ASHLAND, ORE.: Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has announced its 2018 season, featuring 11 productions running in repertory at its 3 performance venues.
The Angus Bowmer Theatre season will open with Shakespeare’s Othello (Feb.-Oct. 2018), directed by Rauch.
Next will be Sense and Sensibility (Feb.-Oct. 2018), adapted by Kate Hamill from Jane Austen, about the three Dashwood sisters who relocate to a cottage in Devonshire after their father’s death. Hana S. Sharif will direct.
Following will be Destiny of Desire (Feb.-July 2018), by Karen Zacarías, a comedy about two girls who were secretly switched at birth one stormy night in Mexico. José Luis Valenzuela will direct.
The season will continue with Oklahoma! (April-Oct. 2018), with music by Richard Rodgers and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the novel Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs. Rauch’s modern revision of the classic features same-sex couples in the Oklahoma territory and will include the original choreography of Agnes de Mille. Rauch will direct.
The Angus Bowmer Theatre season will close with the U.S. premiere of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s Snow in Midsummer (July-Oct. 2018), a contemporary reimagining of a 13th-century Chinese Yuan dynasty ghost story about a spirit wrongfully executed who wreaks havoc on the modern industrial village of New Harmony.
The season at the Thomas Theatre will begin with Shakespeare’s Henry V (Feb.-Oct. 2018). Daniel José Molina will star, and Rosa Joshi will direct.
Next up will be the world premiere of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta (March-Oct. 2018), about a young Native Lenape woman who reconnects with her ancestral homeland when she moves from the Delaware Nation in Anadarko, Okla., to New York City for a job at a major investment bank. Laurie Woolery will direct.
Following will be the world premiere of Idris Goodwin’s The Way the Mountain Moved (July-Oct. 2018). Commissioned by OSF’s American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, the play follows a group of African-American Mormons, Department of War surveyors, pioneered women, and a Mexican-American war veteran who all lose their way and find each other in the American West. May Adrales will direct.
The Allen Elizabethan Theatre season will launch with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (June-Oct., 2018), directed by Dámaso Rodríguez.
Following will be Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will (June-Oct. 2018), a comedy about two friends of Shakespeare who compile the First Folio of his work. Christopher Liam Moore will direct.
The season will finish with Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost (June-Oct. 2018). Amanda Dehnert will direct.
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1935, produces contemporary plays and musicals as well as Shakespeare and other classic works.
