HOW A GLOBAL PANDEMIC SHUT DOWN THE WORLD-FAMOUS OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, IT’S AWARD-WINNING COSTUME DEPARTMENT, AND THE TOWN THAT DEPENDS ON BOTH
The world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a staple of the Ashland, Ore. community for almost a century, shut its doors for the rest of the 2020 season at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. Now, in a dramatic turn of events not even the Bard himself could have written, many in the area, the festival’s costumers included, wonder what’s next for them and the festival that keeps this small town’s economy –– and culture –– running.
A friend. A co-worker. A flyer at the back of a bathroom stall.
Many things brought far-flung costume workers to this little town in the Rogue Valley, situated cozily between Grants Pass, the original home of Dutch Bros. Coffee, and the California-Oregon state line. But they stayed for the fantasy that was –– and to many, still is –– the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF).
That dream, though, ended abruptly after the 85-year-old festival, which hasn’t cancelled a season since the onset of World War II, called off the 2020 season after one week. The reason is the same one that shut down the world: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For most of the workers in the costume department at OSF, the announcement of the festival’s closure came down one unlucky Friday when they were told to go home. Some thought they would return to work early the next week. Others were sure the season would be called off for the rest of the year.
“A lot of us were caught off-guard,” said Elaine McBennett, a 39-year veteran of OSF’s costume department. “It was really blunt. Friday the 13th was the last day we worked.”
For McBennett and most of her 52 coworkers in the costume department, the cancellation of the remainder of the season put their jobs on hold.
“I see people walking down the street in town just looking like a deer in headlights, like, ‘What am I going to do?’” McBennett said.
An unlikely candidate
Even the website of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival itself admits this world-famous festival celebrating one of the English language’s greatest playwrights is ironically placed in the 21,263 population town. Ashland, 294 miles north of Sacramento and 178 miles south of Eugene, is nestled right in the middle of hundreds of miles of country, hills and mountains between the California state capitol to its south and the home to the University of Oregon to the north, the closest two major cities. The festival only grew because of its placement in the southernmost end of Oregon’s Rogue Valley, or perhaps, in spite of it.
Ashland, originally called Ashland Mills, was established in 1851 after gold was discovered nearby. The city quickly became a stopover for those in both other parts of Oregon and California on their way to what is now Jacksonville on their quest for gold. Shops and businesses in and around Ashland sprang up to supply travelers and gold-seekers with what they would need to pan for gold and live out in the Southern Oregon climate. As the town grew, so too, did the number of travelers who came through town on the well-traveled stagecoach line, which then attracted the railroad, and then, the Chautauqua movement.
This movement, a nationwide effort to expand cultural and entertainment offerings in rural areas, came to Ashland. This, in turn, brought performers to the city’s first Chautauqua building to see such acts as John Philip Sousa and William Jennings Bryan. The movement died in the first couple decades of the 20th century, but the remaining walls of Ashland’s Chautauqua building would next house the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, thanks to English teacher Angus L. Bowmer, the festival’s founder. The festival itself started in 1935 with a series of two plays, Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, preceded by a boxing match city officials insisted on being included in the event’s lineup to absorb the financial losses they expected from the plays. The $400 advanced to Bowmer from the city to stage both the plays was repaid in full from each of the plays’ ticket sales, actually absorbing the losses from the boxing matches insisted on by Ashland’s local politicians.
From there, the festival only grew. As the city got larger and the lumber-based economy retracted in the 1960s, construction of a bigger theater allowed for the further expansion of the the festival. This stretched out OSF’s season in the fall and winter. The effort to establish the city’s economy on the success of the festival had the effect of stabilizing Ashland’s economy after the decline of the timber industry, so long part of the economic prosperity of communities across the state. Over the next 32 years, the festival would only expand, starting with the construction of the Angus Bowmer Theater in 1970 and eventually operating on an annual budget of $22 million. Now, more than 600 employees and even more volunteers organize an eight-month-long season that shows 11 plays on four stages, resulting in 780 performances every year.
Except this year.
“OSF makes Ashland a beacon for so many”
Now, with the rest of the season cancelled, the state’s southernmost city has all but rolled up its sidewalks. Some shops, restaurants and other stores remain open as much as they can, some in town said, but the tourism attracted by OSF is gone, and with it, much of the city’s livelihood.
“OSF is the lifeblood for that town and that region,” said Janet Cadmus, an overhire costume craft artisan for the festival. “It’s heartbreaking. We’ve all had these tearful conversations about it.”
While Cadmus’s contract ended in March and she moved to Pittsburgh to work for a union costume shop producing costumes for film, TV and commercials, she worries about how people still in Ashland will make it without the festival. She wonders how it will impact some people’s careers.
“Some of them are from there, but a lot of those people moved there from somewhere else years ago and have an entire life built there,” she said. “They don’t just come in for the season and leave. That’s where they are. It’s very scary for so many people.”
Some of the folks who remain in Ashland are hanging on as best as they can. Some have their own homes. Some live in a trailer park between the city and Mount Ashland. Some aren’t sure what comes next.
“I live on the south side of Ashland in the cheapest situation I could find,” said Bridget Kraft, the festival’s only costume dyer and painter. “ I’m frugal and found the cheapest option for me. I’m in a lucky enough situation to make enough money to not be incredibly low. I know how to cook and dry beans. I’m not great, but I’m okay.”
Kraft, who owns her own trailer and rents space in a trailer park on the south side of Ashland, works as much as she can selling textiles on her website, Kraftweave.com. The work is fine, she says, but the stability for costume workers at OSF is second to none. She, among others, misses that.
“Theater work is bizarre,” Kraft said. “You have to piece together your livelihood. I moved to OSF to do a 10-month contract and stop piecemealing my life.”
Others have been able to stay, too. Jacourtney Mountain Bluhm, interim costume design assistant and costume shopper/buyer, married a fellow OSF employee in September 2018 and bought a house in Ashland, intending that she and her husband, Nikos Mountain, would stay.
““We’re not working now. We’re trying to figure things out as we go,” she said. “I think we’re going to hang on as long as we can. My husband loves the Pacific Northwest. He’s got family here and we didn’t see anywhere else we could really live.”
Mountain Bluhm moved to Ashland from San Marcos, Texas, where she studied theater at Texas State University. A world away from the small Southern Oregon town, she saw a poster for OSF’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” starring, ironically, two women. The funny flyer started her journey to Ashland, where she started working for OSF as a wardrobe assistant in 2016.
She and Mountain, a technician for OSF, both got the announcement on that Friday the 13th that everyone should go home. She wasn’t sure, unlike some of her coworkers, that they would come back anytime soon.
“I didn’t see any way we could survive the pandemic at this measure when the announcement came down,” Mountain Bluhm said. “There’s no way OSF could survive during all of it.”
The Mountain Bluhms are weighing their options, like so many others still in town. But not everyone might be forced to leave.
“I bought out my ex-husband’s share of the house, and I’ve been doing improvements I can do that won’t cost a lot of money,” said Elaine McBennett, a cutter and draper in the costume department. “‘I don’t want to sell’ has been my rationale, and I don’t see myself getting another job. There’s not going to be that kind of opportunity out there.”
McBennett, who started working for the OSF costume shop in 1981, is one of the veteran workers in the costume department. She planned to continue working for the festival until she retired, which she didn’t anticipate happening now –– a few years, maybe, she thought. But this changed her plans.
“I’m not panicked because I can tell myself ‘I’m retired now. That’s what it’s going to be,’” she said. “But I don’t want that.”
Andrea Schmatjen, a stitcher in the costume department for six seasons, isn’t as close to retirement as McBennett –– not even close. Only 30, she bought her own home last year just a few miles up Interstate 5 in Medford, the county seat of Jackson County and home to more than 82,000 people. The cost of living is low enough in the city for the Phoenix, Ariz. native to live comfortably, although she’s nervous about when, and if, she can return to work.
“I’ve been working on and off for a couple of different places making masks,” Schmatjen said, who, as someone with an autoimmune disorder, is in a high-risk category. “Of course, like most people who can sew, that’s pretty much been my deal right now. That’s kind of my only job at the moment.”
Like Mountain Bluhm, she’s considering other career options, too. What if she can’t go back to work anytime soon? Where else can she go?
“There was never really another job I wanted,” she said of her career in costuming. “I think that’s part of what’s making this so difficult for me now. What are my other options, career-wise, if I decide I don’t want to wait around?”
Some, much like Cadmus, aren’t waiting around. Master Stitcher Julia Braun, who immigrated from Germany and worked in New York and Portland before coming to Ashland, is now bouncing back between Los Angeles and Ashland as she prepares to move to L.A. to work in Hollywood.
In a way, the timing of the pandemic worked out well for Braun, she said. The pull down to Southern California from Southern Oregon called to Braun, who dreamed of working in the film industry for a long time.
“Oregon Shakespeare Festival is an amazing place to work and I will always go back, but I wasn’t ready to settle down in a small town just yet,” Braun said. “ I’ve got to go down and see what this Los Angeles thing is all about.”
The pull back up north might draw Braun back someday, she added. The stability offered by OSF allows costume workers to have a long-term job year-round that allows for a family and a permanent home –– something many OSF costumers have already taken advantage of.
“Ashland and Oregon Shakespeare Festival is perfect if you want to settle down,” she said. “They’re so supportive of the staff and employees. I hope one day to go back.”
“I’ll always keep trying to go back.”
Cadmus joined OSF after being exposed to the work of sometimes-OSF costume designer Deb Dryden and Lena Price, dyer for the OSF for years. The two costume workers worked together at the festival, and a lot of Price’s work was featured in the book Dryden wrote.
Aging and distressing, amongst other fabric processes, and the methods and principles expressed in the book exposed Cadmus to the work both Dryden and Price did for OSF. However, she didn’t make a connection with anyone at OSF until she moved to San Diego in 1996, and wrote the costume department head and asked to work there. Months passed before she heard back, and then Carol Wielden, costume shop manager for OSF, called. After a phone interview during a brief stint in Ohio, Wielden hired Cadmus to start in January of 1997.
“That was my first time working there, and I lived there at that time. I loved it and I still do,” Cadmus said. “I have a homing beacon there. As long as I can, I will always keep trying to go back there.”
This story was originally published in PacNoW Magazine, a fashion and style magazine I started as my Master's Degree thesis project in Fall 2020. To read the original story, click here. Photo by Madeline Shannon.