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Just months before the start of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2023 season, the organization has announced major changes to its leadership team.
In January, executive director David Schmitz announced he would be stepping down from his position, effective immediately, as part of OSF’s post-pandemic restructuring in order to ensure that both the artistic and business sides of the company can be brought into further alignment. Amanda Brandes, director of development, is also leaving her post in mid-February.
During this transition, artistic director Nataki Garrett stepped in as interim executive artistic director, overseeing OSF’s artistic direction, marketing and overall development.
In addition to her current role as managing director of Inclusion Diversity, Equity and Access people, culture and operations, Anyania Muse will become interim chief operations officer, taking on finance, audience experience and education. She will report to Garrett.
“We are grateful for David’s contributions to OSF and his leadership under very challenging times at OSF,” Diane Yu, OSF board chair, stated in a press release. “We have experienced Nataki’s leadership through crisis many times before, but most notably during the pandemic when she took on the responsibilities across the organization to help OSF survive. I have no doubt that she, along with other members of the leadership team, will lead this organization through this transition period and into a place of stability and success.”
The past several years have been perhaps the most challenging time OSF has experienced. Not only did COVID lockdowns scrap hundreds of performances (the company left its stages dark for all of 2020), hazardous smoke from Southern Oregon wildfires have forced multiple cancellations of plays on its highly popular and largest venue: the Elizabethan Theatre, which is a three-story re-creation of the famed Globe. While the company started hosting some of those plays at Ashland High School, only a fraction of the ticket holders can fit in the smaller space.
In addition to that, Garrett has endured death threats and received letters from patrons identifying themselves as the “Old White Guard,” who accused the artistic director of not understanding Shakespeare and staging too much modern and diverse work. That was actually a gradual shift that Garrett says predates her tenure by decades.
The recently announced changes to OSF also include 12 staff separations, seven employee furloughs, as well as putting a stop or delay on filling 18 open positions.
These decisions came after OSF took several actions throughout the 2022 season and in advance of 2023 to offset inherited structural deficits and the pandemic’s impact on operational costs, ticket sales and donations. That includes reducing the number of shows overall and diversifying its offerings.
Before the internal shake-up, OSF received some good news in December in the form of an unrestricted $10 million grant from The Hitz Foundation, a private family foundation supporting numerous projects in science, the arts and the environment across the globe. The gift is scheduled to pay out $2 million a year for five years. OSF has also received $1.5 million in pledges.
OSF’s 2023 run of performances, titled “The Season of Love,” is scheduled to begin April 18 with Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. It plays through Oct. 15. Jonathan Laron’s Rent kicks off April 19 in the same venue and ends Oct. 14. In all, there will be seven shows.
In addition to that, OSF is bringing back its Quills Fest for a third year, which features a virtual reality exhibition built by OSF’s creative technologists in residence and a slate of world-premiere XR projects that explore the future of storytelling.
Tickets, currently available online, range from $35 to $75.