ASHLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is taking a new step into the digital world, hoping to connect with the millions of Oregonians stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
The southern Oregon theater company launched its new digital platform, O!, on Wednesday, where it expects to begin streaming previously staged performances as well as documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and educational videos.
“This brand is coming online to its full capacity after 85 years,” festival spokesman CJ Martinez said. “This is the moment in time where we’re going to be bold on that.”
O! is aimed at engaging with theater audiences from afar during a season that has been cut severely short due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The company opened its 2020 season March 6 in Ashland, three days after Oregon’s first coronavirus case was confirmed. On March 27, following Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home order, the theater canceled all shows through Sept. 8, cutting five productions completely as it laid off roughly 400 people.
“The times are, for lack of a better word, they’re scary,” artistic director Nataki Garrett said when the cutbacks were announced. “I am driven to make sure that the theater is here on the other side.”
Since then, the organization has launched a $5 million fundraising campaign, encouraging donors to form “teams” to raise money.
Martinez said that there have been no new layoffs since March and that the festival still plans to run a truncated season from Sept. 8 to Nov. 1, if possible.
In the meantime, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival decided to move up the planned launch of its new digital streaming service, initially slated for 2021, Martinez said. A more robust online presence has been one of Garrett’s priorities since taking the helm in 2019.
Almost all of the content on O! will be free, including several original shows that will take viewers behind the scenes of the festival’s productions. There will also be podcasts and audio plays of past productions, as well as virtual reality videos.
And soon, O! will feature on-demand videos of full productions, giving people a taste of the festival while it remains on hiatus.
Martinez said the organization isn’t yet announcing which shows will be offered online, when they’ll be released or the cost of streaming them, but said the platform will offer previously staged productions sometime in the coming weeks.
The effort may generate some additional money at a time when the organization could really use it, but O! is designed primarily as a way to connect and engage with audiences in a new, modern way, the theater said.
“I’m thrilled to introduce the world to O!,” Garrett said in a news release. “Bringing OSF’s full digital experience to life at a time when theatres and performance venues are shuttered across the globe.”
--Jamie Hale; jhale@oregonian.com; 503-294-4077; @HaleJamesB
This article was originally published by the Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving health issue.
