In the early days of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the costumes were usually low-budget outfits made from common fabrics.
Still, the seasons were short, and the costumes were often repurposed and reused, year after year. That’s rarely the case any more.
Modern productions often run for 120 to 135 performances, inflicting plenty of wear and tear on even today’s sturdy, reinforced stage wear. But that doesn’t mean the lives of those clothes are over, not at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
At the end of each season, most garments still in decent shape go to the rental shop.
The shop, located in the huge new OSF production facility in Talent, Oregon, contains about 50,000 used garments and another 15,000 accessories.
The manager of OSF Costume Rentals is Emily Ehrlich Inget. She took OPB on a tour of the massive garment shop.
[widget: aboout-oregon-experiences-documentary-on-the-oregon-shakespeare-festival,left,562156c4e5645f002274d79e]