The Arts in Ashland. It's More Than Just the Oregon Shakespeare Festival!
For a small town Ashland, Oregon has an extraordinary array of performing arts venues, events and festivals. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is of course the best known and the nation’s oldest and largest regional theater — plays run from late February through October. But there’s more than Oregon Shakespeare Festival in and around Ashland. You can walk to any number of the following venues from the Chanticleer Inn.
Theater
Oregon Cabaret Theater, a dinner theatre in a beautifully restored old church. The season is from February to December. OCT does Monday night performances! Fun, campy and entertaining — a couple of blocks from the Chanticleer Inn.
Camelot Theater in Talent, OR
Ashland New Plays Festival assists playwrights to develop new works through public readings and offers an educational forum to the community through discussions and workshops. Winning plays are read every October.
Ashland Contemporary Theater offers quality community-based theatre to Rogue Valley residents.
Camelot Theater, a semi-professional theater company renowned for performing high-quality plays, musicals, and musical events year round, is now housed in the brand-new intimate 164-seat state-of-the-art James Morrison Collier Theatre building in downtown Talent, OR, just 5 miles north of Ashland.
Southern Oregon University Theater
The plays produced by SOU are both charming and extremely well done. Some SOU students intern at the Oregon Shakespeare Festive. Each semester, members of OSF teach, direct and sometimes act in the University’s plays. When visiting Ashland, it’s well worth checking SOU’s schedule of plays and musical performances.
Varsity Theater during the Ashland Indy Film Festival
Cinema
Ashland’s Varsity Theatre, located downtown in a 1937 Art Deco-style building, houses 5 large screens and features art, indy and foreign films; as well as selected first-run movies.
The Ashland Independent Film Festival runs for five days in early April showing high-quality independent film. Over 7,000 film lovers gather at the Varsity Theatre to watch over 80 films in 5 days. Filmmakers of shorts, documentaries and features come from around the world to engage with the audience after each screening and at the festival’s Opening Night Bash and Award Celebration parties with local wine, beer and gourmet food. Special guests have included Helen Hunt, Albert Maysles, Bruce Campbell to name a few. The film festival is one of the reasons Ashland is included in the popular travel guide “A Thousand Places to See Before You Die”.
Music
Incendio Band played St Claire Productions
Every night of the week Ashland is filled with live music. Restaurants, coffee houses and brew pubs host local and regional musicians, some free, others with a nominal cover charge. Use AshlandLiveMusic an online calendar to find who’s playing what and where.
The Britt Festivals now in its 49th year, is the Northwest’s premier outdoor summer music festival. Located in the historic gold rush town of Jacksonville, the Britt presents dozens of summer concerts, featuring world-class (really!) artists in classical music, jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, world, pop and country music.
St. Clair Productions brings the finest traditional and contemporary folk musicians to Ashland; featuring a unique mix of styles from many regions of the US to the far reaches of the globe. The season generally runs from September through May. Every show is family-friendly.
Medford’s Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater (yes, that Ginger Rogers, she was a Rogue Valley girl) brings in the acts: music, dance, kinetic acrobats, plays, musicals and more.
