All the world's a stage
by
Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Monday, October 7th 2019
 |
| Oregon Shakespeare Festival Globe Theater, Ashland, Oregon |
The audience was silent as
the actor playing Duke Orsino spoke: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”
was underway, and Act 1, Scene 1 of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland
had begun.
Officially born July 2, 1935,
the festival two days later presented the same play again and, in between,
performed “The Merchant of Venice,” both directed by Angus Livingston Bowmer,
an English professor who, in 1931, had come to the Southern Oregon Normal
School, today’s Southern Oregon University.
 |
| Angus Bowmer |
Born in 1904, Bowmer was the
son of Charles Bowmer and the grandson of Harry L. Bowmer, both printers and
newspaper publishers in Washington state. With an old hand press, a few fonts
of type, a bottle of printer’s ink, and a few reams of newsprint, Harry had
started several papers throughout the Northwest.
Business was a family affair.
Harry’s wife, Minnie, set type while keeping the home fires burning, and
prepared an occasional snack for lunch. Harry gathered the news and sold
advertising. Charles and his wife, Flora, were the editorial staff, and, when
he wasn’t studying or playing with his friends, young Angus was the press boy.
Angus graduated from what is
now Western Washington University in 1923 and began teaching.
While continuing his studies
at the University of Washington, he met Ben Iden Payne, a noted English
Shakespearean actor and director who gets credit for influencing nearly all
modern productions of Shakespeare. No one had a greater influence on Angus.
 |
| Chautauqua Building, Lithia Park, Ashland, Oregon |
Not long after he began
teaching at SOU, Angus got an idea.
 |
| Remnant Wall - Chautauqua Dome Ashland, Oregon |
Looking at the remnants of
the curved lower wall that once supported the two bubbly white domes of the
Chautauqua building in Lithia Park, his thoughts turned to Shakespeare.
“The dome had just been taken
off,” Angus told a reporter, “and it gave me the impression of a 16th century
sketch of the Globe Theater. I got excited about the possibility of producing a
Shakespearean work there.”
In the midst of the
Depression, the local economy was hard hit, and Angus decided a festival rather
than a single play would bring in tourist dollars over a longer period of time
and best help the community.
With a grant of less than
$400 from the city of
Ashland and assistance from the State Emergency Relief
Administration, he built a stage within the old Chautauqua shell, began to
advertise, and launched the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
“True to the Shakespearian
style, very little scenery will be used,” the Mail Tribune said. “Most of the
play will hinge upon the brilliantly colored costumes of the Elizabethan
period.”
The annual festival was cut
short after a 1940 fire and the outbreak of WWII. Angus enlisted in the Army,
putting return of the festival in doubt.
However, in 1947, he and the festival
were back on stage.
 |
| Angus Bowmer Enlists in WWII |
Over the following years more
performances were added, and soon the company was branching out into
non-Shakespearian plays.
In 1970, as Angus Bowmer was
about to retire after being a professor at the university for 39 years, a
600-seat theater was built and named in his honor.
 |
| Angus Bowmer as Shylock |
He had directed 30
productions, performed 32 Shakespearean roles, and, in 1958, could finally
claim that OSF had produced all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, the last being
“Troilus and Cressida.”
“Perhaps one reason why the
festival has been able to grow,” wrote Bowmer in 1952, “is the fact that it has
had one primary purpose — public entertainment.”
On May 26, 1979, Angus Bowmer
died, leaving a legacy that continues to grow ever stronger.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com
