“ The Play ’ s the Thing ” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
BY SUE ELLER
rom its humble beginnings as a three-day festival founded in 1935 in Ashland , Oregon , the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival ( OSF ) has become one of the largest professional regional repertory theatre companies in the United States . It has the oldest existing full-scale Elizabethan stage in the Western Hemisphere . It features up to eight plays and musicals , including classics and new productions , on a rotating basis each season .
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus features three theatre spaces in near proximity to each other . The two indoor theaters are the Angus Bowmer Theatre , which seats 601 , and the Thomas Theatre , which seats between 270 and 360 . The largest is the Allen Elizabethan Theatre , which seats 1,190 . The Allen Elizabethan Theatre is named for a queen and the “ glorious age in which Shakespeare
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