OSF Open House 09

This morning we woke up to the constant pounding rain on our window. We were so surprised. A rare occurrence for Ashland. Luckily it blew over about eleven, and just in time for our day to start. Today we went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Open house.

We started with a tour of the costume department. To our surprise, it is a huge deal to get the initial design of the costumes until they hit the floor for rehearsal. Most plays have about 10 people per play working on up to 60 elaborate costumes. Every detail from the jewelery and shoes to the elaborate beaded work and accurate costume representation for the period is taken in to consideration. All of the costumes are available for other production houses and individuals to rent at the end of the season.

Next we went to the stage and prop design department a down the street from the theater. All of the stages and props are custom designed each season. All the stage sets are donated to local schools or throw away at the end of the season (since each play, even if it is done by OSF again, has a different director and designer with a different idea of how the play should look). Although the props are all put online at the end of the season to be rented by people all over the world.

We we able to chat with one of the prop designers for Don Quixote. He showed us some of the props for the play and explained that most of these particular props were all made from everyday items, including tires to make a vulture and garden gloves to create the owl.

We never did get anyone to tell us an est. cost for a play, but it would not be cheap. These plays are labors of love for one persons vision of the play. There was one backstage tour for the new theater, but we missed it. We decided we will take the full backstage tour another day.