Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival 2022

After the dark COVID years of 2020-1, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon is back on the boards, but that is a mixed blessing. It is goodish for the town of Ashland that some tourists have returned, which I will explain, and great that theater professionals are employed again.  However, because of sudden changes in its operations, the length of its season, and a turn away from Shakespeare as a central source for performances, the 2022 and 2023 OSF is a very different OSF than in 2019. As a result, I fear that OSF will face increasing financial hardships, and so will the town that hosts it.

The Festival was in a period of transition when COVID devastated our lives (literally, for so many people), our economy, and live cultural activities. Bill Rauch, Artistic Director for a dozen years, had left to run the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in New York. An interim Executive Director with no professional theater experience named Paul Christie left shortly after. Rauch’s replacement was Nataki Garrett, late of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company where she was the Acting Artistic Director for eighteen months. Garrett has directed no Shakespeare as of 2022, she plans to direct Romeo and Juliet in 2023, and produced only one of his plays, Robert O’Hara’s critically lambasted 2017 production of Macbeth. Garrett had, however, an excellent track record in fundraising. She was soon joined by new Executive Director David…