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9 unusual facts about Oregon Shakespeare Festival


Bruce Abbott

Abbott's career began as a dancer/actor in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, where he spent three seasons in the late 1970s.

Danny Bruno

Since then, Bruno has had major roles in hundreds of plays throughout the Northwest at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, New Rose Theater, Artists Repertory Theatre, Oregon Repertory Theatre, Lakewood Theatre, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Actor's Cabaret of Eugene, Northwest Classical Theatre, Profile Theatre and Stark Raving Theatre among others.

Enid Kent

A Hollywood High School graduate (and classmate of actress Swoosie Kurtz), Enid Kent explored the world of theater from an early age, becoming a participant in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival among other endeavors.

Jahnna N. Malcolm

Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner met in 1978, when they were actors with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.

Kelvin Underwood

In Ashland, Underwood got involved with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has performed as a drummer during their 2009, 2010 and 2012 seasons, while also collaborating with a variety of artists, including Ashland's Dancing People Company, Rock music artist Frankie Hernandez, the Mackay Project Jazz Quartet, and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble.

M. Lee Pelton

Pelton also holds, or has held, positions on several educational boards and committees: the American Council on Education, the Harvard University Board of Overseers, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Oregon Symphony, Oregon Health & Science University Foundation, American Association for Higher Education, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and National Collegiate Athletic Association among others.

Tracy's Tiger

Produced in the New Theatre, the smallest of Oregon Shakespeare Festival's theaters, the musical met with a warm reception from critics and played to sold-out audiences for the entire season.

The story of Tracy's Tiger was adapted into an original musical in two acts for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2007 season.

Transcendence Theatre Company

Over 450 people participated in the project from Artistic Directors at the United States' top regional theatres like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage and Steppenwolf Theatre, to Broadway Producers to college students and professors.


Melanie Marnich

She has received commissions from the Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage and South Coast Repertory.

Nilo Cruz

Some of the theatres that have developed and performed his works include New York’s Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Pasadena Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, The Alliance, New Theatre, Florida Stage and the Coconut Grove Playhouse.


see also

Angus L. Bowmer

Bowmer attended the University of Washington in Seattle in the 1930s, acting in at least two of its Shakespeare productions, Love's Labor's Lost and Cymbeline under guest director Ben Iden Payne, an Englishman whose ideas for neo-Elizabethan staging of Shakespeare’s plays provided inspiration later in Bowmer's life as he began producing the plays that became the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.