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Familiar faces will leave festival Each has reasons mostly about family or career By BILL VARBLE The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will face its 2000 season minus several familiar faces. The no-show list includes actors Andrew Borba, Bill Geisslinger, Anthony Heald, Mark Murphey and Derrick Lee Weeden. The festival's current season ends Sunday, and the new one opens in February. Murphey (Shu Fu in "The Good Person of Szechuan," Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing") doesn't see any common denominator in the departures. "I think it's different with everybody," he says. "It happens to some extent every year. This year it just happens to be a lot of people." Tony Heald (Iago in "Othello," Rosmer in "Rosmersholm") agrees. "It's been in the plan for me," he says. "I told Libby (Appel, OSF's artistic director) in May of 1998 that I'd take 2000 off and would like to be back the seasons after that." Maybe 10 or 15 actors leave the festival each year out of a company of about 70, actors say. Geisslinger (Billy Flynn in "Chicago") spent 13 season at the festival. Derek Lee Weeden (Othello in "Othello") spent 11. Murphey spent 19 of the past 30 years at OSF, including the last 10 years straight. Heald put in three. The festival puts on more than 700 performances of a dozen plays, repertory style, alternating in three theaters in a season that stretches from February through October. Actors typically play several roles each year. Equity contracts (the actors union) at Shakespeare start with the first day of rehearsals and run through the last day of the show or shows the actor is in. Actors sometimes leave the festival looking for hotter roles or greener pastures. "This next season they didn't really have that much for me to do," Murphey says. "They offered me some smaller roles. Your option is to stay or find something else." Shakespeare's revolving door goes both ways. OSF officials say former festival actors Ray Porter, Marco Barricelli, Judith-Marie Bergan, Richard Elmore and Terrilynn Towns will all be returning next season after absences from the festival. Film or TV pay can be a powerful lure to actors. "Nothing gives me the artistic satisfaction of working onstage," Heald says, "the chance to do a role from beginning to end every night with the wild card of an audience. But it's not financially very fulfilling." He says TV and movie work (he was a bad-guy lawyer in "8mm" and a creepy psychiatrist in 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs") pays the bills so he can live in a nice town and work in live theater. Murphey figures at age 51 the number of years with really good roles is dwindling. He's off to San Francisco this winter and will commute to Ashland, where his wife, actress and painter Jill Fine, will stay with the couple's 13-year-old daughter. After that he's not sure. He may go to Los Angeles. Heald, 54, has been to Los Angeles for recent meetings on several projects. He says if he were to get a job lasting a month he'd commute. He says he has no plans to relocate ever again. He'd love to do a character that appears on a TV series such as "ER" or "West Wing." "They have to pay you because it's not artistically satisfying," he jokes. Andrew Borba (Cassio in "Othello"), 35, is going to L.A. to be with his wife, Janet, an HBO producer. "We've lived in a commuter relationship for two years," he says. He did a movie last year, then worked a 10-month season. He says he had a good offer from the festival, but he and his wife decided it was important to spend time together. Actors say uncertainty is just part of the life. "We're migrant workers," Borba says. "The majority of my salary went to plane tickets." "`You get used to it," Murphey says. "But no matter how long it's been, you're never sure." "When you decide to go into this profession you accept a lifestyle that has down periods," Heald says. "You find a way to take advantage of them." Murphey and his wife moved 35 times in 21 years and not once in the past 10. He'd like to return. "It's a beautiful place to live," he says. Heald figures his versatility is an asset when he wants to return. "I'm castable in a wide variety of things," he says. "Although I may get a rude shock someday." He plans to work on his house next summer and maybe take a family vacation for the first time in years. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA