ASHLAND, ORE.--Retiring Artistic Director Libby Appel brought to a close a record season and has left an enduring legacy after 12 years of leadership at one of the country's oldest professional regional theaters.
Appel, who was awarded the title of Artistic Director Emeritus by the OSF Board of Directors in September, has led the company since 1995. In her final season Appel selected a playbill of diverse offerings she dubbed "a parting gift to her company and audience." She directed two of her favorite plays, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (a new adaptation she created) and William Shakespeare's The Tempest. In addition, she put three new plays in the New Theatre: one of them a world premiere, Tracy's Tiger, commissioned by OSF and written by OSF company members for the OSF acting ensemble.
Her gift was a huge success. The 2007 season closed Sunday, October 29th with a record attendance of 404,730 at 90% of capacity and ticket revenues at $15,487,632. Total attendance in the Angus Bowmer Theatre was 211,450 (89% of capacity), 69,078 (86% of capacity) in the New Theatre, and 124,202 (96% of capacity) in the Elizabethan Stage/Allen Pavilion. These figures are up three percent from 2006.
In addition to a number of seasons of record attendance, during Appel's tenure OSF continued to diversify the acting company, as well as hire directors and designers of color. Appel maintained the commitment to increase the number of experienced actors and directors and to assign dramaturgs, movement coaches and voice and text coaches to each production.
Another key component of Appel's term was a commitment to literary development. OSF expanded its commissioning of new plays, adaptations and translations to new levels. Lillian Groag's The Magic Fire, commissioned by OSF, toured to the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 1997. New play development continued with the commissioning of David Edgar's two-play cycle Continental Divide, and Octavio Solis's Gibraltar. Robert Schenkkan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Kentucky Cycle, was commissioned to write By the Waters of Babylon, a play for two OSF actors, and in 2005 OSF commissioned Tracy's Tiger. Appel also commissioned several translations and adaptations, including The Three Musketeers, The Good Person of Szechuan, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, The Visit, Henry VI, Parts One, Two & Three, Napoli Milionaria! and this season's The Cherry Orchard.
Much of the new work has been produced in OSF's New Theatre, opened in 2002. As Appel noted at its opening, "It isn't every day that theatres are born, and I'm thrilled with the new opportunities presented by this theatre." The theatre has enabled OSF to change the audience configuration from arena, to three-quarter thrust, to avenue seating-creating new artistic choices and new experiences for audiences.
As Appel prepared to step down this season, she worked through the artistic transition with incoming Artistic Director Bill Rauch. His inaugural season was announced in March 2007 and will open February 15, 2008.
Committed to continuing in the tradition of OSF, while looking to stretch the playbill in new ways, Rauch will present in the Angus Bowmer Theatre Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, August Wilson's Fences, Śūdraka's The Clay Cart, Jeff Whitty's The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. The New Theatre will open with a world premiere production of Julie Marie Myatt's Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter, which will tour to the Kennedy Center in July after it closes at OSF; Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Luis Alfaro's new play Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. The Elizabethan Stage offers Shakespeare's Othello and The Comedy of Errors and Thornton Wilder's Our Town, the first time in OSF's history that a 20th-century play has been staged outdoors.
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