The dome had just been taken off and it gave me the impression of a 16th century sketch of the Globe Theater. I began to do some research and got excited about the possibility of producing a Shakespearean work there.

A local furniture store had kept weather records for 40 years. They indicated it was possible to have an outdoor theatre here during the summer. The other was a federal report on the economic prospects for this area. Agriculture had gone about as far as it could go. Lumber had reached its peak. The only hope appeared to be the tourist industry.

That’s why we settled on a festival, and not a play. A festival would draw people to stay for a time, and to spend money in the community.

A good many people felt I was a peculiar young man, but harmless. Others regarded me as a nice young man trying to bring back the good old days.

--The Oregonian, 1979

Perhaps one reason why the Festival has been able to grow over twelve seasons and look forward to many more is the fact that it has had one primary purpose—public entertainment. It has always been held here that scholarship is a means to an end, not an end in itself. To an audience who pays admission to be entertained, the scholar should be as unobtrusive as the electrician.

-- 1952 OSF Souvenir Program

I am fully convinced that one of the reasons why so many of our audience members comment about the excitement and satisfaction they feel in our productions is that they have caught the joy of discovery which they share with our company. The discoveries which each company member has worked so hard to find all through the long rehearsal periods he reveals to his audience with the same exultant exuberance as the tyro-bicyclist who shouts, “Look, Ma, no hands!”

-- From As I remember, Adam

We are not a museum…not an antiquarian display place. The past is certainly our nurturing source and continuing inspiration, but we are in no way bound by the past. We don’t stand still. We are a living, breathing, changing and growing theatre, with a future still to discover. Theatre is always a living art, with open arms for the new. The legacy of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival will continue to enrich the future because our beginnings are strong, sound and sure.

-- From As I remember, Adam

"My first impression was how small he was. Not that he was diminutive, but his fame and reputation led me to expect someone at least as tall as Tyrone power and as imposing as Orson Welles. Yet here he was – the Producing Director of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, laughing at feeble Scotch jokes at the popcorn counter, a weaving, bobbing figure somewhere between Groucho Marx and Jiminy Cricket."

"He was generous beyond belief. Talent was not to be hoarded, but used. He surrounded himself with the most gifted people he could get and tackled the most difficult problems with a zest only the truly confident could muster. And when we failed, as we all did a lot, he was there with unabashed support for a job well done, however inadequate and humiliating the results."

"I hope that we who continue here can carry on Angus Bowmer’s greatest legacy: his humanity. I hope we can work with the same dogged enthusiasm he always had; the same openness; the same faith, the same sincerity. The theatre’s a place where, in Thornton Wilder’s words, people can show most vividly what it’s like to be a human being. That doesn’t seem like much, sometimes, but Angus Bowmer showed us in his life and in his work, that it’s everything."