Programs celebrating Oregon's rich heritage will be offered during Oregon Archives Week to be held Oct. 7-14. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has designated the week to recognize the state's history and the role of archivists in collecting and preserving records.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Southern Oregon University have scheduled lectures and a reception to be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 14-15.

The theme of the week is "Archives Among Us! Celebrating Oregon's Unique Archival Heritage" and the events in Ashland will take place around significant archival collections at OSF and SOU.

"OSF has one of the few archives actually housed within a professional theatre, rather than in a nearby historical society, library or museum," notes OSF archivist Kathleen F. Leary in a press release.

"Also, since the festival has grown with the community and region, we can actually see how the valley has evolved in the primary sources and contemporary accounts of people who lived and worked in those earlier decades."

Advertisement

As part of the celebration, the OSF archives as well as the First Folio of 1623, one of the first published volumes of Shakespeare's writing, will be available for viewing.

The first of the events will include talks by forest historian Jeff LaLande and Shakespeare scholar Alan Armstrong at 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, in the Meese Room on the third floor of the Hannon Library on the SOU campus, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland.

LaLande will present "100 Years of Forest History," a presentation showcasing the highlights of the Rogue River National Forest, and Armstrong, a Shakespeare scholar and guest dramaturg at OSF, will present "Staging Shakespeare's King John," a look at the sources Armstrong used to research and prepare the 2007 OSF production of "King John."

A free viewing of the First Folio, on loan from the Paul Allen Family Collection, and a tour of the OSF archives will be available from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 15, at the New Theatre on the OSF campus, 15 S. Pioneer St., Ashland.

A reception will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Oct. 15 in Carpenter Hall at OSF, and Paul Merchant, a Shakespeare scholar and archivist at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, will present a discussion of the First Folio from 1-2 p.m., also in Carpenter Hall.

Merchant also will discuss his own research in England and at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.