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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels February 23, 2004 The Vining valediction By Robert H. Miller For the Tidings In 193I, then, his mind set on developing an extensive extracurricular theatre program at Southern Oregon Normal School, Angus L. Bowmer purposed to convince faculty, student body, and townspeople of the worthiness and importance of his project, and also nurtured his dream of an outdoor theater for Shakespeare. He received staunch and eloquent support, by the way, from Professor Irving Vining. However, not until 1935 was Angus ready to produce, as part of the city's Independence Day celebrations, a festival of Shakespeare plays within the walls of the old Chautauqua building whose dome had been torn down in 1933; walls that resembled sketches he had seen of Elizabethan theaters. The celebration committee avowed they had nothing against Shakespeare but were timorous over a possible deficit in the celebration budget. Which is why they suggested that Bowmer allow the use of the Elizabethan stage on the afternoon of the Fourth for a card of boxing matches. Surprisingly, he did not fight the idea. "I assured them that such an event would be quite typical of the kind of thing that appealed to Elizabethan audiences, though to be sure, their tastes were somewhat more bloody," he wrote in "As I Remember, Adam." And as it turned out, Shakespeare delivered the knockout punch to the noble art of self-defense: The festival not only covered its own expenses but also absorbed the high losses from the fights. The plays performed were "Twelfth Night" on July 2 and July 4, and "The Merchant of Venice" on the Third. The program, curiously, contained an advertisement for Lithia Theatre's motion pictures on Thursday and Friday - the Baer-Braddock 15-round prizefight plus Warner Baxter in "Under the Pampas Moon." Bowmer won the day, and his festival continued (without boxing) in the Elizabethan Theatre through 1940, but was shut down during World War II (1941-46). When production resumed in 1947, it did so with a new, larger Elizabethan stage, built to replace the one damaged by a 1940 fire. It was in 1951 that James Selleck, manager of the Varsity movie house, detecting a direct correlation of attendance between his theatre and the expansion of the Shakespeare Festival - they were high and low together - offered Angus use of the idle Lithia Theatre at no rental fee if Angus would produce a winter season of non-Shakespearean plays there. Angus, who loved doing plays, jumped at the opportunity, and with director Richard Graham raised the necessary financing and gathered together an aspiring young troupe of actors naming them "The Vining Repertory Company." This was in gracious deference to the Vining Brothers, both of whom had died by then. If the theatre, because of its desuetude, presently had a "tattered yet still graceful elegance," as described by Ashland historian and author Marjorie O'Hara, Angus renovated it and gave it a new look and luster. For the first season, a $6 subscription assured one a seat for "Antigone," "On Monday Next," "Ten Little Indians," and "The Late Christopher Bean." In April-May of 1952, the plays performed were "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Claudia," "Death of a Salesman," and "The Importance of Being Earnest." The October-November DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams