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'Make sure there is a theater to come back to': Oregon Shakespeare Festival delays season, cuts staff

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced it has laid off 80% of its staff and delayed its season due to the coronavirus.

ASHLAND, Oregon — The world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland announced it has temporarily laid off 80% of its staff and delayed its season’s re-opening until September.

The news comes as many other businesses and fine arts companies suffer the impacts of state-mandated social distancing because of the Coronavirus.

Over 85-years, hundreds of thousands of people have visited The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They pack its theaters and in this day of social distancing, therein lies the problem.

“Theatre requires you sit next to somebody,” said OSF artistic Director Nataki Garrett. “Our business is based on ticket sales and without being able to assemble, we can't sell tickets.”

Just one month after opening its 2020 season, OSF stopped production and temporarily laid off 80% of its 500-person staff, following orders set by Governor Kate Brown. Garrett hoped to reopen the theater in September.

“I'm settling into kind of a consistent state of shock,” said Garrett. “There's no way that anyone could have predicted that we would be here now.”

Garrett said because of the lengthy closure, OSF faced a projected $5 million to $8 million deficit over the next eight months.

“My mandate is to make sure there is a theater to come back to.”

Garrett said one way people can help support OSF is by donating back their pre-purchased tickets for canceled shows, or by exchanging them for ticket vouchers.

“When we have to refund that money back, it comes right out of the mouths of our artists,” said Garrett. She hoped others would do the same for all performing arts companies.

“Imagine this time of quarantine without the artistic response,” said Garrett. “No Netflix, no Disney+, no reruns of anything, no acting, no music… none of that would exist without the arts!”

Throughout history, assured Garrett, theaters have bounced back after pandemics.

“Shakespeare, what he did during the plagues in his time… there's a rumor that he wrote King Lear during that,” she said.

And in King Lear, Shakespeare wrote, "The weight of this sad time we must obey." Particularly timely words.

“That’s the power of theater,” said Garrett.

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