Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Katie D.

April 18, 2010 - 7:54 PM

I've just gotten back from a fabulous two-day trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The Clark Honors College funds a trip once a year, for about twenty students to go and experience some of the finest theater in North America. I have never seen acting to compare with the Shakespeare Festival productions!

I've written about the OSF previously: my first experience in Ashland was the Honors College trip last year, which was an incredible experience. It was so incredible, in fact, that when my mom came to visit over the summer we took at trip to Ashland to see two plays. The Festival runs from late March until mid-October, with multiple trips happening simultaneously, including works by Shakespeare, classical theater, and contemporary plays from the dramatic to comedies to musicals. The Festival maintains three theaters, all of which have plays running simultaneously.

The whole atmosphere of Ashland is one of art and language and literature and drama and expression.

Aside from the joy of seeing the performances at the OSF, it was also an extreme pleasure to spend the weekend with a huge group of Honors College students. On the three-hour drive, we talked about everything from music to theses to post-graduation plans to the observed behavior of sheep along the highway. Honors College students are so great not necessarily because they're smart, but because they're articulate and involved. Everyone has an opinion, everything has something to add, even if it's just in the form of a question. While in town, we wandered into thrift stores and funky old bookstores, and generally enjoyed being in the bright sun and away from our theses. Being in the context of an artistic, expressive city with a large group of expressive, invested student peers was a fabulous weekend experience.

This year, the CHC group went to two plays: Hamlet (by Shakespeare, of course), and Ruined, a contemporary play by Lynn Nottage. Each play was vastly different, and a fabulous example of the depth and quality of the Festival.

I've seen several versions of Hamlet, and have read it several times for various classes. However, I have never seen or imagined anything to compare with the innovation and power of this production. The wonderful thing about seeing a Shakespeare play is that the grace and beauty of the script can be reinterpreted and artistically manipulated into new contexts and settings. The directors at the OSF do not manipulate the language in the slightest, but are extremely adept at changing the historical moment in which the play is set, and by utilizing costuming and setting to create a new lens to experience the play. Hamlet was performed in a strange combination of contemporary and esoteric costumes and set, complete with a castle backdrop with security cameras observing the action. This allowed for some truly exciting imaginings of the script and the characters, from a vivid teenage-angst Ophelia to King Hamlet's ghost who acted in sign language, without any spoken word.

All this made a beautiful story come to vivid and immediate life, and to remind us all that the issues discussed in Hamlet, from governance to coming of age are issues that arise in a mixture of dark humor and tragedy in the lives of us all.

However, my favorite moment of the performance was the "play within the play." This is the moment responsible for that great line "the play's the thing in which I'll catch the conscience of the king!" and serves as an iconic moment of speaking truth to power through the medium of art. It is my favorite scene in Hamlet under any circumstances, but last night I saw it in an entirely new light. The players acted in beatbox and hip hop! It was beautifully done. I loved every moment.

This afternoon we saw Ruined, which is a play about women living in a brothel in war-torn Congo. The play was written by a woman who became interested in the mass rape and murder of women in contemporary Africa, and who created this drama from many real-world stories told to her during a trip to the Congo. It was an extremely difficult play to watch, and the superb quality of the acting only made it more so. Yet it was also a beautiful testament to the pain and suffering of hundreds of thousands of women today, and a composite view of a situation which I cannot even fathom. I cried during most of the play, but I also truly appreciated it for its artistry and the actor's supreme command of their characters. While it is difficult to say that I enjoyed a play like Ruined, it is something that I feel strongly as a valuable artistic moment, and an opportunity to be called to consciousness about a terrible contemporary moment.

As a bonus for an already fabulous weekend, on Saturday night a group of the seniors on the trip joined some of the actors from Hamlet at a local bar. My friend's big sister is a professional dancer in Ashland and knows many of the cast members, and invited us for a drink with some of them. It was fabulous to have a moment to tell the actors how profoundly impacted I had been by their work, and to hear a bit about the direction and artistic decisions behind the production.

Overall, it has been a fabulous weekend, and I am so happy to have had the chance to see theater of this quality and to spend so much time with my many friends and new acquaintances in the Honors College. I'm starting the week with Shakespeare's words echoing in my mind, and the many powerful images still lingering before my eyes.