Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2017 Living Ideas Series Begins this Month

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has announced its Living Ideas programming for 2017, with a broad range of events that will explore the intersection of art and community.

"The Living Ideas: Art and Community Dialogue Series," now in its third season, creates contextualized programming that is both thought- and heart-provoking and lives in the intersection of art and community. Through collaboration and partnership with individuals and organizations, Living Ideas provides a commons to exchange ideas and engage compassionately in a number of venues-on the OSF campus, in the community and via digital platforms-using relevant themes inspired by the works on the Festival's stages.

The 2017 Living Ideas programming will dive deeper into themes of legacy, mentorship, storytelling, memory and history as illuminated in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One and Henry IV, Part Two, UNIVERSES' world-premiere musical UniSon and the world premiere of Randy Reinholz's Off the Rails. Events will include facilitated post-matinee "Talk Backs/Move Backs," "Boar's Head" poetry workshops, digital engagements that inspire interactive conversation that extends beyond the physical boundaries of our theaters and an immersive theatre piece that examines how you participate in the storytelling process.

"Talk Back/Move Back" events will be offered on Sunday, May 7; Wednesday, June 14; Friday, July 21; Saturday, September 2; Thursday, July 13; Friday, July 14; Sunday, August 6; and Friday, August 11. A "Talk Back" event will be an opportunity to engage with themes and ideas that resonate in the performance, and discuss connections between the characters and our own lives. A "Move Back" event will use non-verbal expression to explore emotions following a performance; explore and illuminate themes by using a kinesthetic approach; and collectively process and build community through movement. Talk Back and Move Back events are free and non-ticketed. Talk Backs will take place in New Place and Move Backs will be in the BLACK SWAN. Check the Living Ideas web page for more specific date/time information.

In the "Boar's Head" portion of this season's Living Ideas offerings, OSF's resident ensemble UNIVERSES, creators of this season's UniSon, will lead workshops focused on their aesthetic in the birthplace of slam poetry-the community tavern. Participants will learn how the UNIVERSES aesthetic developed, construct both a UNIVERSES-style and an iambic poem, then perform their pieces in Ashland's own Boar's Head, Oberon's Restaurant and Bar. Boar's Heads will take place at 7:00 p.m. on the following dates; Thursday, May 25; Wednesday, June 28; Monday, July 17; and Monday, August 21. These events are free, non-ticketed and open to all.

The final two offerings of Living Ideas programming engage in the intersection of art and technology. In "OSF digistories," storytellers, art makers and multi-disciplinary artists have been commissioned to create a short video series, prompted by themes of legacy, mentorship, responsibility, history and memory. These "digistories" will be unveiled on a multimedia Tumblr webpage, a platform for interactive conversation surrounding the work encouraging audiences to engage and create their own videos as they reflect on the stories. Further details and the web address will be released in June.

Take Them Into the Dirt: An Immersion will be an immersive theatre piece based on Indigenous stories that explore legacy and how we as human beings use our senses, identities and cultural frames to experience story. Using live performance, virtual reality, projection techniques and sensory exploration, this immersive experience will ask participants to explore their personal construct of legacy and how they engage with storytelling. Participants will be asked to bring a personal item that represents legacy that will be used in the performance. Dates for Take Them into the Dirt: An Immersion will be in early October 2017. Further details will be announced later in the season.

Further information on the Living Ideas offerings can be found here.

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."

Photo credit: Kim Budd

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