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Shakespeare Festival Spotlights Diversity
con tin u ed
fro n t Front
T hese are big questions that
have been seriously addressed by
festival staff, w hich in the past sev­
eral years has steadily built pro­
gram s to attract audiences o f color
from nearby urban areas and co n ­
duct outreach into the grow ing
L atino com m unities that dot the
region.
A shland - a postcard scene sur­
rounded by rural farming com m uni­
ties and population from statew ide
and C alifornia - could be ju st an­
other sleepy stop along 1-5, but
since 1935 their love o f theater has
set it apart from their neighbors.
Now, in a world where attracting
ju st one type o f audience do esn ’t
quite cut it. the festival seeks other
w ays to set A shland apart by ex­
panding their playbill, cast and au­
dience. In the w ords o f Diane Holt,
director o f audience developm ent,
O SF understands that to represent
the world you m ust understand the
w orld’s diverse cultures.
Holt explained the beginnings of
theirdi versity program, dating back
to the late 1990s, when they began
to place greater em phasis on hiring
actors o f color and launched cam ­
paigns to find new audiences.
H istorically, the w ord diversity
h a s n ’t been sy n o n y m o u s w ith
southern Oregon - but O SF has
worked hard to build a com pany o f
world-class actors, directors and
artists that m irror the array o f clas­
s ic ,
c o n te m p o r a r y
an d
Shakespearean plays. A ttracting
theatergoers from Portland, the San
Francisco Bay area and beyond,
they’ve em bodied the idea that the­
ater knows no race or gender, only
the integral lesso n so f love, fam ily,
tragedy and com edy.
Eventually, actors o f colorcam e
to represent at least 25 percent o f
the com pany com prised o f around
80 members. But at the sam e tim e
things were slightly one-sided:
“Now that we had m ore than a
third o f the staff with actors o f
color, we looked out into the audi­
ence. which was mostly white,” Holt
recalled.
Holt began to hear, through feed­
back from actors and staff, a per­
ception in the African A m erican
com m unity that southern O regon
w asn’t a safe place to stop.
Not long after the revelation. Holt
said a white man from My rtle Creek,
a small com munity outside Ashland,
paid her a visit after seeing an A u­
gust W ilson play.
He said it broke his heart to see
such w onderful African Am erican
plays, but no A frican A m ericans in
the audience.
T he man gave the festival a small
grant, their first funding to attract
people o f color, and in 1999 they
received another larger grant for
outreach in the local Latino co m ­
m unity. In 2(X) 1 another cam paign
broadened their audience, moving
right along in expanding beyond
their rural boundaries.
This past year, festival officials
joined Portland’s Partners in D iver­
sity to recruit new board mem bers
and sent an actor to the quarterly
Say Hey, NW netw orking event. A
couple tim es this year, actors have
led com m unity discussions about
the plays, held most recently at a
church in northeast Portland.
With full momentum, OSF recently
hired a new artistic director, Bridget
B. Sullivan, whose job, which starts
next month, will be tocontinue reach­
ing out into surrounding com m uni­
ties and Portland as well as into
California, Seattle and Vancouver,
W ash.
Originally from upstate New York
piioto by S arah B i . ount /T he P ortland O bserver
and a longtime A tlanta resident,
Sullivan has the dual perspective of Representatives o f the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland are known for introducing theater and Shakespeare to low-income
being a minority in a rural and white high schools. Pictured from left are OSF Development Director Diane Holt and company actors Nancy Rodríguez, René Millán and
setting and having lived in one o f the Armando Duran.
most diverse cities in the country.
Now, as a relatively new Oregonian
from Portland, she is recei ving a crash
course in southern Oregon culture
after visiting for the job interv iew.
“M y short time in Ashland al­
lowed me to see there was a certain
energy,” she said. “It could be the
creative energy but I also got the
sense that A shland w as serious
about accepting diversity in their
community.”
And from what her new colleagues
have told her. the tim ing couldn't be
better.
“Everyone has made reference to
The audience development director with the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, Diane Holt (left) meets with actress Greta
Oglesby, who appears in this season's “Gem o f the Ocean" and
“The Tempest.”
P o r t l a n d O b s e r v e r T k u to R e v i e w
2007
‘the tim e is now , ” she said. “The
tim e is perfectly aligned to m ake
diverse changes across the board.
O S F is c o m m itte d to m a k in g
changes that will benefit A shland
and region as a w hole.”
S ullivan is already busy g ener­
ating enough ideas to m ake your
head buzz, including plans to jazz
up w eekend getaw ay tours that
already originate from Portland and
O akland. Calif. S h e'd like to see
brochure’s printed in Spanish, part­
nerships with local theaters and
radio show s, and she plans to build
a relationship betw een the festival
and inner city kids in com m unities
w ith schools that may not have art
program s.
It’s unclear how exactly Sullivan
will affect the festival, but as our
state adapts to cultural changes in
altitudes and acceptance, it’s good
to know A shland can look to its
g reatest strength, the festival, to
nurture this ideal.
C atch “G em o f the O cean’’ or
one o f 10 oth er perform ances, in ­
cluding S h ak esp eare's “A s You
L ike It” and “T he T em pest” during
th e 2 0 0 6 -0 7 s e a s o n r u n n in g
through O ctober at OSF.
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