From late April through December each year, the Festival now offers 800 to 850 matinee and evening performances of a wide range of classic and contemporary plays not limited to Shakespeare to a total annual audience of nearly 400,000.

In 1935, the similarity of the remaining wall of the then-roofless Chautauqua building to Elizabethan theatres inspired Southern Oregon University drama professor Angus L. Bowmer to propose using it to present plays by Shakespeare.

The NBC programs and the subsequent attention go a long way to explaining how a tiny out-of-the-way timber town in the Northwest became a theatrical and tourist Mecca.

In 1986, OSF was again approached about producing in the new Portland Center for the Performing Arts, leading to the launch in November 1988 of a season of five plays including Shaw's Heartbreak House and Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, the first of four productions that transferred to or from Ashland.

[8] The Festival opened the 2020 season on February 28 with performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter and the Starcatcher, and The Copper Children in the Angus Bowmer Theatre.

[9] In April 2023, OSF announced an emergency fundraising campaign as the company was in financial crisis and needed to raise $2.5 million to continue the season as planned.

In addition to the plays, since 1951 a free outdoor "Green Show" drawing audiences in the hundreds, often including non-playgoers, precedes the evening plays from June through September, Wednesday through Saturday nights, from a modular steel stage with a sprung floor for the dancers, a removable wheelchair ramp for performers with disabilities, and built-in storage facilities that eliminate carting equipment from and to distant storage facilities.

The shows now vary widely with performers such as a dance group from Mexico or India one night, clowns doing ballet on stilts the next, and a classical music quartet on another.

Individual performers, groups, choirs, bands, and orchestras may present Afro-Cuban, baroque, blues, classical, contemporary, cowboy, funk, gospel, hip-hop, jazz, mariachi, marimba, poetry, marionette, renaissance, or salsa, sometimes combined in unexpected ways.

That impact stems from direct sales of tickets but also expenditures at some 125 restaurants (a variety and density per resident similar to that in New York and Paris), hotels and motels in Ashland, and shops (second to last row of the table).

These in turn create further economic activity, the economists’ “multiplier effect” that measures how often each dollar is spent on further local goods and services, estimated at 2.9 for OSF, resulting in the figures shown in bottom row of the table.

The Daedalus Project, managed by company members since 1987 in support of HIV/AIDS charitable organizations, traditionally featured a morning fun run, an afternoon play reading, an "arts and treasures" sale and an evening variety show and underwear parade.

The design for the first outdoor OSF Elizabethan Theatre was sketched by Angus L. Bowmer based on his recollection of productions at the University of Washington in which he had acted while a student.

Just before each performance, an actor opens the gable window, and in keeping with Elizabethan tradition signaling a play in progress, runs a flag up the pole to the sound of a trumpet and doffs his cap to the audience.

It houses a control room, and audience services including rental of infrared hearing devices, blankets, pillows, and food and drink, both of which are allowed in the auditorium.

This led the City of Ashland to apply to the Economic Development Administration of the Department of Commerce in Fall 1968 for a $1,792,000 project grant with the Angus Bowmer Theatre as the keystone.

Although about half the size of the outdoor theatre, it more than doubled audience capacity by making it possible to hold matinee performances and to extend the season into spring and fall.

The design by Richard L. Hay and architects Kirk, Wallace and McKinley of Seattle and contractor Robert D. Morrow, Inc., of Salem, Oregon was at once basic, flexible, functional, and innovative.

Just two hours before the 18 June 2011 matinee a crack was discovered in the seventy-foot long, six and one-half foot high main ceiling support beam of the Bowmer Theatre.

[35] With the removal of the scene construction shop in 2014 to the new Production Building, a thirteen-month transformation began of the old one into the Hay-Patton Rehearsal Center by demolishing everything except the masonry exterior and the steel framework and raising the second floor three feet.

She has produced over 150 mainstage, black box, and developmental projects including world premieres of Book of Will, Two Degrees, Zoe's Perfect Wedding, The Great Leap, and American Mariachi.

[8] Once the plays have opened, the voice and text staff are on hand to help actors with vocal challenges that may arise, attend periodic performances to provide helpful ideas, work with understudies, teach voluntary voice classes to the acting company, provide ongoing professional development support in the form of project or individual session work, and participate in play selection and workshops for upcoming seasons.

Twenty-five to thirty Assistantships annually provide hands-on opportunities in virtually every area of the organization by pairing recipients with an appropriate OSF staff member for an average of three months.

Finally, 15–20 annual unpaid Internships of two to four months each provide emerging artists and administrators with hands-on experience by pairing them with a Festival staff member in an area of interest.

In May 2013, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Festival a $200,000 grant to digitize 2,649 deteriorating tapes, films and videos and to make them publicly available through its website and the YouTube platform.

The collection spans the history of the Festival from its inception in 1935 through 2012 and comprises an unparalleled comprehensive record of Shakespearean and theatrical performance by a single U.S. theatre company.

[52] Also included are the home movies of founder Angus Bowmer, Southern Oregon Normal School events and rare footage of the initial 1935 Festival season!

They help with data collection for periodic audience surveys and staff numerous events that comprise the annual Daedalus fund raiser (see above), drive company vehicles on specific errands, and direct traffic during dismantling and movement of sets into storage at the end of the season.

Ashland Garden Club members provide floral arrangements for the annual Feast of Will celebration on the opening weekend of the Allen Elizabethan Theatre.

An annual Souvenir Program included photographic highlights of each play and special articles along with pictures and biographies of actors, playwrights, and the many people who work behind the scenes.