Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2025

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) continued down a bumpy road in 2025, its 90^th anniversary season. I ended last year’s roundup on OSF wishing newly announced Executive Director Gabriella Calicchio success.[1] She is now gone, probably terminated. Calicchio began work in mid-November 2024. The festival claims she requested early release from her contract, which may be true. An inside source who must be anonymous says that Calicchio was dictatorial to people, some  of them not under her supervision, so there may be more to the story than OSF admits. The board met while in town for the opening of the outdoor plays in mid-June and several days later announced that Calicchio was on leave and unavailable for comment with a termination date of 1 July.

The Board of Directors has done a poor job hiring Executive and Artistic Directors lately with the sole expectation of current Artistic Director Tim Bond, but he was known from his previous tenure as Associate Artistic Director from 1996 to 2007. David Schmitz, the Executive Director prior to Calicchio, imposed policies that treated long-time patrons badly and hurt the company in other ways. Previous Artistic Director Nataki Garrett is considered a disaster by most people. The board needs to do some soul searching about these hiring mistakes or there should be resignations with new board members brought in who know how to match people to jobs.

There is another labor relations problem. OSF signed an Actor’s Equity contract in 1986 but has been…