The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, Oregon, an hour's drive from my house, is famous for outstanding productions, not only of Shakespeare but of plays throughout the ages. I have seen some stunning productions at OSF and some unforgettable scenes.
Then COVID hit, and even before COVID, smokey summers in recent years meant one cancellation after another of performances in the outdoor theater. OSF took a nose dive. They quickly moved to Zoom presentations and other types of online performance, but it isn't the same. There is no substitute for live theater.
So I was excited to hear that OSF was producing Fannie this summer, in the Elizabethan (outdoor) theater. I bought a ticket for an October performance, hoping to escape smoke and made confident by OSF's COVID protocols: show proof of vaccination, wear a mask throughout the show, and sit (in your pod) distanced from other attendees.
Fannie is a one-woman show about Fannie Lou Hamer, the brave civil rights activist who defied Jim Crow to work towards voting rights for black people. Greta Oglesby gave an astonishing performance, and the play itself was excellent, but it made me sad to watch it, thinking that in spite of what has changed in Mississippi since Fannie's days, bigotry and voter suppression still exist, and thinking about the changes COVID and climate change have wrought on our own way of life. OSF's changed circumstances were painfully evident: the theater was only two-thirds full because of the spaced-out seating; this play had only one actor, lasted only an hour and a half, had minimal sets with no scenery changes, and offered no program—obviously a production on a greatly reduced budget.
Then COVID hit, and even before COVID, smokey summers in recent years meant one cancellation after another of performances in the outdoor theater. OSF took a nose dive. They quickly moved to Zoom presentations and other types of online performance, but it isn't the same. There is no substitute for live theater.
So I was excited to hear that OSF was producing Fannie this summer, in the Elizabethan (outdoor) theater. I bought a ticket for an October performance, hoping to escape smoke and made confident by OSF's COVID protocols: show proof of vaccination, wear a mask throughout the show, and sit (in your pod) distanced from other attendees.
Fannie is a one-woman show about Fannie Lou Hamer, the brave civil rights activist who defied Jim Crow to work towards voting rights for black people. Greta Oglesby gave an astonishing performance, and the play itself was excellent, but it made me sad to watch it, thinking that in spite of what has changed in Mississippi since Fannie's days, bigotry and voter suppression still exist, and thinking about the changes COVID and climate change have wrought on our own way of life. OSF's changed circumstances were painfully evident: the theater was only two-thirds full because of the spaced-out seating; this play had only one actor, lasted only an hour and a half, had minimal sets with no scenery changes, and offered no program—obviously a production on a greatly reduced budget.
Hope resurged, though, as I drove home—hope that we could overcome a racist society as long as OSF can give its audiences such material, hope that we can overcome the despair of our life under the domination of COVID, hope that this abbreviated season at OSF is the beginning of a grand comeback of live theater, however slowly it might have to inch forward.
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