Oregon Shakespeare Festival Offers $10 Community Rush Food Drive

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is offering discounted $10 rush tickets for eight performances to benefit ACCESS and the Ashland Emergency Food Bank. Those wishing to participate are asked to bring at least one non-perishable food item for each $10 ticket purchased. Patrons may also make a cash donation to receive this special rush price.

"As our 2018 season gets underway, I look forward to yet again seeing our patrons line up at the Box Office with donations in hand," said Paula Muncaster Walker, OSF interim co-director of marketing and communications. "This is a wonderful opportunity for community members to experience some of our early-season performances at a substantial discount and support the vital services ACCESS and the Ashland Emergency Food Bank provide for the Rogue Valley."

Tickets will be available starting two hours prior to curtain time on the day of the show only for these Community Rush tickets. That means 11:30 a.m. for matinees and 6:00 p.m. for evening performances. Tickets will be sold at the OSF Box Office windows only, on a first-come, first-served basis. Bins will be provided for food and/or cash donations in the Box Office lobby.

In addition, through OSF Connects, the Festival always offers $5 Rush tickets to any rushing performance for holders of Oregon Trail cards.

The select rush performances to benefit the Ashland Emergency Food Bank and ACCESS are:

Saturday, March 3

1:30 p.m. Destiny of Desire

8:00 p.m. Sense and Sensibility

Sunday, March 4

1:30 p.m. Henry V

1:30 p.m. Othello

Tuesday, March 6

8:00 p.m. Destiny of Desire

Thursday, March 8

1:30 p.m. Henry V

1:30 p.m. Sense and Sensibility

Friday, March 9

8:00 p.m. Sense and Sensibility

ACCESS provides food, housing, warmth and other essential services to Jackson County's low income children, families, seniors and people with disabilities. As the Community Action Agency of Jackson County, ACCESS has been helping Jackson County residents break the cycle of poverty since 1976. With a focus on education, ACCESS helps people through economic crisis by guiding them through changes in habits to help them become self-sustaining. ACCESS currently serves local residents through 15 programs designed to address problems from one-time emergencies to longer-term issues.

Ashland Emergency Food Bank provides food, free of charge, to residents of Ashland, Talent and surrounding rural communities who would otherwise go hungry. AEFB customers include the unemployed, under-employed, disabled, working poor, students, seniors and homeless. Twenty-five percent of those served are children under the age of 18. AEFB also distributes nonperishable food items to several organizations that offer prepared meals, or that serve a specific niche of people in need. These groups include Uncle Foods Diner, St. Vincent De Paul, and the Catalyst and Maslow Programs at Ashland High School. In 2015, Ashland Emergency Food Bank served an average of 600 households (approximately 1,500 children and adults) every month. Each family received enough food to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner for two to three days.

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 and musicals. OSF's play commissioning programs, which include American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, 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."

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