Shakespeare 2017

SHAKESPEARE

2017

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SHAKESPEARE 2017

Playing this season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Angus Bowmer Theatre “Julius Caesar,” through Oct. 29 “Shakespeare in Love,” through Oct. 29 “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” through July 6 “UniSon,” through Oct. 28 “Off the Rails,” July 27-Oct. 28 Thomas Theatre “Henry IV, Part One,” through Oct. 28 “Hannah and the Dread Gazebo,” through Oct. 28 “Henry IV, Part Two,” July 4-Oct. 29 Allen Elizabethan Theatre “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” through Oct. 13 “The Odyssey,” through Oct. 14 “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,” through Oct. 15 ON THE COVER: Jennie Greenberry plays Belle in “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.” [OSF illustration]

4 K. T. Vogt takes on the lovable, despicable Falstaff in “Merry Wives” 6 ‘Shakespeare in Love’ runs the gamut from comedy to pathos 8 Place is an important aspect of Luis Alfaro’s works, including ‘Mojada’ 10 Daniel Molina explores Prince Hal in both parts of ‘Henry IV’ 11 OSF’s the Bricks gets a whole new look — and better accessibility 13 Randy Reinholz describes ‘Off the Rails’ as ‘a roller coaster ride’ 14 Jiehae Park gives insights into her play ‘Hannah and the Dread Gazebo’ 16 Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ was a journey in itself 17 From music to dance to comedy, OSF’s Green Show offers something for everyone 18 Changing OSF’s sets takes choreography, rhythm, blocking

Jessica Ko plays Hannah’s grandmother in “Hannah and the Dread Gazebo.” [OSF PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM] Shakespeare

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'THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR'

K. T. Vogt takes on Falstaff She plays him as a mix of Jack Black and ‘big dangerous toddler’ “The Merry Wives of Windsor”

By Tammy Asnicar for the Mail Tribune

K. T. Vogt says she’s having the time of her career playing the womanizing Sir John Falstaff in this season’s production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

Known for her comedic supporting roles in nine seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Vogt is enjoying her pivotal role in what has been called the “most purely farcical of all of Shakespeare’s plays.”

Playing off the other actors in “big scenes is a little like being in a play group,” she says.

The stage, she adds, “is really a playground with responsibility.”

And while she admits her current role is challenging, Vogt is quick to add that she is enjoying traveling “the great arc of the character.”

Falstaff is boisterous, lively, cowardly, funny and mischievous, and one of the bard’s most beloved characters. He appears in three of Shakespeare’s plays and is mentioned in two others.

Vogt calls this season at OSF “the allFalstaff season,” with Falstaff strutting his stuff in “Merry Wives” as well as “Henry IV, Part One" and “Henry IV, Part Two.” As she rehearsed for “Merry Wives,” which opened earlier this month in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre, Vogt’s focus is on Falstaff, the blowhard in over his head, rather than the roguish mentor who leads drinking buddy young Prince Hal astray in the “Henry” plays.

In “Merry Wives,” Falstaff conspires to seduce Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, wives of two prominent citizens in the village of Windsor.

The women play along with him in order to expose him as a preposterous lecher.

Then to complicate matters, the insanely jealous Mr. Ford disguises himself as Mr. Brook and hires Falstaff to procure Mistress Ford for him in order to (so he plans) reveal her suspected infidelity. But Mistress Ford and Mistress Page dupe both Falstaff and Mr. Ford. On one occasion, Falstaff 4

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Author: William Shakespeare Director: Dawn Monique Williams Runs: Through Oct. 13 Theater: Allen Elizabethan is tricked into hiding in a basket of dirty clothes, then dropped into the river. On another occasion, he must disguise himself as a fat old woman, a witch much hated by Mr. Ford, who summarily pummels her.

Both husbands finally join their merry wives in an elaborate charade, the high point of which is the humiliation of Falstaff, who has this time disguised himself as the ghostly Herne the Hunter, complete with a massive set of horns on his head.

Vogt describes her portrayal of Falstaff as

“a little bit of Jack Black,” her own father’s larger-than-life persona and “a big dangerous toddler.”

That she is a woman portraying a man who is equal parts “adorable and horrible” may appear brave to some, but it’s all in a day’s work for the actor who says she’s drawn to a role, “not necessarily the age or gender” of a character.

She purposely uses the initials K. T. as her stage name so she can audition and be cast in men’s roles. It opens doors that may not be open to “Katherine,” she says.

She contends that the right actress can perform any of the great classic roles traditionally denied to women and make it her own. In fact, veteran comedic television actress Pat Carroll’s ground-breaking portrayal of Falstaff in the 1990 production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at

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the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger was Vogt’s inspiration. Carroll’s “balding knight with whiskers” was considered a triumph.

Vogt hopes that her performance, like Carroll’s, gives audiences “a glimmer” of Falstaff as a human being.

As the winner of the 2015 Falstaff Award for her performance as Launce in OSF’s 2014 all-female production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Vogt was seemingly destined for this season’s casting.

She says she was approached by both "Merry Wives" director, Dawn Monique Williams, and OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch for the role as Falstaff, which she calls “a wonderful blessing.”

Williams, who directed Vogt in “Two Gentlemen,” calls her comic timing “spot on.”

“Hilarious and loved by audiences,” Williams adds of Vogt, saying her “comic chops” are perfect to bite into “Merry Wives” — “a broad, raucous romantic farce that is bawdy and wild.” “(Falstaff ) is horrible, but charming,” Vogt says. “It’s a weird human condition that such a character can be both repelling and attractive.”

And yet there is “karmic justice,” she adds, for the “foxy guy with white-class privilege.”

“Here he is, he’s got the world on a string, and the string breaks.”

As she developed Falstaff ’s voice, Vogt says she heard her father’s voice. A lawyer with a three-octave operatic voice range who loved to recite Shakespeare, he could “pump it out of the woods,” she says.

In addition to exploring the character, Vogt is learning 12 songs that Williams the director and Paul James Prendergast the composer and sound designer incorporated to underscore and refresh the more than 500-year-old play.

K. T. Vogt (center) plays Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Pictured with her are Erica Sullivan as Mistress Ford, left, and Vilma Silva as Mistress Page.

[OSF PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM]

She believes the music is perfectly paired with Shakespeare’s lyrical prose.

“The music fleshes out the characters, fleshes out the scenes and makes the storytelling clearer.”

In addition to her romp in “Merry Wives,” Vogt is cast as Nurse and in the ensemble of “Shakespeare in Love,” currently playing in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.

Besides “Two Gentlemen,” her notable

past OSF performances included roles in “The Yeomen of the Guard,” “Richard II,” “The Cocoanuts,” “Animal Crackers” and “The Imaginary Invalid.”

She’s also worked in television and film.

“Embodying a character” like Falstaff, Vogt says, “is fun and delightful.”

“I think the audience is going to dig it.”

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

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'SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE'

From screen to stage DeMeritt, Romero say OSF's version runs the gamut from comedy to pathos

By Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune

'Shakespeare in Love'

The two lead actors in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's stage version of the hit movie "Shakespeare in Love" took different approaches to prepare for their roles.

Both William DeMeritt and Jamie Ann Romero had seen the Oscar-winning 1998 film years ago as students. DeMeritt, who plays Shakespeare, decided to watch the film again. But Romero, who portrays Viola de Lesseps, shied away from another viewing.

"Since being cast, I haven't watched it at all. I didn't want to be creating an homage," she says.

Romero says she doesn't feel intimidated by the fact that many people attending the OSF play will have seen the movie, which tells the story of a fictionalized Shakespeare overcoming writer's block and penning "Romeo and Juliet" after falling in love with de Lesseps, an upper-class woman who defies social mores and sneaks onstage disguised as a male actor.

"That's something you run into with Shakespeare in general," she says. "A lot of people have seen 'Romeo and Juliet' and his other plays. I try to push that to the back of my mind and create something wholly new for the audience."

The movie version of "Shakespeare in Love" was written by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman after Norman's son mused aloud, "I wonder how Shakespeare wrote 'Romeo and Juliet?' " After the movie became a blockbuster, Stoppard was tasked with creating a stage version but backed out of the project.

English playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall took over the adaption, keeping about 90 percent of the film script but making some changes, including adding more lines from Shakespeare's plays. The play premiered in London in 2014 and was staged again in Canada in 2016.

Both the movie and the play mix humor with tragedy and heartbreak.

In the hands of director Christopher Liam Moore, the play has taken an even more comedic turn in OSF's Angus Bowmer Theatre.

"There are not a lot of gut-busting moments in the film," DeMeritt says. "In the production we have, the director and ensemble have brought out more of the big

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Screenplay: Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard Stage adaptation: Lee Hall Director: Christopher Liam Moore Runs: Through Oct. 29 Theater: Angus Bowmer

laughs."

OSF veteran actors Brent Hinkley and K. T. Vogt — perennial crowd favorites adept at both physical and verbal comedy — entertain the audience as, respectively, an over-extended, cash-strapped theater owner who gets his feet roasted over coals by henchmen, and a harried, protective nurse to de Lesseps.

Ashland High School senior Preston Mead earns laughter and applause as a creepy young John Webster — who wants every play to be staged as a Stephen Kingworthy gore fest. (Portrayed as a youth in "Shakespeare in Love," the real Webster wrote macabre, disturbing plays as an adult.)

Candy Cane, a spaniel who works as a therapy dog when not on stage, and El, a fluffy pooch adopted from an animal shelter, take turns stealing scenes as they trade off in a canine role for each performance.

"When the dogs are at work, they are working," Romero says. "There are specific times when we're allowed to pet them and when we're not. Sometimes when they come up to you and they're wagging their tails and looking up at you with their big eyes and you can't pet them, it breaks your heart."

She says "Shakespeare in Love" runs the gamut from comedy to pathos — a view shared by DeMeritt.

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"One of my grad-school teachers said, 'Actors are athletes of the heart,' " DeMeritt says. "It's kind of hokey, but this play bears that out. It has every human emotion, and I go through them on a nightly basis. It's wonderful and funny and incredibly challenging — and made easier by the people I'm with on stage."

Romero concurs, saying, "It is exhausting. I come down from the show spent emotionally and physically."

DeMeritt adds, "I either fall asleep instantly, or I'm awake until four in the morning."

Romero notes she goes through 17 costume changes during the play as she switches from a female to a male persona. The character de Lesseps appears in Elizabethan dresses as a woman, but switches into men's clothing so she can appear on stage in an era when women were barred from the acting profession, which was considered morally dubious at the time.

"What's so wonderful about this play and this character is I see a lot of myself in the character," Romero says.

"She has a passion for Shakespeare — not just the person, but the words.

That passion drives her to be on stage even though it's dangerous."

Adding to the danger, de Lesseps is betrothed to Lord Wessex, a jealous, domineering nobleman who is short on cash but owns plantations in the American Colonies. He wants to marry de Lesseps to access her father's wealth.

For his part, DeMeritt says he feels honored to portray Shakespeare.

"I haven't had a lot of opportunity to be the titular character in a show," he says. "It's great and terrifying and a big responsibility."

Both DeMeritt and Romero say the stage version of "Shakespeare in Love" is an easily accessible play with enough inside theater jokes and references to keep even the most seasoned OSF fan entertained.

"This play has a lot for everyone — from the Shakespeare lover to someone who doesn't know Shakespeare at all," Romero says.

— Staff reporter Vickie Aldous can be reached at 541-776-4486 or valdous@ mailtribune.com.

Disguised as a male actor, Viola (Jamie Ann Romero) sneaks a moment of tenderness with Will (William DeMeritt) in “Shakespeare in Love.” [OSF PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM]

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'MOJADA, MEDEA IN LOS ANGELES'

Using theater to create change

Medea (Sabina Zuniga Varela) looks at the night sky with her son Acan (Jahnangel Jimenez) in “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” written by Luis Alfaro and running through July 6 in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. [OSF PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM]

Playwright Luis Alfaro: ‘I obsess about the questions of the world’ ‘Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles’

By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune

Why did Luis Alfaro set “Mojada” in Los Angeles? If you’ve read even the briefest biography, you know the answer: That’s where Alfaro grew up. How he came to place “Mojada” in Los Angeles, though, is not so simple, and therein lies the tale.

Place is an important aspect of Luis Alfaro’s works and it’s been an important part of his life as well. He grew up in Pico/Union, a predominantly Latino community in downtown Los Angeles that Alfaro says was very violent, very poor. At 16, he left home and went as far as Los Angeles’ skid row, the arts district where he studied with performance 8

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Playwright: Luis Alfaro Director: Juliette Carrillo Runs: Through July 6 Theater: Angus Bowmer artist Scott Kelman and helped to found Dark Horses, a performance collective. The barrios, the gay neighborhoods, the drug culture, the arts collectives, these were Alfaro’s neighborhoods, their people became his tribe.

Alfaro honed his craft in L.A. and created a life of performance, poetry and theater. “I was studying with all these crazy performance art troupes, learning the craft, doing crazy shows,” Alfaro texted recently. Alfaro’s body of work grew and so did his relationships with theaters and performers throughout the

country.

Alfaro traveled the country, not as a tourist, but as a resident, an activist, a listener.

“I spent about 10 years living in cities that were generally having some sort of a problem,” he says. “Tucson, Hartford, Houston — a lot of different

cities.” He would live there for months at a time and write a play about that place. As a young artist and person of color, he says he couldn’t get into the big theaters and it was hard to reach the public, but Alfaro was making an impact, changing lives through theater wherever

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he worked.

Then, in 1997, came a call from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Luis Alfaro was awarded a “genius” grant. MacArthur Foundation nominations are anonymous, given to those who show exceptional creativity in their field, and there are no strings attached or reporting requirements. The MacArthur grant gave Alfaro financial freedom, credibility to gain introductions, and the authority to effect change. “All of a sudden the big theaters and anything I wanted to research, I could call somebody and say I was a MacArthur Fellow and I’m doing a piece about whatever,” Alfaro recalls. “All of a sudden I got openings.

“What I really wanted was access,” says Alfaro. “If you don’t have access early in your career to the big organizations, mentorship is a huge part of our world.”

The MacArthur opened a lot of doors for Alfaro and gave him introductions to the CEOs of big companies, mayors of small and big towns, university professors and scholars. Alfaro used his award not for himself, but to develop communities of artists, acting as maestro, teacher for emerging Chicanos with talent. Alfaro was building community, collectives and collaborations all over the country, showcasing the work of others as his craft matured and opportunities broadened.

“Electricidad,” Alfaro’s play

Luis Alfaro is OSF’s Mellon Playwright in Residence. [OSF PHOTO]

about Chicano gangs, is based on the Greek myth of Electra. It premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2003. While this first performance was set in L.A., Alfaro re-wrote subsequent performances for the cities where it was performed.

“I would research the city,” he says, “because while the questions were the same, the environment tells you how to tell the story.” Reaching out to the audience, using theater to open a conversation, create change, to ask questions is everything to this playwright.

“I obsess about the questions of the world,” Alfaro says.

Talking with Alfaro about place brings excitement to his voice, and by now he’s speaking louder and faster as he tells his stories. “I love it when I’m able to go to a city, and they say, ‘Don’t just come for the first week of rehearsal, come for

six months, learn the terrain, find out what the real issues are and how your play fits into that,’” he says. “When they say, ‘Come, really explore the city.

Be honest and truthful about what the issues are.’ That’s exciting because you can really get underneath a play. That’s a gift.”

“Mojada, Medea in Los Angeles” didn’t start life in L.A. It was born in 2012 in San Francisco as “Bruja: Medea in the Mission.” Alfaro wanted to explore the idea of a vengeful witch, an undocumented Latina woman who is betrayed and deceived.

Based on Euripides’ tragedy, the third of Alfaro’s Greek myths was re-framed within the context of ancient Michoacán cultures and a very contemporary American barrio setting.

“Bruja” was performed March 2013 in Tucson, again placed in San Francisco but with a vaguely southwestern set.

Three months later, in July 2013, “Bruja,” witch, became “Mojada,” wetback, premiering at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Some objected to the word “mojada,” saying it was a derogatory word, disrespectful to the Latino community. Alfaro confronted the critics, saying, “We (Latinos) are members of the world community; we have to show our good and our challenges, sharing the things that are the most vulnerable to us.”

Mojada is a strong word, a word that evokes powerful emotions, and sometimes, these are what make the most important, the most telling stories.

It was Chicago artist Chay Yew who asked Alfaro to go out into the Latino neighborhoods and talk to people, to rethink the play. “I met the dreamers, the undocumented who help each other on the street,” Alfaro says. “That really started to shift how I thought about the play.” This “Mojada” is set in Pilson, a community southwest of Chicago where thousands of Hispanics are being displaced as the neighborhood is gentrified. In “Mojada,” Medea is not vengeful, but victim as are all whom she touches. Medea is a curandera, a healer whose magic fails in this place where she is other, foreign.

Luis’ father, Jaime Alfaro, died in October that year. Before Jaime died, Luis spent nearly two years with his dad who was hospitalized with a stroke. The

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Daniel Jose Molina, left, and Jeffrey King play Prince Hal and King Henry, respectively, in both parts of “Henry IV” this season at OSF. [OSF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION]

'HENRY IV' PARTS ONE AND TWO

What it takes to be

KING Daniel Jose Molina explores the complexity of Prince Hal all the way to 'Henry V'

By Angela Decker for the Mail Tribune

Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor Daniel Jose Molina is blazing up the stage as Prince Hal in both parts One and Two of "Henry IV" this season.

“It is really exciting. I think I know who Prince Hal is right now, but I also am looking

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forward to what I’ll discover about him in Part II,” says Molina, who is in his third season at OSF. Part One opened in February in the Thomas Theatre; Part Two opens in July in the same venue.

Molina compares "Henry IV, Part One" to the original “Star Wars” film, a coming-of-age story packed with personal

struggles, wild characters and a fierce battle that shapes a young man’s future.

“It’s a dimension of my nerdiness,” says Molina. “I can connect almost anything to ‘Star Wars.’ ” Though Luke Skywalker may not be the first character who SEE MOLINA, 12

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COURTYARD RENOVATION

A NEW LOOK FOR THE BRICKS Renovation provides easier access, better views of the Green Show

The Bricks at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival courtyard received a makeover, under construction in this May 2017 photo, that included expanded seating, new lawn area and better access for those with disabilities. [MAIL TRIBUNE / DENISE BARATTA]

By Sarah Lemon for the Mail Tribune

More greenery sets the stage for Green Shows on the Bricks, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s newly renovated courtyard.

“The Green Show actually does still have a green,” said OSF General Manager Ted DeLong.

About 100 square feet of additional grass, numerous shrubs, trees and other landscaping soften the predominantly hard surfaces of the Bricks. A massive overhaul of the Pioneer Street site began late last fall to increase Green Show seating capacity by five times and to improve access to the festival campus for wheelchair users and other playgoers with mobility challenges.

The Bricks remodel is the second phase of OSF’s $5.1 million Access for All project, which is on budget, said DeLong.

And despite the region’s above-average rain and snowfall last winter, work on the Bricks stayed on schedule, said

DeLong.

“This was like the wettest, snowiest winter,” he said, explaining that Adroit Construction contractors spent no small amount of time erecting awnings to cover newly poured concrete.

The pavers’ color is different than the plaza’s old terra cottatoned bricks, but the change isn’t radically different, said DeLong.

The festival solicited and considered a variety of community opinions on the project, dating back three years, he added.

“One of the things we heard loud and clear … is it does need to be brick,” said DeLong. “We certainly hope it will resonate with people.”

The new design of the Bricks,

by Walker Macy Landscape Architecture in association with Hacker Architects, both of Portland, minimizes slopes and cross-slopes for easier navigation between the courtyard and sidewalk bordering Pioneer Street. Staircases fill some areas that wouldn’t accommodate ramps, said DeLong. Apart from

foot traffic, vehicles moving theater backdrops and set pieces can traverse the Bricks, he said.

“This whole project upgraded the way we bring scenery and other materials in and out of the theaters.”

Delineating and shading the Green Show stage, a new pergola echoes the aesthetic of OSF’s Thomas Theatre across Pioneer Street. Fashioned from steel and cedar, the structure combines the Thomas’ industrial and organic elements and “ties the campus together,” said DeLong.

“We like to think of it as Ashland’s living room.”

Newly planted trees, specifically vine maples, add more vertical focal points, said DeLong. Lamp poles are positioned so Green Show audiences won’t be blinded if observing from a high vantage, a flaw in their former configuration, he said. Lighting has been more evenly dispersed across the entire site, he added.

More signs supplementing festival information are

another new feature, he added.

Joining the large board that displays current production titles — albeit a new version — are placards announcing other festival activities, said DeLong.

The free, pre-play Green Shows long have drawn passersby to linger in front of the theaters as dancers and musicians, many in period costumes, performed. Starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, OSF Artistic Director Libby Appel introduced more contemporary genres, including modern-dance company Dance Kaleidoscope, to the Green Show. That effort continues under Associate Producer Claudia Alick, who welcomes the gamut of live music, dance and other artistic and cultural spectacles to OSF. See the Green Show’s season schedule at www.osfashland. org/greenshow. Events begin at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

— Reach Gold Hill freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@gmail.com.

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‘Henry IV’

MOLINA From Page 10

comes to mind when watching Molina’s charming, party-boy Hal, the comparison works.

Both parts of “Henry IV” are epic, packed with battles, fascinating characters, witty wordplay and, thanks to Falstaff, loads of comedy.

Prince Hal is a complicated figure who grows into a king despite his resistance. Molina says he’s most intrigued by Hal’s complexity and the responsibility he takes on at such a young age.

“At first, Hal seems terrified of the crown," says Molina. “I love the idea of what happens to make someone become a king. That’s maybe my favorite aspect of playing him.”

The concept that a king was a divine being is very present in the play, he points out.

“What it takes to be a leader is a big theme, but we need to remember that rulers are still human,” says Molina. “The reward I get is finding that feeling, finding what makes Hal so human.”

One challenge of playing Hal in both parts this season is knowing his future, says Molina.

“In playing Hal, I don’t want to lean too much on the idea that he knows he’ll eventually be Henry V. He says something to that effect in the beginning, that he is just pretending to be carefree. A lot of times that’s played literally, like he knows what he’s doing,” Molina says. “But that’s boring.

And it makes him a little bit of a sociopath. Really, he’s lying to all these people and play-acting?”

The play itself, says Molina of "Henry IV, Part One," is largely the vision of the director, Lileana Blain-Cruz.

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Part One Playwright: William Shakespeare Director: Lileana Blain-Cruz Runs: Through Oct. 28 Theater: Thomas Part Two Director: Carl Cofield Runs: July 4-Oct. 29 Theater: Thomas mean nothing if the production wasn’t solid. What Lileana does is so bold and solid,” he says.

“History plays can be daunting, but to see the risks we take, and the way we make it all so exciting, is awesome.”

Part Two of "Henry IV" still offers a great deal of tension, Molina says. Although Prince Hal reconciles with his father in Part One, everything is not perfect. “It’s still hard for him to talk to his father. He’s still a kid with a lot weighing on him.”

Molina says both parts of “Henry IV” are appealing on many levels. He thinks OSF audiences will love them.

“Henry IV is one of the few Shakespeare plays that is general, mass-appeal perfect. It’s a summer blockbuster,” he says.

Molina says that if one were to look at the two parts of "Henry IV" as musical pieces, the first would be in a major key. Part Two is more in a minor key.

“It’s a slow burn, very dense but still a lot of action and a lot of discoveries. It’s more like ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ ” he says.

Molina’s time as Hal won’t be over this season. He’ll also play the lead in "Henry V" next season. “'Henry V' is my favorite play.

To get to be Prince Hal all the way to Henry is like a Shakespearean pipe dream. I try not to think about it too much, though. I mean, Prince Hal doesn’t know any of this yet,” says Molina. “I’ll just take it one play at a time and enjoy the ride.”

— Reach Ashland freelance writer Angela Decker at decker4@gmail.com.

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‘OFF THE RAILS’

‘Blazing Saddles’ meets Shakespeare Native American playwright Randy Reinholz adapts ‘Measure for Measure’ in Wild West

By Tammy Asnicar ‘Off the Rails’ for the Mail Tribune William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” goes “Off the Rails” in the world premiere of Randy Reinholz’s adaption of the bard’s last comedy.

Spotlighting “one of the most difficult chapters” in American history, Reinholz has chosen to weave Shakespeare’s contrasting themes of justice and mercy and corruption and purity into a multi-hued yarn about the Wild West and Native American boarding schools.

Of Choctaw ancestry, Reinholz developed “Off the Rails” to focus on the Native American experience on the western frontier through “a native lens.”

The play begins previews July 27 and opens July 30 in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.

“Off the Rails” is set against the backdrop of the U.S. government’s 50-year social experiment with Native American boarding schools in the 19th century.

The play opens with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show coming to town to hold auditions and the regulars at the Stewed Prunes Saloon clamoring for a shot at stardom. The revelry is interrupted when Momaday, a Pawnee teenager, is sentenced to

Playwright: Randy Reinholz Director: Bill Rauch Runs: July 27-Oct. 28 Theater: Angus Bowmer

hang for his forbidden love affair with Caitlin, an IrishAmerican girl.

Captain Angelo, the superintendent of the boarding school, is the presiding officer of Genoa, Nebraska — a black-and-white law and order town. A rigid believer in the rule of law, it is Angelo who has condemned Momaday.

The two young lovers, who are now expecting a child, were married in a traditional Pawnee ceremony, but the marriage is not considered legitimate by the white government. Momaday’s sister, Isabel, a young woman hoping to become a teacher, is sent to plead for her brother’s life, and Angelo falls completely in lust with her. He offers to spare Momaday if Isabel will sleep with him.

While the synopsis may not read like a comedy, Reinholz describes the play as “‘Blazing Saddles’ meets Shakespeare.”

Reinholz used about 30 percent of Shakespeare’s original text and interspersed it with contemporary dialogue or “Fakespeare,” as he calls it.

Of Choctaw ancestry, Randy Reinholz developed “Off the Rails” to focus on the Native American experience on the western frontier through “a native lens.” [OSF PHOTO] He injected “healthy doses of humor and music” not to ease the painful legacy of the boarding schools, but make the tragedy easier to swallow. He added he didn’t want to “hit the audience head-on” with the brutality.

“Most Americans are unaware of this — one of the most difficult chapters in American history.”

The curriculum and disciplinary methods were designed to “kill the Indian to save the man,” he explains. “It was a call for

cultural genocide.”

“At the boarding schools, and many places, language, culture, dance, all those things were outlawed.”

“Like ‘Blazing Saddles’ targeted race relations in the 1970s, we’re using humor here rather than political correctness … entertaining without lecturing.

“There are songs rather than monologues.”

Reinholz has always liked

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'HANNAH AND THE DREAD GAZEBO'

Q&A with Jiehae Park Playwright mines her immigrant experience for play exploring separation, reunification

Dang (Sean Jones, right) seeks to understand his repeated encounters with a mysterious stranger (Jessica Ko) at the train station in “Hannah and the Dread Gazebo,” by Jiehae Park. [OSF PHOTO BY JENNY GRAHAM]

North and South Korea.

Hannah flies to South Korea, where she is reunited with her South Playwright Jiehae Park drew Korean parents and her thoroughly from her own family's experience Americanized brother, who also has and global politics to rejoined the family during map a surreal journey the crisis. While Hannah from New York City and her brother navigate to South Korea in unfamiliar territory, their "Hannah and the father struggles with the Dread Gazebo." government bureaucracy In the play, Hannah to try and retrieve the is a young Koreangrandmother's body from American woman the no-man's land that is about to take her final the DMZ. exams to become a Park was born in South pediatric neurologist Korea but immigrated JIEHAE PARK when she learns her to America at age 3 grandmother may have commitwith her family. Her parents and ted suicide by leaping from the brother later returned to their home top of her retirement home into country while Park remained in the demilitarized zone separating America.

By Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune

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An actor in addition to being a playwright, she blends English and Korean, humor and tragedy and themes of reunification and separation in "Hannah and the Dread Gazebo."

In an interview, she offered insights into the play and her writing process.

Q. How did you handle the mix of Korean and English in the play? Do you yourself speak Korean, or did you have to get help for those parts of the play?

I’m really interested in the experience of trying to understand a language that we’re not fluent in — how much can we understand, and what are our tactics for communicating non-verbally?

I was born in Korea but left when

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I was quite young, so I have the common immigrant experience of understanding more than I can speak. My brother, however, is truly fluent, since he grew up partly in Korea. He did almost all of the translations, since I wanted them to be colloquially more accurate than I have the ability to do. It’s fascinating to me how he and I experience being there in different ways, because of that difference in ability.

For the play, I thought it would be more interesting to make both siblings even less familiar with the language than I am (and closer to most of the audience likely to see it), which allowed us to use fun and theatrical ways to communicate non-verbally.

Most of the audience won’t understand the words, but they’ll understand pieces, and be briefly forced into the position of being the “outsider” through language — something an English-speaking American audience probably doesn’t experience as much of in this country. There's both comedy and tragedy to be mined from that situation.

Q. The characters in the play have a mix of reactions when they visit South Korea. Do you remember anything about the country from when you lived there?

I certainly have memories — food, family, sounds. But with memories that early it’s hard to say what is “real” and what is reconstructed. They say every time we remember something, we’re actually neurologically reshaping it by that act of reconstruction.

Are we remembering what happened, or what we believe happened based on stories we’ve been told, pictures we’ve seen, or pure imagination?

Q. Please discuss the DMZ and the various meanings and metaphors it represents to you. The play describes how the DMZ is a de facto animal sanctuary, but also a dangerous, landmine-riddled area.

It’s an irony that this place that has so many dangerous associations has also — because it's closed off to people — become this stretch of wilderness with a biodiversity that “civilized development” often wipes out. But, of course, it’s fraught with literal danger also — soldiers patrolling the border, people sometimes sneaking across, landmines …

It's also a literal border between two countries that were once one and between two peoples who, spiritually, many still think of as one. They are painfully divided.

The longer the two countries move along

‘Hannah and the Dread Gazebo’ Playwright: Jiehae Park Director: Chay Yew Runs: Through Oct. 28 Theater: Thomas their respective tracks, the harder it becomes to image how reunification would ever proceed. The Berlin Wall lasted around 30 years, but the DMZ has already existed for over twice that.

Q. How did you become involved in playwriting and acting?

I always did theater in school, but I didn’t allow myself to think it was a possible career until after I graduated. I went to math/science/computer programs in middle and high school. But my senior year of college, I remember going to a recruiting meeting for some big management consulting company and just feeling my heart sink through the floor, knowing how unhappy I’d be in that kind of job, and that deep down, what I really wanted to do was make theater. So when I graduated, I took a bunch of random part-time jobs while trying to be a part of whatever theater I could — like many of those who start out as an actor. I eventually went to grad school

for acting, and it was only after I had been out for a couple of years that I started writing seriously.

Q. How has the recognition your play has received, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival stage production, influenced your career? How does being an actor influence you as a playwright, and vice versa?

It’s amazing to me that this production at OSF will run for nearly seven months.

That’s almost unheard of in the nonprofit world, and it feels like a tremendous honor, knowing so many people will experience the play. I also feel really lucky to have traveled with this play to various festivals, workshops and readings, and to have been introduced to various communities of artists and audiences through it.

I don’t act a ton anymore — maybe once or twice a year, but usually when I do one of the biggest things I leave with is a renewed respect for actors. Acting is a brave, hard life, and it makes me appreciate the actors in my own plays very much for the courage they bring to the room and their lives in choosing that path.

Reach reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-7764486 or by email at valdous@mailtribune. com.

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‘THE ODYSSEY’

ZIMMERMAN’S JOURNEY Director unconsciously incorporated images from childhood in adapting Homer’s epic

By Sarah Lemon for the Mail Tribune

One woman’s personal and professional journey has transformed “The Odyssey” from an ancient Greek tale to a stage adaptation that made its outdoor-venue debut at this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

“It’s been a very long journey with it,” says Director Mary Zimmerman, who adapted Homer’s epic 25 years ago for the theater.

Traveling with Zimmerman to Ashland’s OSF are cast and artists from her previous productions of “The Odyssey.”

Christopher Donahue reprises his longtime role as Odysseus for OSF. The play’s set, lighting and costume designers all have realized Zimmerman’s vision at other theaters, including Chicago’s Lookingglass and Goodman theaters, Princeton’s McCarter Theater and Seattle Repertory Theatre, before coming to Ashland.

“I suggested it specifically for the (Allen) Elizabethan,” says Zimmerman. “This has never been done outdoors before.”

In transferring her script outdoors, Zimmerman sacrificed sets refined over the decades in other performance spaces. Abandoning lighting cues for the play’s first hour, Zimmerman capitalizes on the “monumental” descent of darkness.

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Mary Zimmerman adapted “The Odyssey.” The OSF production stars Daniel T. Parker as Cyclops. Also pictured is Buzz Fraser. [OSF ILLUSTRATION] them, OSF audiences at first sense the expansive vista before Odysseus, whose tale unfolds as dusk gathers and night falls, compelling the audience’s attention closer to the stage, as one would lean into a campfire, explains Zimmerman in a festival interview.

“It’s lost a lot of our manmade scenery, but it’s gained the entire natural world,” she says.

“I also try to take in images that seize the imagination.”

Some of those images came to Zimmerman in childhood, when she first encountered “The Odyssey” and, so enamored of

the story, rendered characters and their adventures in a series of drawings. As a graduate student adapting the play from Robert Fitzgerald’s English translation, Zimmerman unconsciously highlighted aspects from drawings she made more than a decade earlier.

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‘The Odyssey’ Author: Homer Adapted by: Mary Zimmerman Director: Mary Zimmerman Runs: Through Oct. 14 Theater: Allen Elizabethan Among Zimmerman’s favorite subjects — as seen in her adaptation — are the goddess Calypso, the hospitable Phaeacians and Odysseus’ son Telemachus, depicted with a tree branch over his head. She says she wasn’t aware of the continuity between her artistic and theatrical endeavors until she unearthed the drawings years later.

“It absolutely is having been with this text since childhood … and then coming back to it after so long a period of time,” says Zimmerman. “And I think it just deepens as we go along with it.”

As Zimmerman pared the text to accommodate performance in a single evening, she employed additional “poetic” measures to enact episodes — naval battles and encounters with sea monsters — much too large in scope

MOJADA From Page 9

monologue, “St. Jude,” premiered in 2013 and in it, Luis thunders from a pulpit, script open in front of him. “St. Jude” is Luis’ grief, his loss, his anger and in it, Luis tells the story of his life and his father’s with pin pricks of blood marking memories on a map of California. Luis Alfaro was home, restoring strength and creativity among his first tribe, with his family.

Less than two years later, in September 2015, “Mojada, Medea in Los Angeles” premiered at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. Medea had come home.

Walk onto the set of “Mojada, Medea in Los Angeles” in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, and you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. You are in this strange, magical place at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where anything is possible. Here today, at “Mojada, Medea in Los Angeles,” the traffic roars, the planes are way too low coming into LAX, and the beaches of Santa Monica are so close for some, and a world away for others. Today, in “Mojada, Medea in

Los Angeles,” you are in Boyle Heights, a dense Latino barrio where people are proud, ambitious, poor, victimized, heroic, vicious and noble. Here, today Medea is mojada and will sacrifice all she loves for what she holds true.

Will Alfaro someday set “Mojada” in another place? Move it from Los Angeles?

It’s possible, and perhaps even probable.

“I think of a play as a living, breathing organism,” Alfaro says, “and when I die, the play can be set in stone.”

“Mojada, Medea in Los Angeles” runs in the Angus Bowmer Theatre through July 6. The show is approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes with no intermission. Adult themes and some violence make this show inappropriate for younger audiences. For more information, including an interview with OSF Resident Playwright Alfaro and Director Juliette Carrillo and a podcast by Sabina Zuniga Varela, visit the OSF website at www.OSFAshland.com.

— Maureen Flanagan Battistella is a freelance writer living in Ashland, Oregon. She can be reached at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.

for the stage. The Allen’s limitation on technical feats also requires the audience to use its imagination, says Zimmerman, constructing a vessel from poles and sheets, for example.

“It’s a pretty bare stage,” she says. “It isn’t realism.”

Thematically, “The Odyssey” is just as relevant today, says Zimmerman, as it was in 800 B.C. A family that’s been fractured struggles against enormous odds to reunite.

“The suspense that’s built into the story — it still works,” she says.

And Homer’s “astuteness of human behavior,” she explains, juxtaposed with “fantastical and epic elements” conjure “wide, sweeping ideas about what ‘home’ is.”

“It’s a symbolic journey of life through to death,” says Zimmerman. “Our death is a kind of return to home.”

“The Odyssey” runs through Oct. 4 at OSF. — Reach Gold Hill freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@gmail.com.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

A well-oiled machine OSF crews must use choreography, blocking, rhythm in set changes

By Ryan Pfeil Mail Tribune

The set for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “UniSon” is, like so many other productions, an elaborate affair.

Interlocking pieces fit together to create a purple stage floor in the festival’s Bowmer Theatre, overshadowed by a structure that looks as though it’s made of gray stone, 10 flat screen televisions hanging from it at paced intervals like large framed pictures of ink.

The play is built around unpublished poetry of playwright August Wilson, a story about a poet who comes back from the dead and guides an apprentice through some of the writings.

During the play, the stanzas of some of Wilson’s poems are projected on the now-dark TVs. For now, though, this elaborate set has to go. A new play, “Shakespeare in Love,” will be shown on the same stage, and a new elaborate set will need to take the place of the purple floor, gray tower and its ornamental screens.

The stage crew of a dozen or so people that begins to drift into the theater in late May to remove this set isn’t just taking pieces off stage and piling them carelessly in a storeroom. The disassembly operation that begins has choreography, blocking, rhythm. It works that way because of how OSF sets are built in the first place. “(Scene shop workers) plan these sets, give them to us and find ways that we can take them apart,” says Jason Jolly, OSF’s associate stage operations manager. “We’ll go through, we’ll figure out ways to stack, to store these sets, because we don’t have a lot of room.”

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figure out ways to stack and store sets for 11 plays in three theaters, needing to balance efficiency and delicacy, multiple times a day six days a week. It’s a system that includes understudies for the stage crew. Just in case.

“There are three theaters, so there could be a changeover in the Thomas across the street, changeover here and then there’s a changeover outdoors in the Elizabethan into the next night’s show,” says OSF spokesman Eddie Wallace. “So we’ve got a pretty formidable crew when we’re operating at full steam at the height of the season.”

During the “UniSon” set removal, the stage crew breaks into small groups, focusing on sections of the set. There’s the purple floor that needs to come up section by section like tiles from a giant’s house. There are the pieces of the TV-laden structure that roll away on wheels.

There are also some of the seat sections that need to come up.

Then there’s the shuffle of moving other stored groups of set pieces into new positions so ones needed next can be more easily accessed.

“That’s the biggest trick: storing these sets and then finding a way to shuffle them around where you can get the next one in without having a lot of room,” Jolly says. “We’re always thinking one play ahead.”

At one point, a fake dead pig prop descends from the ceiling on a rope.

“We make pigs fly,” Jolly says.

There’s storage space above and storage below this nowevolving stage, and the bulk of sets and props there are constantly rearranged. It’s a game of Tetris that gets paused at regular intervals but never resolves.

Eventually, the “UniSon” set is gone. Pieces of the “Shakespeare

A tower from the set of “Shakespeare in Love” is wheeled from a back room behind the stage of the Bowmer Theatre. [MAIL TRIBUNE / DENISE BARATTA]

in Love” set begin to roll in to replace it: wooden towers that dwarf the set that was there before it, new lighting layouts, new stage floor. Shouts bark in the theater at a consistent clip, with stage crew members communicating their actions in real time. Just so everyone’s on the same page.

In a few hours, this will all happen again. The shuffle must go on.

“It’s a small dance,” Jolly says.

“Every one of those pieces of scenery went to a specific spot facing a specific way. So when we come out of ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ it will look exactly like this.”

Reach reporter Ryan Pfeil at 541776-4468 or rpfeil@mailtribune. com. Follow him at www.twitter. com/ryanpfeil.

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OFF THE RAILS From Page 13

“Measure for Measure.” Exploring the themes of Christian justice and civil justice, and discovering whether the characters will receive understanding and leniency or compassion and forgiveness instead of the harsh punishment they could have received by law, intrigued him as a playwright.

In Shakespeare’s play, mercy and virtue eventually win. The outcome, however, in “Off the Rails” isn’t certain until the final scenes.

There is “back-and-forth tension,” Reinholz says.

“In ‘Measure for Measure’ like most of Shakespeare’s plays, you are pretty certain it will all work out. In ‘Off the Rails,’ it’s hard to imagine that Momaday will not hang.”

Whenever events begin to turn tragic, “we rev the comedy back up,” says the playwright.

“And, we heal with song.”

“It’s a roller coaster ride,” adding that the fun includes tomahawk throwing contests and rope tricks.

In addition to the tonguein-cheek of the Buffalo Bill escapades, the mood is lightened with traditional Pawnee chants and Gaelic melodies, saloon songs, and the blues.

Off the Rails” is OSF’s first play by a Native American writer.

A former television and film actor, Reinholz is a professor of theater, film and television at San Diego State University.

He is the producing artistic director and co-founder of Native Voices theater company at the Autry Museum of the American West — the only Equity theater dedicated to Native American playwrights. He and his wife, retired actress and Native Voices co-founder Jean Bruce Scott, have supervised the production of original Native American plays since 1999.

Primarily a theatrical director, Reinholz wrote “Off the Rails” in 2015 with an assist from his wife, who is a dramaturge. The play had a “storefront” run at the Autry in Los Angeles and was “wonderfully received,” he says.

Over the past 18 months, the work has become “more developed” or full-bodied with the addition of more characters, elements and two to three new songs, he says.

“Off the Rails” has a cast that includes actors who are fullblooded Native American and of mixed European and Native American descent, as well as African-Americans, Chinese and Anglos.

“It’s what the West might have looked like,” Reinholz says.

“We tend to romanticize it and think of it as a rugged Anglo view, but there were Buffalo Soldiers out there, you had the immigrants and the indentured servants that were working on building railroads, you had former slaves. You had real

diversity and then you had the indigenous folks.”

Both Reinholz and Scott are determined to dim “the unflattering light” in which most Native Americans are portrayed and promote the versatility of Native Americans, especially on stage.

“Native Americans have often been called invisible in American theater,” Reinholz says. And, native voices are seldom heard.

Reinholz says he is “incredibly grateful” for the opportunity to bring the play and a Native American voice to an arena such as OSF. He also credits the commitment of Artistic Director Bill Rauch and Alison Carey, the director of the American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, to enrich “the fabric of American theater.”

“The brain power and the heart brought to this production are phenomenal,” he says.

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

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Thank you Sneak Preview Readers for honoring us as the ‘Best of Ashland’ in the following categories: Best Play (Off-Bardway): Chicago Best Female Performance (Off-Bardway): Deanna Ott in Chicago Best Director (Local Theater): Valerie Rachelle

As well as being mentioned among the best in the following categories: Best Pastries/Desserts Best Live Concert in Ashland: The Rogue Suspects’ One Night Only Show Best Play (Off-Bardway): 9 to 5, Ring of Fire & Bat Boy Best Female Performance (Off-Bardway): Alyssa Birrer in 9 to 5 and Natasha Harris in Pine Mountain Lodge Best Male Performance (Off-Bardway): Galloway Stevens in Chicago & 9 to 5, John Leistner in Ring of Fire, and John Stadelman in Pine Mountain Lodge Best Director (Local Theater): Rick Robinson

And if you liked what we did in 2016, you won’t want to miss a single show in our 2017 season!

February 9– April 9

April 20 – June 25

July 6 – September 3

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September 14 – November 5

November 16 – December 31

541.488.2902 First Street and Hargadine in Ashland, OR

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