OSF Announces 2014 Directors

Artistic Director Bill Rauch announced the directors for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2014 season. The 2014 season playbill was unveiled on February 1.

"I am proud to announce the 2014 roster of directors, a dynamic mix of OSF veterans and artists directing for the first time with our company," said Rauch. "All these artists are individuals whose work I have long admired. The strength and variety of their directorial visions will bring even more vitality to a playbill-a delicious blend of many classical stories with a handful of exceptional new works-that is already generating huge excitement for our company and our audiences."

In the Angus Bowmer Theatre

Tony Taccone will direct William Shakespeare's last great romance, THE TEMPEST. Taccone has been a frequent guest artist at OSF, most recently writing (in collaboration with Jonathan Moscone) the world premiere production GHOST LIGHT, part of the American Revolutions series. Among his directing credits at OSF are CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, OTHELLO and PENTECOST. Taccone has been the artistic director at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for the past 15 years.

Playing all season in repertory with THE TEMPEST is the Marx Brothers farce THE COCOANUTS, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and book by George S. Kaufman, with additional text by Morrie Ryskind, and adapted by Mark Bedard. David Ivers, director of this season's production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, will return to direct this madcap comedy. Ivers is co-artistic director at Utah Shakespeare Festival.

Also opening at the top of the season and playing through early July is the neglected classic drama THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN'S WINDOW, by Lorraine Hansberry, author of LES BLANCS and A RAISIN IN THE SUN (produced at OSF in 1998 and 2004). Juliette Carrillo will direct. Carrillo is a nationally recognized theatre director who has staged work in many regional theatres across the country. She is also an award-winning filmmaker. THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN'S WINDOW originally opened on Broadway in 1964 and ran for 101 performances, closing on the night Hansberry died. This production honors the 50th anniversary of that opening.

Opening in April is the world premiere adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's award-winning book A WRINKLE IN TIME, adapted and directed by TraCy Young. Young has adapted and directed a number of projects for OSF, most recently, MEDEA/MACBETH/CINDERELLA with Bill Rauch. Other projects have included THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS and THE IMAGINARY INVALID. A WRINKLE IN TIME, an enduring and epic science fiction fantasy tale, has at its center a young woman and her clairvoyant little brother who must find their mysteriously absent father. This story about the power of love and the strength of family has long held appeal for the young and young at heart.

In July, the final show to open in the Bowmer is the world premiere by Robert Schenkkan, THE GREAT SOCIETY. OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch will direct. THE GREAT SOCIETY continues the story begun in Schenkkan's ALL THE WAY (2012, co-winner of the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize), also directed by Rauch. In this part of the story, President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in his second term-his legitimate term-but crises mount as the Vietnam War escalates out of control and domestic unrest threatens to boil over at home, putting the legislation and social change so dear to his heart in jeopardy. THE GREAT SOCIETY, commissioned by and co-produced with Seattle Repertory Theatre, is being developed by American Revolutions.

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