The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Has Announced New Program Alignment for OSF Artistic Engagement Department

By: Feb. 20, 2020
Get Access To Every Broadway Story

Unlock access to every one of the hundreds of articles published daily on BroadwayWorld by logging in with one click.




Existing user? Just click login.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Has Announced New Program Alignment for OSF Artistic Engagement Department

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival today announced new program alignment and leadership for its newly renamed OSF Artistic Engagement department, which continues lifelong learning, audience expansion, and community engagement through its existing programs. The newly launched OSF Artist in Residence (AiR) program provides an array of collaborative opportunities and experiences with OSF's teaching artists. Robert C. Goodwin is now Director of Artistic Engagement: Education and Community; Kirsten Giroux is Associate Director of Artistic Engagement: Education and Community Curriculum & Instruction; Russell Zook is Associate Director of Artistic Engagement: Education and Community.

"For more than seven decades, OSF has empowered artists and educators to share the legacy of its educational programming that has reached tens of thousands of students, teachers, and playgoers," Goodwin said. "Our artistic engagement team is thrilled to now expand and combine OSF's education and artistic expertise through a diversity of initiatives and interactive programming."

OSF Artistic Engagement will continue its visiting workshops for a variety of schools and organizations, as well as in-house theatre classes designed to engage all ages and generations in appreciation for theatre and performing arts. Its programs will also explore storytelling across disciplines, including use of digital content tools, to inspire participants in their communities and workplace environments, while attracting the next generation of theatre appreciators.

"Education has long been the bridge between the work on OSF's stages and playgoers and patrons of all ages and backgrounds, providing insights for both classical and contemporary productions," said OSF Artistic Director Nataki Garrett. "With these new and reimagined program offerings now co-curated and fully aligned with the artistic capabilities of a theatre company this size, we hope to both deepen and expand relationships with the individuals, communities, and organizations they serve."

New AiR Programs

The OSF Artist in Residence (AiR) programs are customized engagements for businesses, schools, and community groups lead by OSF's world class professional artists.

AiR Business is designed to fit an organization's specific needs. Teaching artists provide interactive workshops on storytelling, story creating, soft-skill building and inclusion to elevate internal and external communication, team dynamics, and powers of persuasion.

AiR School offers fun, active, exciting workshops for both students and teachers, including personal identity and emotional intelligence development work, tapping into group and individual imaginations and creativity.

AiR Community for community groups and social organizations, provides teaching artists who design and implement a variety of workshops and community engagements to increase their team building abilities through empathy training, listening skills, and relationship development.

Goodwin added, "We are all storytellers, and a captivating story is equally valuable in classrooms, places of business, and throughout our daily lives."

To learn more about OSF's Artistic Engagement visit www.osfashland.org/engage-and-learn. For more information or to inquire about specific program offerings email artisticengagement@osfashland.org

About OSF

Founded by Angus Bowmer in 1935, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has grown from a three-day festival of two plays to a nationally renowned theatre arts organization that presents an eight-month season of up to 11 plays that include works by Shakespeare as well as a mix of classics, musicals, and world-premiere plays and musicals. OSF's play commissioning programs, which include American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, have generated works that have been produced on Broadway, internationally, and at regional, community and high school theatres across the country. The Festival draws attendance upwards of 400,000 to more than 800 performances every year and employs 400 to 600 theatre professionals.

OSF invites and welcomes everyone, and believes the inclusion of diverse people, ideas, cultures and traditions enriches both our insights into the work we present on stage and our relationships with each other. OSF is committed to equity and diversity in all areas of our work and in our audiences.

OSF's mission statement: "Inspired by Shakespeare's work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory."



Videos