned theatre, and we know that anything can happen in an abandoned theatre. All the props and furniture exist in this space and through the action of the ensemble we will create Belle's room, the castle, the bar scene in the tavern. All these objects will come to life."

Music direction and arrangements are by J. Oconer Navarro, with choreography by Erika Chong Shuch. The creative team includes Christopher Acebo (scenic design), Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), Jennifer Schriever (lighting), Joanna Lynne Staub (sound design), Julie Felise Dubiner (dramaturgy), David Carey and Rebecca Clark Carey (voice and text), Matt Goodrich (associate music director), U. Jonathan Toppo (fight direction) and Amy Miranda Bender (stage manager).

The cast features Jennie Greenberry as Belle, Jordan Barbour as the Beast, Sara Bruner as LeFou, James Ryen as Gaston, Michael J. Hume as Maurice, Daniel T. Parker as Cogsworth, David Kelly as Lumiére, Kate Mulligan as Mrs. Potts, Robin Goodrin Nordli as Babette, Britney Simpson as Mme. De la Grande Bouche, Naiya Gardiner as Chip, Jeremy Peter Johnson as Monsieur D'Arque, Julian Remulla as the Baker, Shaun Taylor-Corbett as the Bookseller and Truett Felt, Briawna Jackson and Tatiana Lofton as the Silly Girls. Cast members also play townspeople, tavern patrons, enchanted objects and wolves. Swings are Christian Bufford and Daniela Cobb.

The musicians for the production are Matt Goodrich (piano and conductor), Kent Wilson, Jr. (synthesizer), Reed Bentley (percussion), Kimberly Fitch (violin), Nancy Martin (cello), Daniel Kocurek (trumpet), Mark Eliot Jacobs (trombone) and Rhett Bender (woodwinds).

Disney's Beauty and the Beast is supported by Lead Sponsor McMurtry Family Foundation, Sponsors Robert Dohmen and The Goatie Foundation, and Partners Samuel Dana Dakin and Skye Taplin Dakin; Katie Farewell, and Linda Joyce Hodge.

The three Allen Elizabethan Theatre plays join six productions already running in the Angus Bowmer and Thomas Theatres: Julius Caesar, Shakespeare in Love, Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, UniSon, Henry IV, Part One and Hannah and the Dread Gazebo.

Still to come in the 2017 season are one more play by Shakespeare, and a world premiere adaptation that uses a Shakespeare play as its source material.

Henry IV, Part Two, directed by Carl Cofield and featuring much of the same cast as the concurrently running Henry IV, Part One, begins previews July 4 in the intimate Thomas Theatre. Henry IV, Part Two officially opens July 8 and runs through October 29. There are multiple opportunities for patrons to experience a same-day or a two-day Henry IV marathon. The Ashland Daily Tidings raved about Henry IV, Part One, saying "OSF's new production of Henry IV, Part One is a marvel...see it as soon as possible!"

Off the Rails, a world premiere by Randy Reinholz, is the first play by a Native American playwright in OSF's 83-year history. This irreverent, subversive adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure uses healthy doses of humor and music to illuminate the painful legacy of Indian boarding schools in the American West. Directed by Bill Rauch and playing in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, Off the Rails begins previews July 27, opens July 30 and runs through October 28.

The 2017 season is sponsored by U.S. Bank.

Tickets are available online at www.osfashland.org or via the Box Office at 800-219-8161.

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a nationally renowned theatre arts organization that presents an eight-month season of up to 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals, and world-premiere plays and musicals. OSF's play commissioning programs, which include American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, have generated works that have been produced on Broadway, throughout the American regional theatre, and in high schools and community theatres across the country. The Festival draws attendance of more than 400,000 to approximately 800 performances every year and employs approximately 575 theatre professionals.

OSF invites and welcomes everyone, and believes the inclusion of diverse people, ideas, cultures and traditions enriches both our insights into the work we present on stage and our relationships with each other. OSF is committed to equity and diversity in all areas of our work and in our audiences.

OSF's mission statement: "Inspired by Shakespeare's work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory."

To post a comment, you must register and login.