OSF Cancels Green Show For Remainder Of 2018

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will end its Green Show season early due the ongoing impacts of wildfire smoke. The Green Show, a series of free performances typically offered on OSF's Courtyard Stage six nights a week throughout the summer and into mid-October, will end on Sunday, Aug. 26, 2018. The Festival remains open and its 10 mainstage plays will continue into October.

Since mid-July, the majority of Green Show performances have been canceled or moved from the large outdoor courtyard - commonly referred to as "the Bricks" - to the indoor BLACK SWAN Theatre due to unhealthy air quality caused by smoke from wildfires burning in multiple states. Over 20 performances of the Festival's three outdoor plays have also either been canceled or moved from the 1,200-seat Allen Elizabethan Theatre to the smaller Mountain Avenue Theatre at Ashland High School.

OSF's financial losses so far in 2018 due to wildfire smoke are estimated to be about $2 million.

"This was a painful but necessary decision," Artistic Director Bill Rauch said. "Given the extra resources, time and energy required to repeatedly move outdoor performances to indoor venues, and the financial impacts of smoke-related performance cancelations, we must keep our company's focus on our 10 spectacular mainstage productions, seven of which are in our two indoor theatres. Our primary priorities are the health of our patrons and staff, the stewardship of this nonprofit company's resources, and continuing to deliver world-class art to our audiences."

Rauch continued, "The Green Show is a wonderful platform for diverse artists at various stages of their career to share their artistry, and is enjoyed by our local community and out-of-town guests. For these reasons and more, we look forward to the Green Show's return in the future, as OSF establishes alternatives that address the challenges wildfire smoke poses for outdoor performances."

The final Green Show performance of 2018 on Aug. 26 will be by La Victoria, a three-piece, all-female band that plays roots music from Mexico, Latin America and the U.S.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2018 season, which continues to draw rave reviews from critics and audience members, runs through Oct. 28. OSF's full 2018 playbill includes Othello, Sense and Sensibility, Destiny of Desire, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! and Snow in Midsummer in the Angus Bowmer Theatre; Henry V, Manahatta and The Way the Mountain Moved in the intimate Thomas Theatre; and Romeo and Juliet, The Book of Will and Love's Labor's Lost in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre.

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a nationally renowned theatre arts organization that presents an eight-month season of up to 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals and world-premiere plays. OSF's play commissioning programs, which include American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle and Play on! 36 Playwrights Translate Shakespeare, have generated works that have been produced on Broadway, throughout the American regional theatre, and in high schools and community theatres across the country. The Festival draws attendance of more than 400,000 to approximately 800 performances every year and employs approximately 575 theatre professionals.

OSF invites and welcomes everyone, and believes the inclusion of diverse people, ideas, cultures and traditions enriches both our insights into the work we present on stage and our relationships with each other. OSF is committed to equity and diversity in all areas of our work and in our audiences.

OSF's mission statement: "Inspired by Shakespeare's work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory."