January 29, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@sa.ucsb.edu

Libby Appel, Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in residence at UCSB as Regents’ Lecturer

Summary Facts:

• Libby Appel
• Artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
• Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB Department of Dramatic Art and Dance
• A free public talk: “A Case for the Arts in a Time of Crisis”
• Thursday, March 7 / UCSB Hatlen Theatre / 4 pm
• For information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

Libby Appel is just the fourth Artistic Director in the 65-year history of the prestigious Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the first woman to hold the Festival’s top post. As a Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB Department of Dramatic Art and Dance, Appel will present the free public talk “A Case for the Arts in a Time of Crisis” on Thursday, March 7 at 4 pm in UCSB Hatlen Theatre.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is considered America’s first authentic Elizabethan theatre and the second largest repertory theatre in the world. That Appel heads this esteemed organization signals a significant change in the mostly male-dominated world of drama. Appel has said in an interview, “I started free-lancing in 1988 and I really had great luck and got a lot of jobs, but I was always hired as the ‘woman director’ to do the ‘women’s plays’—you know, Steel Magnolias and things like that that I had no interest in whatsoever. So I really felt like a token. But that’s all changed now. I don’t feel like a token any more and I run the largest theater in the country. There are countless numbers of women artistic directors nowadays.”

Before assuming her position at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Appel spent four years as Artistic Director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre. She has served as Dean and Artistic Director at the School of Theatre at the California Institute of the Arts and has also taught at California State University-Long Beach and at the Goodman Theatre and School of Drama in Chicago. Her influential actor training techniques are outlined in her book Mask Characterization: An Acting Process, which includes theory and exercises that lead to the organic creation of character from the mask that hides the self, paradoxically allowing students to probe more deeply into themselves. She is the co-author with Michael Flachmann of two plays, Shakespeare’s Women and Shakespeare’s Lovers.

As a freelance director, Appel has mounted productions at many of the country’s most highly regarded theaters including the Guthrie Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, the Court Theatre, San Jose Repertory and the Utah, Colorado and Kern Shakespeare Festivals. Her extensive directing credits include The Trip to Bountiful, Three Sisters, Henry V, Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, The Merchant of Venice, Miss Evers’ Boys, A Raisin in the Sun, Dancing at Lughnasa and Ain’t Misbehavin’.

Appel’s public talk is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Her residency at UCSB is made possible by the Regents’ Lectureship program of the University of California. Instituted in 1962 to encourage rare and invaluable interaction between gifted non-academics and the university community, the program has continued to provide campus residencies in sponsoring departments for people with distinguished achievement in the arts, sciences, humanities, business, politics and international affairs.

The two remaining UCSB Regents’ Lecturers for 2001-2002 are: Jeffrey Weeks, a MacArthur Fellow who will be the guest of the Department of Mathematics in May; and Michael C. Tobias, a documentary filmmaker who will be in residence in the Environmental Studies Program in Spring Quarter.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.