The Oregon Shakespeare Festival occupies a campus adjacent to
Lithia Park and the Plaza in Ashland, Oregon. The primary buildings are the three theatres, Carpenter Hall, and the Camps, Pioneer, and Administration buildings, all surrounding an open central court locally known as "The Bricks" that ties everything together into an architecturally coherent whole and facilitates movement. It also provides a stage for the nightly Green Shows (see above) from June through September. The Black Swan (G), now serves as a laboratory for the development of new plays. Off-campus buildings include the production facility, classrooms, the Hay Patton Rehearsal Center, and costume storage and rental facilities described below.
Allen Elizabethan Theatre The
Allen Elizabethan Theatre has evolved since the founding of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when the first performance of
Twelfth Night was presented on July 2, 1935.
Original Elizabethan Theatre The design for the first outdoor OSF Elizabethan Theatre was sketched by
Angus L. Bowmer based on his recollection of productions at the University of Washington in which he had acted while a student. Ashland, Oregon obtained WPA funds in 1935 to build it within the circular walls that remained in the roofless shell of the abandoned Chautauqua theatre. Bowmer extended the walls to reduce the stage width to fifty-five feet, and painted the extensions to resemble half-timbered buildings. He designed a thrust stage—one projecting toward the audience—with a balcony. Two columns helped divide the main stage into forestage, middle stage, and inner stage areas. Illustrating the improvised nature of it all, actors doubled as stage hands, stage lighting was housed in coffee cans, and string beans were planted along the walls to improve sound quality. Fifty-cent general admission seating was on benches just behind the one-dollar reserved seating on folding chairs. This theatre was torn down during World War II.
Second Elizabethan Theatre The second outdoor Elizabethan Theatre was built in 1947 from plans drawn up by
University of Washington drama professor John Conway. The main stage became trapezoidal, with entries added on either side, and windows added above them flanking the balcony stage. A low railing gave a finished appearance to the forestage. Chairs arranged to improve sight lines replaced bench seating. Backstage areas were added gradually and haphazardly, until the ramshackle result was ordered torn down as a fire hazard in 1958. Patterned on London's 1599
Fortune Theatre and designed by
Richard L. Hay, it incorporated all the stage dimensions mentioned in the Fortune contract. The trapezoidal stage was retained but the façade was extended to three stories, resulting in a forestage, middle stage, inner below, inner above (the old balcony), and a musicians' gallery. The wings were provided with second-story windows. Each provides acting areas, creating many staging possibilities. A pitched, shingled roof enhances the half-timbered façade. A windowed gable was extended from the center of the roof to cover and define the middle stage. Just before each performance, an actor opens the gable window, and in keeping with Elizabethan tradition signaling a play in progress, runs a flag up the pole to the sound of a trumpet and doffs his cap to the audience. The result is an approximate replica of the Fortune Theatre. The known but incomplete dimensions apply only to the stage. The original specifications sometimes say no more than "to be built like the Globe," for which there are no plans or details. The remotely operated lighting, on scaffolding on either side of the stage, of course did not exist in the original, and the current site rather than the original architecture largely determined the shape of the auditorium. Twelve hundred seats in slightly offset arcs ascend the original hillside, giving an excellent view of the stage from each seat. The old Chautauqua theatre walls, now ivy-covered, remain as the outer perimeter of the theatre. The $7.6 million
Paul Allen Pavilion was added in 1992. It houses a control room, and audience services including rental of infrared hearing devices, blankets, pillows, and food and drink, both of which are allowed in the auditorium. Several hundred seats were moved to a balcony and two boxes, further improving sightlines and acoustics. Vomitoria (colloquially, "voms"), the traditional name for entryways for actors from under the seating area, were added and the lighting scaffolds were eliminated.
Angus Bowmer Theatre An April 1968 report by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research of the
University of Oregon pointed to the lost economic opportunity represented by the thousands of people the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was turning away each year. It further noted that the Festival had become an important economic engine for southern Oregon, and recommended addition of an indoor theatre. This led the
City of Ashland to apply to the
Economic Development Administration of the
Department of Commerce in Fall 1968 for a $1,792,000 project grant with the Angus Bowmer Theatre as the keystone. The plan also called for a parking building, a remodeled administration building and box office, a scene shop and exhibit hall that later would become the OSF Black Swan, landscaping, and street realignment. $896,000 was approved in April 1969, to match an equal amount to be raised through private donations. The fund drive quickly exceeded its goal and ground for the new theatre was broken on December 18, 1969. The theatre was ready just five months later and opened with a production of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, selected to recognize the Shakespearean origin of the Festival but to signal Festival readiness to broaden its horizons by incorporating modern plays into its repertoire. Reinforcing that signal,
The Fantasticks and ''You Can't Take it with You'' were also presented during that first six-week season. The Angus Bowmer Theatre seats between 592 and 610 patrons depending on configuration. Although about half the size of the outdoor theatre, it more than doubled audience capacity by making it possible to hold matinee performances and to extend the season into spring and fall. The design by
Richard L. Hay and architects Kirk, Wallace and McKinley of Seattle and contractor Robert D. Morrow, Inc., of
Salem, Oregon was at once basic, flexible, functional, and innovative. All seats are within of the stage, arranged with only two side aisles and wide spaces between rows. Dark colors resist reflection and draw the eye to the stage. The forestage is on a hydraulic lift system that can emulate the thrust stage of the OSF Allen Elizabethan Theatre, form a more conventional
proscenium front that can move below auditorium floor level to form an orchestra pit, or drop two stories for storage of equipment or scenery. The walls of the auditorium can swing in to close down the playing area or open to accommodate larger productions. Illustrating these characteristics, the first picture is the set for August Wilson's
Fences. The second, taken two hours later on the same stage, is the set for the ancient Hindu classic
The Clay Cart. Stage crews for the two indoor theatres must complete set changes of this scope six days a week between the end of a matinee and the "call" before the evening curtain and again the next morning in time for the matinee (the outdoor stage changes daily). This illustrates the nature of true repertory theater, which allows the playgoer to see different plays on the same day on the same stage, but requires designing and making sets to withstand constant rapid assembly, disassembly and return to accessible storage to await the next change of set. It also requires actors able to simultaneously play different parts in very different plays. Just two hours before the 18 June 2011 matinee a crack was discovered in the seventy-foot long, six and one-half foot high main ceiling support beam of the Bowmer Theatre. Shows were immediately relocated to other venues as work progressed to repair the beam. A 598-seat tent, "Bowmer in the Park," was soon erected in Lithia Park adjacent to the Festival campus as a temporary replacement venue. A single set was designed and built to serve four very different shows, and the shows themselves were re-staged while keeping the artistic vision of each as intact as possible. Thirty-one performances were held in the tent and averaged 82% of capacity, generating approximately $650,000 in revenue against approximately $800,000 for the tent itself, $1,000,000 in lost revenue from ticket returns, and $330,000 in repair costs. The Bowmer reopened on 2 August, a month ahead of the initial estimate. The Festival filed an insurance claim for $3.58 million and received checks in March 2012 for $330,000 to cover the cost of repairs and $2.984 million covering much of the lost revenue, leaving about $200,000, primarily representing the cost of the temporary tent theatre itself, unresolved.
Black Swan The Black Swan (G on the OSF campus map above) served as the Festival's third theatre from 1977 to 2001. The building, originally an
automobile dealership, was bought in 1969 as a
scene shop and rehearsal hall. Company members began using it to stage "midnight" readings for one another and invited friends who brought other friends. Artistic Director Jerry Turner recognized the opportunity to take risks with unconventional staging and subjects, and called for its development as a third OSF theatre. Fitting a theatre into the existing building was challenging. It could hold only 138 seats, all within five rows of the stage. There had to be, as designer Richard Hay put it, a "certain amount of tucking and squeezing." Each director had to solve the problem of an immovable roof support in the middle of the stage. For instance, in one production, it became a crucifix after adding a horizontal piece. The theatre reverted to its earlier roles in 2002 when it was replaced by the New Theatre, now renamed the Thomas Theatre. Among those roles are rehearsal space, meeting and audition rooms, classes, and since 2011 as a home for the Black Swan Lab (see above).
Thomas Theatre The limitations stemming from adapting an existing building as the Black Swan led to the design and building of a third theatre that provided flexible seating and increased capacity while maintaining the intimacy of the Black Swan.
Other buildings The Box Office (J on the OSF campus map above) is on the same courtyard as the Thomas Theatre. The Festival acquired the Administration Building (C) in April 1967. Forming the northern boundary of the campus, the building houses the artistic, business, community productions, development, education, group sales, literary (D), human resources offices, development, and the mailroom. The adjacent Camps Building (A) houses the members' lounge, communications and marketing offices, and a meeting room. The Festival's costume production shop occupies the Pioneer Building at the northwest corner of campus and an annex in the Administration building. The staff creates the costumes and accessories in three main studios on the lower floor of the building and in an extension of the Administration Building. Also in this area are offices and fitting rooms for the costume designers and costume design assistants, a costume props area and a vented paint room. Upstairs is a dye room, lounge, laundry, storage room, and office. During the height of costume production each season, a wig shop and additional studio is open in the basement of the Angus Bowmer Theatre. The Festival acquired Carpenter Hall (I) in October 1973, renovating it to accommodate lectures, concerts, rehearsals, meetings and Festival and community events. The Bill Patton Garden (K) provides the venue for free informal summer noon talks by OSF actors and staff. The Tudor Guild operated the Tudor Guild Gift Shop (B) and Brass Rubbing Center (K) for many years, both now operated by OSF itself, and will facilitate campus tours beginning in 2022. Just off campus, a purpose-equipped fitness center helps actors stay fit for physically demanding roles that often require acrobatics, fights, and pratfalls. In November 2013 the Festival completed the $7.2 million purpose-built (6,646.7 m2) Production Building in neighboring
Talent, Oregon now home to a multi-function staff. The building houses custom-designed technologically advanced set and prop construction and scene painting facilities. The scene shop has an extensive pit area that precisely duplicates the trap doors in the theatres themselves, allowing for precise sizing, testing of assembly and disassembly, and automating elevator cues. Lighting in the painting areas duplicates that in the theatres, guaranteeing desired colors. The building also houses OSF's costume warehouse and rental business, which has over 50,000 costumes and over 15,000 costume props such as armor, crowns, and wigs available for rent by other theatres, television and movie producers, and corporations. With the removal of the scene construction shop in 2014 to the new Production Building, a thirteen-month transformation began of the old one into the Hay-Patton Rehearsal Center by demolishing everything except the masonry exterior and the steel framework and raising the second floor three feet. Following a plan developed by Ogden Roemer Wilkerson Architecture carried out by Adroit Construction at a cost of $4.4 million, it hosted its first rehearsal on 29 December 2015. The building is equipped with a sophisticated sound system and has six rehearsal halls, three of them some , sufficient to precisely duplicate stages in any of the three Festival theatres. All six include fully sprung floors to prevent injuries when dancing, rehearsing stage combat, or similar physical activities. The LED lighting system is zoned and dimmable, the ceilings have steel tracks which allow for suspension of scenery, lights, loudspeakers, and even people. Some have additional features such as small conversation areas and dance-style mirrors. The building also includes a stage management office, a recording studio, a movement studio focused on the
Feldenkrais Method, a studio for work on vocal technique, stamina, and dialect; a loading dock, a conference room, showers, two warmup spaces that double as small meeting rooms, two
green rooms equipped with refrigerator, storage cases, sink, dishwasher, tables custom-made by the prop shop, and chairs. ==Organization==