Oregon Shakespeare Festival NOONS SERIES Returns 6/20

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has unveiled its June/July Summer Festival Noons schedule, which features a wide variety of opportunities to engage on a deeper level with the OSF company and the works on our stages, six days a week.

The Festival Noons series' wide range of engagement offerings is on full display in the first week of summer programming, with a free Park Talk in Bill Patton Garden on June 20 featuring Nicole M. Smith, company management housing coordinator; a panel discussion with cast members of Luis Alfaro's Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles on June 21 titled "The Journey Here" and facilitated by Audience Development Manager Carolina Morones; an informative Preface for Jiehae Park's Hannah and the Dread Gazebo June 22; "Gown in 60 Seconds," a demonstration of the costume and wig quick changes of Shakespeare in Love on June 23; "Be Our Guest," a conversation with the "Beauty" (Jennie Greenberry) and the "Beast" (Jordan Barbour) of Disney's Beauty and the Beast on June 24; and a free Park Talk June 25 with actor Jamie Ann Romero (Shakespeare in Love, The Merry Wives of Windsor).

Director of Literary Development & Dramaturgy Amrita Ramanan will lead a handful of Festival Noons engagements, including "It's a Mystery! How the 2017 Season Came Together" June 30; "They Look Up to Me: Prince Hal's Playlist," a July 7 listening party exploring the music of Henry IV, Part One; "The Humors of Sir John Falstaff" with Merry Wives director Dawn Monique Williams; and "Friends, Romans, Countrymen and Me: Julius Caesar in the Now" with Education & Engagement Manager Russell Zook July 12.

Members of the casts and creative teams of Julius Caesar (June 28), Shakespeare in Love (July 5), Henry IV, Part One (July 15) and Hannah and the Dread Gazebo (July 19) will visit Festival Noons to share stories or demonstrate techniques for the creation and performance of their productions.

Other highlights include: "Shakespeare in Love: From Screenplay to Stage" with Southern Oregon University Professor of Digital Film Andrew Kenneth Gay July 1; "Shakespeare and the Tradition of Radical Adaptation" with Merry Wives director Dawn Monique Williams July 14; Konaway Nika Tillicum Camp, the culminating performance of this week-long program for Native students throughout Oregon, July 21 at noon on the Green Show stage; "Translating Shakespeare into American Sign Language," a July 22 panel discussion with Access Services Coordinator Julie Simon, actor Howie Seago and Crom Saunders, ASL Master: Performance; "What's Past is Dialogue: Exploring Texts that Challenge Standard Historical Narratives," a Must Read Aloud participatory event July 26; "Epic Voyages and the Search for Home in Mary Zimmerman's Ingenious The Odyssey" July 28 with UC Irvine Professor of Drama Ketu H. Katrak; and "Standing Rock: More than a Pipeline," July 29 with James Davis, development director of The Language Conservancy.

On Thursdays, OSF Education continues its popular Preface series with 45-minute in-depth introductions to the world of a play. Preface topics include Hannah and the Dread Gazebo (June 22, July 20), Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles (June 29, July 6), UniSon (July 13) and Henry IV, Parts One and Two (July 27).

Free Park Talks are held every Sunday and Tuesday, except for the 4th of July holiday, in the Bill Patton Garden outside Gate 1 of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre. Unless otherwise indicated, all other Festival Noons events take place in Carpenter Hall.

There will be no Festival Noons event on Friday, July 21 to allow patrons and OSF company members to attend the culminating performance of Konaway Nika Tillicum Camp's week-long program for Native American students throughout Oregon. The performance will take place at noon on the Green Show stage.

Tickets for Festival Noons are $12 for adults, $10 for OSF members, and $8 for youth ages 6-17. Visit osfashland.org, call (800) 219-8161 or stop by the OSF box office at 15 S. Pioneer Street in Ashland to purchase tickets. The June/July Festival Noons schedule may be viewed online at
osfashland.org/FestivalNoons.

The series continues August 1-September 3; the schedule and details for those dates will be available in July.

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."

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