Shakespeare 2018

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Shakespeare 2018

4 ‘The Book of Will’: What if Shakespeare’s words had been lost to time?

6 ‘Sense and Sensibility: Kate Hamill brings Austen to a modern audience 8 Buff on stage: Wonder how actors keep so fit? Here’s the answer 10 The Dummy Box: Actors’ secret award for the best blunder of the season 12 Brass rubbings: Create your own memento of your trip to OSF 14 Elizabethan comfort: You can thank the Soroptimists 16 ‘Manahatta’: Then and now not so different 18 Living Ideas: Tying what you see on stage to the world Playing this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Angus Bowmer Theatre “Othello,” through Oct. 28 “Sense and Sensibility,” through Oct. 28 “Destiny of Desire,” through July 12 “Oklahoma!” through Oct. 27 “Snow in Midsummer,” Aug. 2 through Oct. 27 Thomas Theatre “Henry V,” through Oct. 27 “Manahatta,” through Oct. 27 “The Way the Mountain Moved,” July 10 through Oct. 28 Allen Elizabethan Theatre “Romeo and Juliet,” through Oct. 12 “The Book of Will,” through Oct. 13 “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” through Oct. 14 ON THE COVER: Elinor Dashwood (Nancy Rodriguez, upper right) and her family must navigate their gossip-filled community in “Sense and Sensibility.”

PHOTO: JENNY GRAHAM

PHOTO: JENNY GRAHAM

Laurey (Royer Bockus, left) and Curly (Tatiana Wechsler) in “Oklahoma!”

Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 3

Behind the

First Folio ‘The Book of Will’ Playwright: Lauren Gunderson Director: Christopher Liam Moore When: June 6 through Oct. 13 Where: Allen Elizabethan Theatre

By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune OSF BROCHURE IMAGE

Kevin Kenerly (Richard Burbage), Jeffrey King (John Heminges) and David Kelly (Henry Condell) in “The Book of Will,” by Lauren Gunderson.

What if Shakespeare’s words had been lost to time?

‘The Book of Will’ explores why they weren’t

“The Book of Will” promises to be a rare view into 17th century publishing practices and the origin of the First Folio. The play, written by Lauren Gunderson and directed by Christopher Liam Moore, begins in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre on June 6.

The First Folio was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and is the closest record of Shakespeare’s works that we have today.

Published as an oversized, bound volume, the First Folio is a faithful representation of William Shakespeare’s plays as documented by his closest friends.

The First Folio is the book of Will.

Gunderson’s play follows Will’s friends as they fight to save Shakespeare’s lines from disappearing with time.

Gunderson, who, according to American Theatre magazine was the most produced American playwright in 2017-18, was in Ashland for rehearsals in early May and talked about the experience of writing “The Book of Will,” seeing it performed and working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her works include “I and You,” “Silent Sky,” “The Taming” and “Exit Pursued by a Bear,” among others.

MFB: How did you come to think of the idea of Shakespeare’s words lost to time and memory?

LG: I’ve been fascinated with this story for a long time, always felt that there was a play in it. There is a book called “The Book of William,” which is about Shakespeare’s First Folio and that first chapter is full of details, a very efficient history of Henry

4 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

Condell and how they made the First Folio and the circumstances. That stuck with me for a long time.

Then I was in conversation with fellow artistic director and dramaturg Nick Avila. We were talking about our interest in the history. That made it really clear this is a play that I could write, that I wanted to write. A lot of people have a love of Shakespeare but don’t know all the details and that’s part of the fun of what this play elucidates.

MFB: The world premiere of “The Book of Will” was at the 2016 New Play Summit at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts as a work commissioned by the Women’s Voices Fund. What was the response there and did it surprise you?

LG: It was incredible, really amazing. I don’t know if it surprised me. It always surprises me.

People were most excited to have a play that was both contemporary and in conversation with Shakespeare and that made it both a new play and yet feel like a classic play at its best, and that’s something I hope we bring to this production, too.

MFB: In 2017, The New Yorker called you “America’s most popular playwright.” How is “The Book of Will” related to your body of work?

LG: It is quite related. My plays have a couple of tracks, contemporary stuff and my historical work, about half of it is history. A lot of the history plays that I write are about women and science and in that way, this (“The Book of Will”) diverges. I’ve written about almost every century for the last five or so in various different ways, so this fits nicely in that way, telling a story from history but making it feel like it belongs with us now. That’s my favorite thing to do with history — take either known or ill-known characters and make them feel like they’re contemporary — that they’re dealing with what we’re

dealing with. They love how we love, handle loss the way we do.

Human beings don’t change that much, actually, over the centuries.

Our technologies do, but we don’t really.

MFB: You’ve been to Ashland and seen the rehearsals?

LG: I saw the run and it was amazing.

MFB: How will the OSF staging be similar or different from Denver?

LG: It will be very different, the ending especially will be quite different. Yeah! It’s a very special play for this company ... because it’s a play about a troupe of actors, and they are a troupe of actors. Those actors have decades of history together, and so do these actors. In that way I think there couldn’t be a more perfect place for this story to be told because really, they’re not having to dig very deep to find their connection to their characters.

MFB: You’re working with an incredibly talented cast.

You probably saw David Kelly’s remarkable ability to react in a very spontaneous way (Kelly is cast as Henry Condell). Kevin Kenerly is masterful (Kenerly has the role of Richard Burbage). Jeffrey King, Jordan Barbour, Catherine Castellanos are amazing (respectively playing, John Heminges, Ed Knight and Elizabeth Condell). How did you see your work through their talents?

LG: They are best at what they do. They are theater rock stars, so I couldn’t be happier with this team. David Kelly’s comedy is unstoppable and delicate. Everyone’s so full of feeling and nuance. They’re just the best pros in the world.

MFB: How did you work with Christopher Liam Moore?

What did he bring to the play?

LG: He’s so brilliant! He’s so much fun in the room and he knows these actors so well you can just see they have a shared language, shared history, shared jokes. It makes the process efficient and effective in a way that’s very unique to this team, so I’m over the moon.

MFB: I love a comment you made on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s video Playwright’s Interview, “It’s about something bigger than themselves, bigger than their time. The importance of preserving, capturing in some fashion the fugitive nature of performance.”

Can you expand on that?

LG: That is the nature of the entire art form, that it (theatre) is temporal and yet why I’m a writer and why I’m doing Shakespeare is that it isn’t temporal. The words stick, that’s what we pass down, so what is temporal is the immediate interpretation. The whole point of theater is that it is regenerated every generation. Hamlet is different now than it was, but it’s still the same. I think that’s the magic of it, the best combination of ephemeral and legacy. It’s the same story but a different presentation, a different heart and soul doing it, which I think makes it immediate to who we are and what we need as civilization right now. On our best days, that’s what we do.

MFB: What do we need as a civilization right now?

LG: Empathy, a sense of understanding and appreciating difference and diversity. We need a sense that teamwork matters as opposed to only the self, that doing something you may not get the benefit of still matters. That’s what this group does (in “The Book of Will”). They didn’t live to see what Shakespeare would become, but they are the reason that Shakespeare did become that. I think all of those things are in the play. It’s a play about brotherhood and sisterhood, about kind and generous men and women being heartful and creative and risking for a greater good.

MFB: Any final thoughts?

LG: The main thing is how unique it is to have this play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that has such an incredible history. It makes the play kind of luminous in a very unique way.

“The Book of Will” previews in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre on June 6, opens June 16 and continues through Oct. 13. There will be a sign interpreted performance on July 7. For more information, visit www.OSFAshland.org.

Maureen Flanagan Battistella is an Ashland freelance writer and can be reached at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.

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Collaborating with Jane

Kate Hamill brings Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ to a modern audience ‘Sense and Sensibility’ Playwright: Adaptation by Kate Hamill Author: Jane Austen Director: Hana S. Sharif When: Through Oct. 28 Where: Angus Bowmer Theatre

By Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune

Adapting Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” for the stage involved much more than taking a highlighter in hand and condensing the novel down to a few hours of performance time.

“I started by asking myself, ‘What’s my point of view on the novel?’ I don’t like copy-and-paste adaptations,” says playwright Kate Hamill, whose adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” runs through Oct. 28 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “Adaptations should stand on their own, not as a retreading of a novel.”

In her novel, Austen writes about the plight of three sisters — Elinor, Marianne and Margaret Dashwood — who have to live off the charity of relatives after their father dies and leaves his ample estate to their half-brother.

The sisters are pushed out of their family home by the machinations of their half-brother’s tightfisted wife. They move into 6 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

a cottage owned by a distant cousin.

“To me, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ is about people’s reactions to social pressures,” Hamill says. “Do you break the rules or follow the rules? Those decisions have consequences for people, especially for women and those who are disadvantaged — and the Dashwoods are both.”

Hamill emphasizes the witty passages in Austen’s novel, which OSF’s seasoned actors play up to full comedic effect.

The adaptation is a mix of Austen and Hamill’s writing, with Hamill estimating the dialogue is made up of about 60 percent of her own writing and 40 percent Austen’s.

“It’s a collaboration with a writer who is no longer living,” Hamill says. “I’m partially using Jane’s text and partially my playwriting.”

In Austen’s novel, some of the romantic entanglements can prove frustrating, especially to the modern reader.

Elinor Dashwood, the eldest of the sisters, likes Edward Ferrars.

But his milquetoast personality and general lack of enthusiasm for Elinor can leave readers scratching their heads about why she likes him.

To the modern reader, it feels like Elinor is facing a case of he’sjust-not-that-into-you and should move on — especially when he is slow to visit her after she moves to the cottage in another town.

But on stage, Nancy Rodriguez as Elinor and Armando McClain as Edward use body language to convey the two characters’ mutual attraction and hesitation about expressing their feelings.

“When I started reading the novel, I asked myself, ‘What do people who are very, very restricted in their expressions act

PHOTOS: JENNY GRAHAM

Elinor (Nancy Rodriguez, top left) and Marianne (Emily Ota, top right) arrive at a London dance attended by several of their acquaintances.

like when they are around people they are attracted to?’ It was endearing to make Edward awkward,” Hamill says. “Everyone loves to see an awkward guy on stage.”

The middle sister, Marianne Dashwood, falls for John Willoughby. They both have passionate, impulsive personalities and love poetry.

“He’s the guy who’s easy to love right away,” Hamill says.

But in a society where women must constantly guard their reputations, Marianne faces far more risk from the headlong romance, while John is free to dabble or commit based on his own desires.

To emphasize social pressures, Hamill has created a chorus of gossips who pop up throughout the play to make witty but snide comments about the characters’ actions.

“It helps us feel the social pressure — and feel complicit with that pressure,” she says.

Since adapting “Sense and Sensibility” to critical acclaim, Hamill has gone on to create other plays, including stage versions of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic “Little Women.”

“Part of why I got into playwriting was born out of love and anger.

I loved the theater. I loved the classics. But I was so angry. If you look on stages, it’s so rare for a woman to be the driver of the play and to not just be the person who helps the male antagonist on his journey.

“Women should also be the center of the story,” says Hamill, who as an actor got tired of playing side roles like the girlfriend or wife of a main male character. “There are lots of wonderful novels

Marianne (Emily Ota, left) comforts her heartbroken sister Elinor (Nancy Rodriguez) in “Sense and Sensibility.”

with female-centered stories.”

Although females make up the majority of ticket-buyers for plays, national statistics show more plays are produced that were written or adapted by men.

Hamill says female audience members deserve to see more women on stage.

“It’s an issue for female artists as well. I see them dropping out of the business in droves because there are no roles for them,” she says. “There’s just not as much work available. I try to have productions that at least have gender parity. That’s how you get more jobs for women both on and off the stage.”

Reach reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or by email at valdous@rosebudmedia.com.

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Looking & sounding good

How the OSF company prepares their bodies and voices PHOTOS: JENNY GRAHAM

Armando McClain, shown in “Sense and Sensibility” with, from left, Emily Ota, Nancy Rodriguez and Kate Mulligan, says Shakespeare requires more physicality than other texts..

By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors are athletes in every sense of the word. Fight scenes, ballet, high kicks and acrobatics. Dialogue, monologue, soliloquy and chorus. Screams and groans, operatic highs and baritone lows. There’s no question about it, the physical and vocal talents of the OSF company are on stage every day.

OSF actors take physical and vocal conditioning seriously, not only because they must perform in the same role 120 times over the course of a season, but because their bodies are often bared to the audience in performance.

Vilma Silva’s muscular back is framed by frou frou in “Destiny of Desire,” while Kevin Kenerly’s torso is caged in steel as malevolent Oberon. Hearing Tatiana Wechsler in “Oklahoma!” and Christopher Donohue’s Odysseus, it is clear that actors’ vocal cords and diaphragm are just as important as their lattissimus dorsi and rectus femoris.

Rebecca Clark Carey is director of Voice and Text at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She advises on all aspects of vocal performance: speaking, singing and shouting. Most actors come to OSF with well-developed vocal practices, and her job is to 8 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

connect to their vocabulary; but for first-time actors, Carey’s biggest problems are ones that she has little control over.

“The pollen in this valley and allergies affect actors’ voices,” she says. “The smoke is challenging, too.” Hydration, humidifiers, masks and allergists are all part of Carey’s toolbox.

“Different training traditions use different exercises or images, but they are all getting at the same thing,” Carey says.

“It’s important to get good core engagement and keep things open up at the top, where the small muscles are, and let the big muscles do the heavy lifting to keep pressure off the vocal folds.”

“There’s muscularity when you do Shakespeare,” says Armando McClain, a five-year OSF veteran who plays Edward Ferrars in “Sense and Sensibility” and Paris in “Romeo and Juliet” this season. “It’s not just the text. You have to give more breath because the punctuation is so spread out that the whole thought requires a lot more breath, a lot more physicality.”

With the requirements of a near year-round schedule, Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors need to be in top condition. McClain exercises regularly to make sure that his body is elastic and he has cardiovascular capacity.

“At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we’re doing these shows six days a week for nine months. There’s a certain marathon mentality about it,” McClain says. “There’s a certain rigor to this work that allows us to do things over and over again and do them the same way. Feats of strength are great, but can you

PHOTO: JENNY GRAHAM

Eduardo Enrikez, shown with Esperanza America in “Destiny of Desire,” says he warms up before every performance with stretches, yoga, Pilates, pushups, pullups and crunches.

do that 120 times in 10 months?

“Every show is different. The demands of ‘Julius Caesar’ are different than the demands of ‘Sense and Sensibility,’” McClain continues. “It’s really about warming up, making sure that you’re stretching out, that your body is where you want it to be and if it’s not, making sure you give that area special attention.”

McClain remembers the physicality of the 2017 “Julius Caesar” production, directed by Shana Cooper, when he had the role of Cinna, and was also in the ensemble. “In ‘Julius Caesar,’ the knife coda we were doing, we all learned it with our right hands,” he says. “All the stabbing and gesture work was predominantly with our right hand, and a lot of us had Popeye arms on our right side and regular arms on the left. So some people changed into their left hand at a certain part of the show, so they could balance out and not burn out their right hand.”

Wendy Fountain, OSF’s ACE-certified personal trainer, recalls the physical demands placed on the “Julius Caesar” ensemble and consulted on this year’s “Henry V” production, where boxes are used to build walls, tables, coffins. “They called me in because ‘Henry’ was very active; it’s a minimal set and they’re transferring set boxes that are not light,” she says. “I went in and watched them and designed a pre-show warmup for them and made suggestions about twisting.”

Fountain manages the Stone House Program, an exercise facility available to the actors along with a subsidized personal training regimen.

“If the actor needs to get in shape for a role, like they have to climb a rope or crouch, gain weight, lose weight, if they have knee issues, we work very specifically with what that actor needs,” Fountain says. “Over the years the Stone House Program has cut down on injuries significantly.”

Many actors admit a certain sense of vanity that influences their conditioning routine. And some scenes require a disrobing, as when Eduardo Enrikez plays the young lover, Sebastian Jose Castillo, who struts to love Fabiola Castillo in “Destiny of Desire.”

“Sometimes you have to take off your shirt as I do,” Enrikez says. “I have to be a little bit cut for the show.” Sure, Enrikez has to be buff, but he also wants to be strong, so he’s been working out every week with Wendy Fountain.

“Acting is muscles; all your muscles are involved,” he says.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so you have to be healthy. You have to eat right, but most importantly, you have to keep your body functioning.”

Almost all actors have a pre-show routine, traditions that help prepare their mind and body for the work ahead.

Enrikez’s warm-up is thorough. “I ride to the theater two hours before our curtain and start by doing stretches, a bit of yoga, a bit of Pilates, then pushups, pullups and a lot of crunches,” he says. “At the same time you’re getting your body warmed up, your vocal muscles warmed up. You have to keep your vocal cords intact and healthy. I do vocal exercises as I’m warming up.”

For Armando McClain, warming up before the performance is an inventory of immediate flexibility; it also includes a spiritual element, a ritual that lets him inhabit the theater, ready for the performance to come.

“I always go out onto the stage and say words into the space,” he says. “When you go into a space, you never know how your voice will be. So you warm up, say the words. Thoughts are things, so if you say something into the room, it will be there.”

Reach Ashland freelance writer Maureen Flanagan Battistella at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.

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Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 9

OSF BLOOPERS

To

err is

human...

To win OSF’s ‘Dummy Box’ is divine PHOTOS: JENNY GRAHAM

Maria (Kate Mulligan) and Olivia (Gina Daniels) listen as Viola (Sara Bruner), disguised as “Cesario,” attempts to woo on Orsino’s behalf in 2016’s “Twelfth Night.” Mulligan accidentally beaned a patron with a cat carrier she was supposed to throw into the vom.

By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors have nominated one of their peers for the Dummy Box award nearly every year since the early 1970s, the previous year’s recipient choosing the next year’s honoree, recognizing the biggest blunder of the year.

“It’s very in-house,” Michael J. Hume, a 23-year OSF veteran, says, “and it may be the first time many have even heard of it.”

The Dummy Box acknowledges performance mistakes and celebrates actors’ capacity to recover the moment, get out of the problem. It is an award given with love and respect.

That first Dummy Box was just a shoebox, inscribed with a name, the year and the play. Over time the box became crowded with tributes and there’s even an inscription: “I give it to myself.”

Hume received his first Dummy Box in 1992 for what he calls “three boneheaded moves” in the “Conclusion of Henry VI.” Over the course of a season, Hume split his pants and, wearing no underwear in period costume, mooned the audience for the entire performance; tripped on the way to an exit; and forgot his lines.

In 2001, Hume recalls that the Dummy Box was passed to Ken Albers for some verbal slippage in “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and Albers made the award an official, unofficial part of OSF’s history. Albers placed the original, taped-up, 10 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

scribbled-on box inside another larger box and started to document what had become an annual award given by the previous year’s recipient.

“Mark Bedard won it [the Dummy Box] for ‘She Loves Me’ in 2010 where there’s a song, ‘Ice cream, he brought me ice cream’ and he forgot to bring the ice cream!” says Hume. “So what was he going to sing? ‘Left shoe! I have my left shoe!?’”

Hume says this one was an easy fix when Bedard ran off stage, brought back the ice cream and said he’d left it on the elevator.

Mandy Younger has been an OSF stage manager for 18 years now and acknowledges that mistakes happen. She’s lived through a number of Dummy Box moments, and some that are merely Dummy Box worthy.

In 2016, for example, during “Twelfth Night,” Kate Mulligan was supposed to toss a cat carrier into the “vom,” a corridor under the audience seats.

“It was our 50th show and Kate threw the cat carrier and missed the vom, which is huge, and it hit a patron in the head,” Younger recalls. “And so she got the Dummy Box. The patron was fine and said it was the best experience of his entire life, he was so happy.

“Moments that stand out for me are moments that are triggered by a forgetful moment or a moment when you go, ‘Wow, you really did not think this one through,’” Younger says. “The Dummy Box absolutely can be how quickly you can think on your feet and your ability to improvise and know lines. It is an amazing skill set here in our incredibly talented actors.”

Most of the OSF company is somewhat reluctant to talk about the Dummy Box, but some acknowledge that David Kelly, Kate Mulligan and Richard Howard have been nominated for the award, Kelly apparently relishing the ceremony. Perhaps, they say, the three have won the Dummy Box more than once; perhaps, more often than anyone else in the company.

Daniel José Molina won the Dummy Box following his first OSF season, when he was cast as Romeo. In a rare public disclosure, Molina talks about what may be his finest moment on stage, 80 or 90 performances into the 2012 run of “Romeo and Juliet.”

“This particular night something went horribly, horribly wrong. Everything is going fine, then in one second a knife is supposed to be pulled out and instead of it being in my hand, I just see it fly into the audience, like in slow motion,” Molina says. This is right before Juliet’s “O happy dagger” line when she kills herself with Romeo’s knife.

Molina says he could think of only one thing: “‘Go find that knife right now.’ And then I continue with this monologue just pacing around, scanning the stage, the vom. It’s nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be seen. I’m gone. I’m stuck in this world where all I want to do is finish the play but there’s no end to the play. I see the entire cast of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ covering their mouths watching through their fingers — they can’t believe what is happening.

“Tony DeBruno, playing the friar, comes on from the Green Room with a dinner knife and that is what Juliet uses to kill herself,” Molina says. “Crisis averted.”

Al Espinosa has been with OSF for seven seasons and

Romeo (Daniel José Molina) and Juliet (Alejandra Escalante) prepare to take their wedding vows in the 2012 production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Molina says a dagger once flew out of his hand into the audience right before Juliet must use it to kill herself.

credits the excitement and distraction of his first child for his 2018 Dummy Box. “I had an entrance in the second act of ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (in 2017) … and for the life of me, I pretty much forgot that entrance almost every time and I would barely make it almost every time,” Espinosa says. And that wasn’t the only thing that went wrong for Espinosa. One time, he forgot the dagger.

“I went on just with a sword for an incredibly choreographed U. Jonathan Toppo fight with both sword and dagger,” Espinosa says. “It’s very difficult to improvise a sword fight, it’s like a dance. I had to throw a punch and do other things with my left hand where I would have had the dagger. We got through it. It happens in live theater — those kinds of things do happen. You’re taught that the show must go on and just continue the story.”

“The Dummy Box has been a longstanding tradition with this company,” says Hume. “It’s a way to create a bonding and give levity because we know things will go wrong.”

Things don’t go wrong very often at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and not so wrong that most would notice. If by chance you catch a Dummy Box-worthy moment, count yourself lucky and enjoy.

Reach Ashland freelance writer Maureen Flanagan Battistella at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.

Mark Bedard as Georg Nowack and Lisa McCormick as Amalia Balash share a scene in the 2010 production of “She Loves Me.” Bedard won the Dummy Box for forgetting the very thing Amalia sings about in another scene: ice cream.

Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 11

TUDOR GUILD

Emerging

media Brass rubbings bring out details in a medieval art form related to Shakespeare’s stories

By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune

Tudor Guild Brass Rubbing Center

Lords and ladies, knights in armor and mythical beasts — these are just a few of the subjects found in the brass casts that are the foundation of a medieval art form available to theatergoers when the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor theater season opens.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

When: Wednesdays through Saturdays, through Sept. 1 Where: Bill Patton Garden behind the Allen Elizabethan Theatre Prices: Start at $7; learn more at the Tudor Guild Gift Shop on The Bricks at OSF

The Tudor Guild’s brass rubbing center is in the Bill Patton Garden behind the Allen Elizabethan Theatre.

You can hear Ashland Creek rushing below, smell the flowering shrubs and feel the breeze. Violins are playing somewhere in Lithia Park. The shaded space commemorates the first general manager and executive director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Laurel Reynolds is a three-year Tudor Guild brass rubbing volunteer, tidy and elegant in a big straw hat, sundress and flats. She picks up a small, intricate brass cast and carefully tapes a heavy, white paper to it. Reynolds is absorbed in the process, focused on the design she’ll expose in the work. She lived in England as a teenager in the 1960s where she rubbed brass in churches when the practice was still allowed.

“It’s the history of them, all the details you can see.

They’re medieval monuments from the 1200s to the 1500s, so they’re a testament of those days,” Reynolds says. “They show the history of the people but also the creativity, the imagination. You can learn a lot about the times by seeing the alterations in styles, for instance.”

Reynolds’ hand lingers over a box of specially made wax crayons and is undecided at first between blues, reds, deep greens. She finally chooses the traditional black, a color that will stand out against the white paper.

“I love the process,” she says. “I was always interested in the emergence of an image. When you look at the brass, you don’t see the detail and it’s not until you rub the brass that you see.”

First Laurel traces the outline of the brass frame, and then presses the crayon carefully over the brass, rubbing a small section at a time. A lace headdress becomes clear,

12 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

PHOTOS: MAUREEN FLANAGAN BATTISTELLA

Laurel Reynolds rubs “Adoration of the Shepherds,” a 1500 brass cast.

The original brass is in Cobham, Surrey, England.

and you can even see the texture of the gown, the ribbons threading the bodice. Laurel may use a light dusting of gold metallic that will stand out against the black. It can take about 10 minutes to make a small rubbing and hours and hours to rub a large brass.

Terry Holden has been a Tudor Guild brass rubbing volunteer for more than 17 years and has worked with hundreds of schoolchildren over that time.

“I had never rubbed brasses, didn’t know anything about it, but I tried it and I loved it,” she remembers. “Anybody can do it. You can be 6 or 60 or 80.” Holden loves sitting out in the garden and helping people rub brass.

There are more than 80 brasses to choose from in the Tudor Guild collection, all made by the Monumental Brass Society of England, exact replicas of the originals found in English churches. Ranging from 8 inches square to over 6 feet, cast brass figures are illustrated and described on the Tudor Guild’s Facebook page and in a small catalog prepared by Holden and another longtime volunteer, Annette Lewis.

There’s a relationship between the brass rubbings and the plays of Shakespeare, one that Lewis knows well.

“During Shakespeare’s time and before, most of the churches had these elaborate brasses in memory of people who died,” Lewis says. “Shakespeare’s histories were the stories of England, actual people who lived. The brasses represent those medieval and renaissance times. They are linked to England, linked to Shakespearean times, Shakespearean stories.”

This year the Tudor Guild celebrates its 70th anniversary of service and fundraising, all in support of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In the early years, guild members picked up visiting actors at the airport, fed them and housed them, cared for their babies and sewed costumes and curtains. Today, the Tudor Guild numbers 174 persons, and has evolved into a sophisticated, professional fundraising arm with significant responsibility. Guild members staff ticket counters, run the Tudor Guild Gift Shop in the OSF courtyard, organize special events and manage the brass rubbing program. The guild has contributed more than $6 million to OSF since 1948.

Rubbing brass in the Bill Patton Garden can commemorate a long-ago noble and also create a special memento of summer performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

That beautiful and historical work of art becomes a representation of the creativity

and imagination of the festival.

Lewis has several brass rubbings framed in her Ashland home. “I have three in the bathroom, a husband and his wife, the Fitzgeralds. Over the door are a series of stories, somewhat grotesque,” she says.

Lewis has three more in the office: a lion, a unicorn and a gryphon. “Every time I look at them, I just smile because they look pretty cool.

“Be careful,” Lewis warns. “This can become addictive, so you might need a 12-step program.”

Thanks to the Tudor Guild, you can rub brass in the Bill Patton Garden from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, through Sept. 1. No appointment is needed and walk-ins are welcome. Call 541-4820940 or email brassrubbing@tudorguild. org a week in advance to make reservations for school classes and groups. Prices start at $7 and depend on the size of the rubbing; all supplies are included. For more information, visit www.TudorGuild.org.

Maureen Flanagan Battistella is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach her at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.

A brass cast depicts Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of Henry VIII.

Happy Hour Daily 4-6:30 Open Late - After Theater Vegan and Vegetarian Options 541-488-1113 35 S. 2nd St. Ashland www.alchemyashland.com Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 13

ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

Warm

& cozy You can thank the Soroptimists for cushions and blankets on cold nights

By Tammy Asnicar for the Mail Tribune

If you’ve ever sat in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Allen Elizabethan Theatre on a summer evening, you know that the cool air swirling up from Ashland Creek sends a breeze rippling through the outdoor amphitheater.

And, because it’s Southern Oregon, a warm, dry, blue-sky day can suddenly become a rain-soaked night.

It can get downright chilly.

Soroptimists International of Ashland rents blankets and sells rain ponchos for just such occasions.

During performances logging three or more hours, a nice cushion under the bum makes the theatergoing experience that much more enjoyable. So, the Soroptimists rent pillows, too.

The service began in 1949 with Soroptimists walking around with cardboard boxes filled with mismatched pillows that rented for 50 cents each. In the early 1970s, blankets were offered at the organization’s pillow booth.

Ponchos were added later.

When the outdoor theater opened 14 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

Pillows, blankets and ponchos Who: Volunteers with Soroptimists International of Ashland What: Blankets, pillows and ponchos for performances in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre Costs: Rentals of blankets and pillows: $3 each.

Sale of ponchos: $3 each Proceeds: Half go toward Soroptimist scholarships and grants designed to improve lives of girls and women; the other half goes to OSF’s FAIR program to provide fellowships, assistantships, internships and residencies For more information: http://www.soroptimistrv.org/siashland.html its doors on June 5, the Soroptimists began their 70th year renting pillows.

Mavis Cloutier has been affiliated with the project for the past 40 years. She calls it “a two-way, win-win” for both Soroptimists and theatergoers.

“We’ve enjoyed a longstanding partnership with OSF,” she says. “It’s a great fundraiser and a great service to patrons.”

After covering operating costs, which include replacing inventory and paying out $7,000 to $10,000 for OSF staff to collect blankets and pillows, the Soroptimists raise about $25,000 to underwrite scholarships and grants designed to

ANDY ATKINSON / MAIL TRIBUNE

Colleen Chambers, left, and Chris Christensen are co-chairs of the Ashland Soroptimists’ fundraising project in which they rent out pillows and blankets and sell rain ponchos during the outdoor season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

improve lives of girls and women in the community and around the world.

OSF also reaps the benefits of the endeavor. Half of each season’s proceeds (about $25,000) goes to the company’s FAIR program.

FAIR is an acronym for fellowships, assistantships, internships and residencies in administration, artistic, design and production within the Tony Award-winning theater environment.

Cloutier, who has served as co-chair of the pillow and blanket project, made many of the pillows or supervised pillow-making parties at her home.

“When the project was first started, they stuffed the pillows with feathers,” she says. “Well, when they got wet, it was not so good for the pillows.”

The pillows are now stuffed with shredded foam.

Colleen Chambers and Chris Christensen, the project’s current co-chairs, laugh at the memory of recent pillow making and stuffing parties held at Chambers’ home.

“My bathtub was filled with stuffing and Chris was inside the tub (scooping up the foam),” says Chambers. “It’s real hands-on.

“I still occasionally find bits of stuffing in the house.”

Cloutier recalls the long nights when she and fellow Soroptimists, along with their husbands, would round up hundreds of rain-soaked blankets and pillows and head to the nearest laundromat.

Drying pillows and blankets at midnight oftentimes would catch the attention of police officers and other curious passersby, she says.

“After a rainy night, we now wait until morning to go to the laundromat,” she says.

With just a couple of months off in the winter, Chambers and Christensen work nearly year-round preparing for the fivemonth outdoor season that this year ends on Oct. 28.

Duties are divided up according to strengths, from paperwork and bookkeeping to sewing and laundry tasks as well as scheduling pillow-making parties, shopping excursions, maintaining the website, scheduling volunteers to work the nightly performances.

Soroptimists and OSF staff meet for debriefing at the beginning and end of every season.

“I am honored to be a part of this, our primary fundraiser,”

says Chambers. “It’s very rewarding.”

Christensen adds that her involvement stems from “a strong desire to help other women.”

“I believe in Soroptimists’ philosophy and ideals and supporting an organization that empowers myself and other women,” she says.

This season, theatergoers will see the first increase in rental fees in 10 years.

Blankets and pillows that were rented for $2.50 each for a single night’s performance will now be $3. Rain ponchos will be sold for $3.

Patrons are cautioned about the 10- to 15-degree or more drop in nightly temperatures at the outdoor venue and about the threat of showers. They are encouraged to rent or buy the necessary items before taking their seats. Once the show begins and the curtain goes up, the Soroptimists’ booth closes and does not open at intermission.

There are also gentle reminders that the pillows and blankets are not take-away items and need to be left on the seats in the theater following the performance — even if a patron is returning for the next night’s show.

“We do lose some inventory every year,” says Chambers. “But, that‘s the cost of business.”

Both Chambers and Christensen are looking forward to the outdoor season’s opening night.

The 2018 summer playbill includes “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Book of Will,” and “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”

From their vantage point at the pillow booth, Chambers says, “there’s no greater place to be.”

“Younger patrons are excited about their first theater experience, and families are happy to be there together, excited and looking forward to enjoying the show,” she says.

Reach Grants Pass freelance writer Tammy Asnicar at tammyasnicar@q.com.

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Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 15

Then & now: Not so different?

‘Manahatta’ explores themes of American Indian rights and justice in wildly different eras ‘Manahatta’ Playwright: Mary Kathryn Nagle Director: Laurie Woolery When: Through Oct. 27 Where: Thomas Theatre

By Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune

Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle was living in New York City when she realized residents there knew very little about the area’s history and the American Indians who once called it home.

“I was living on Manhattan Island. No one I talked to could tell me who the Lenape were, where the word Manhattan came from and why Wall Street was called Wall Street,” she said.

Nagle’s play “Manahatta” answers those questions as it takes audience back and forth between Manhattan in the 1600s and 2008, when the iconic Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed amid an economic meltdown.

The play had its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March and runs through Oct. 27.

Manhattan was the ancestral home of the Lenape, who had their own financial system based on trade and the use of beads made out of shells as currency.

The Dutch West India Company infamously bought Manhattan Island from American Indians in the 1600s 16 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

for a small sum.

Historians still debate whether the company negotiated with tribal members who had any claim to the land, or whether its inhabitants understood the concept of selling land as private property.

With violence growing over the land and its resources, the Dutch built a massive wall to keep American Indians out of lower Manhattan Island.

The area became known as Wall Street, and while the wall was later taken down, the name stuck. Wall Street became the epicenter of the New York City financial district.

The area later became the locus of an economic crisis that reached global proportions and became known as the Great Recession in the 2000s.

Nagle said as the economy tanked, her friends in the Occupy Wall Street protest movement wanted her to pen a play.

“They wanted a Native writer to write a play,” said Nagle, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. “I said, ‘Find a Lenape.’ They didn’t know who the Lenape were. How do you critique the institutions of Wall Street if you don’t know how those institutions began? The United States needs to see the connections between the past and the present.”

In “Manahatta,” Nagle brings the distant and recent past to life.

Her main character, Jane, is a young Lenape woman living in Manahatta in the 1600s. She begins to learn the intricacies of trading fur to the Dutch, as well as their language.

In a separate but interwoven story line, Jane lives in the 2000s and has just started a lucrative career at Lehman Brothers. Also a Lenape woman, she moves from Oklahoma

PHOTOS: JENNY GRAHAM

Wall Street financier Jane Snake (Tanis Parenteau) is in the wrong place at the wrong time when the 2008 mortgage crisis devastates the company she works for, along with her colleagues Dick Fuld (Jeffrey King) and Joe (Danforth Comins).

to her ancestral land on Manhattan Island.

Both parts are played by Tanis Parenteau.

“As a playwright, I’m always trying to write characters in the most authentic way possible,” Nagle said. “I asked myself, ‘What would be the experience of a Lenape woman living in the 1600s and what would be the experience of a Lenape woman working on Wall Street today?’”

Actor Jeffrey King plays two men who are equally ambitious and ruthless — the director of the Dutch West India Company who wants to eliminate the Lenape, and a Lehman Brothers executive who doesn’t care that he is bundling and selling shaky mortgages taken out by overburdened homeowners.

Wherever they are in history, the merciless actions of the twin characters have tragic consequences.

Smart and ambitious herself, Jane wants to succeed in the high-powered world of American finance.

However, she begins to realize the mortgages her company touts as sound investments are anything but.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Jane, her proud mother back in Oklahoma has taken out a mortgage on the family home to pay medical bills.

Nagle’s plays often juxtapose different historical periods and explore themes of American Indian rights and justice.

In addition to being a playwright, she is an attorney who specializes in asserting tribal jurisdiction in domestic violence and sexual assault cases.

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated tribal jurisdiction over non-Indians who committed crimes against Indians on tribal land, Nagle said.

In the decades that followed, American Indian women experienced staggering rates of violence, including domestic violence and rape, according to a National Congress of American Indians report released in 2018.

“Our women experience the highest rates of violence in the nation,” Nagle said.

Se-ket-tu-may-qua (Steven Flores)gives Le-le-wa’-you (Tanis Parenteau) a wampum necklace that belonged to his mother in “Manahatta.”

Most of the violence against women was committed by non-Indian men, the report said.

The state and federal government often failed to prosecute when non-Indian men attacked Indian women on reservations, the report said.

With tribal governments having no jurisdiction on the cases, non-Indian criminals viewed reservations as places where they had free reign, the report said.

In recognition of the problem, Congress passed an act in 2013 that allowed tribes to prosecute non-Indians for domestic or dating violence against Indians, the report said.

In the five years following the change, the 18 participating tribes reported 128 arrests of non-Indian abusers. So far, the arrests have yielded 74 convictions, the report said.

“There are a lot of stories to be told about legal battles in Indian Country,” Nagle said.

Her other plays include “Sliver of a Full Moon,” which tells the stories of domestic violence survivors and a battle in Congress to restore tribal jurisdiction over abusers, and “Sovereignty,” about a young Cherokee lawyer who returns to Oklahoma to put new tribal powers into effect.

“I do find there’s a great synchronicity between by work as an attorney and a playwright,” Nagle said.

Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or by email at valdous@rosebudmedia.com.

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LIVING IDEAS

art & life Where

intersect OSF’s annual series helps theatergoers respond to what’s happening on stage and in the world

By Sarah Lemon for the Mail Tribune

A “centralized” approach characterizes this year’s “Living Ideas: Art and Community Dialogue Series,” presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Two days of workshops and series of short films headline this year’s “Living Ideas,” says Robert Goodwin, associate director of education, engagement for OSF. The “Separate/Together” symposium” is the event’s tentative title to examine constructs around race, says Goodwin.

“The beautiful thing about the series is that it responds to not only what is on stage but also what is happening in our nation and world,” says Goodwin.

Billed as “a commons to exchange ideas and engage compassionately in a number of venues,” Living Ideas debuted in 2015 with “contextualized programming” that provides “thought- and heart-provoking” explorations of the intersection between art and community, according to the OSF website. In their fourth year, “Living Ideas” organizers “pulled back a bit,” says Goodwin, to focus their efforts on an in-depth symposium, rather than a wide complement of programs.

“By design, it’s living, and it’s

18 | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | Shakespeare

Living Ideas Art and Community Dialogue Series What: Forges connections between individuals and communities through exploration of topics inspired by the current season of plays This year’s focus: “Othello” and “Manahatta” Events: To be announced For more information: www.osfashland.org/living ideas new every year,” he says. “Nothing generally is repeated.”

The festival is retaining post-matinee discussions, dubbed “Talk Backs,” under the “Living Ideas” umbrella, says Goodwin. Allowing playgoers to “decompress,” says Goodwin, those dialogues are valuable companions to the festival’s long-running and perennially popular “Festival Noons,” one-hour conversations, demonstrations, lectures and prefaces Tuesday through Sunday from June 19 until Labor Day. Labor issues, including loss of industry, layoffs, economic dislocation and addiction, prompted the first “Living Ideas” series in 2015, coinciding with OSF’s “American Revolutions” world-premiere production of “Sweat” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. Paralleling the Pennsylvania city depicted in “Sweat,” the festival invited the local community to look at similar effects in timber-industry towns around Oregon and

OSF PHOTO

“Take Them into the Dirt” was an interactive experience for participants in the 2017 Living Ideas series.

PHOTO: JENNY GRAHAM

From left, Peter Buckley, Luis Alfaro, Rob Goodwin, Darleen Ortega and Linda Wilcox Young participate in the 2015 Living Ideas Interactive Debate.

the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s a real intersectional community,” says Goodwin of festivalgoers and partnerships that OSF cultivates with individuals and organizations to present “Living Ideas.”

Scholars, lawyers, historians, activists, interfaith spiritual leaders and others assembled in 2016 to discuss abortion amid OSF’s world premiere of “Roe,” by Lisa Loomer. Shifting the action from a panel of experts to event participants, last year’s “Take Them Into the Dirt: An Immersion” combined live performance, virtual reality, projection techniques and sensory exploration in a theater piece based on indigenous stories. “‘Take Them Into the Dirt’ was a huge community success,” says Goodwin, adding that it’s a prime example of how “Living Ideas” allows people of all social strata and economic class to engage.

Physically and emotionally demanding, participation in “Take Them Into the Dirt” was as unexpected and, at times, disorienting as being in a “fun house,” Precious Yamaguchi, a professor at Southern Oregon University,

wrote in a blog about the production. At the end, participants found their way back to the room where they started, each standing in front of a mirror with his or her own reflection.

Reflections on race, including colonialism, xenophobia and critical race theory, says Goodwin, correlate with the 2018 season productions of “Othello” and “Manahatta,” the world-premiere drama by Mary Kathryn Nagle that illuminates the consequences of commercial exploits, including the removal of Native Americans and the attempted eradication of their culture.

“I definitely think there’s exciting possibilities to engage with the work,” says Goodwin.

“Living Ideas” will commence in August, says Goodwin, although precise dates haven’t been determined. Look for the schedule of events in early June at https://www.osfashland.org/en/engage-and-learn/living-ideas.

You can reach freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@gmail.com.

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Shakespeare | Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 19

“Million Dollar Quartet” is a show

that will take the Cabaret “Million Dollar Quartet” is a showTheatre their currentTheatre position as a that out will of take the Cabaret out of theirregional current position a bring leading venue as and leading regional venue and bring them towards more national them towards more national recognition — a venue that will, recognition — a venue that and should, become will, as much a and should, become as much a pa of your annual theater part pa of your annual theater part destination calendar the nearby destination calendar as theas nearby Oregon Shakespeare Festival.”

Oregon Shakespeare Festival.”

- JEFFREY GILLESPIE, ASHLAND DAILY TIDINGS - JEFFREY GILLESPIE, ASHLAND DAILY TIDINGS

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