Ashland, Ore — Friday night the list of plays for the next season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival were announced and it includes some firsts for the Festival.
As is tradition, next year’s line-up of plays will include four of Shakespeare’s own works, along with a Disney classic and three world premieres featuring one of the festival’s most diverse group of playwrights in it’s 82-year history.
“It’s a year of a lot of drama,” said resident OSF playwright Luis Alfaro.
To a crowd of Shakespeare Festival loyalists, the 2017 lineup of plays was announced by artistic director Bill Rauch
“OSF is a classical theatre that does a lot of new work, and we tell as many different kind of stories as we possibly can,” said Rauch.
Among those stories is ‘Mojada’, a modern take on the Greek myth of Madea, written by Alfaro.
“I started to see all these parallels about Madea as the first immigrant so I thought I’m going day immigration story with a modern day Madea, and that’s what it’s come out to,” said Alfaro.
Alfaro is among one of OSF’s most diverse group of playwrights since the festival’s humble beginnings in 1935.
“In the 2017 season we have plays written by Asian-American, African-American, Latino and Native American writers, and that is part of our commitment as a theatre to do work that is relevant to our entire community, to everyone,” said Rauch.
These plays, along with the classic and a modern twist on old tales means there’s likely a play for everyone in 2017.
The season kicks off with Julius Caesar in February of next year.
The plays include:
In the Angus Bowmer Theatre
Julius Caesar
Mojada
UniSon by Universes
Off The Rails
In the Thomas Theatre
Henry IV Part One & Two
Hannah and the Dread Gazebo
In the Allen Elizabethan Theatre
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Odyssey
Beauty and the Beast
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