My family always takes a quick 3 day trip to Ashland, Oregon at the end of the summer. It's the perfect, relaxing place to immerse yourself in the theater... a huge source of design inspiration.


 
Ashland is a quaint little town just north of the California boarder with one of the most well known repertory theater companies in the country. 


 
This quaint little town not only has the first and largest Elizabethan stage in the country, but also two additional theaters, the Bowmer Theater and The New Theater, where there are plays being staged day and night.




  
Ashland is known for it's Shakespeare Festival, which runs from February through October. What you may not realize is that it also has just as many plays by other playwrights as it does Shakespeare.


 
While we're there, we usually see one play in the afternoon and one in the evening. During our theater breaks we hike through Lithia Park, the incredible 93 acre park in the center of town.


 
There are plenty of gourmet restaurants, art galleries, and shops to peruse...there's even a great ice cream parlor open for cones after the late show.


 

 
As for accommodations, there are TONS of B&B's in Ashland, all walkable distance from the theaters in the center of town. We like to pamper ourselves by staying at The Winchester Inn, an incredible Victorian with beautiful rooms, a top notch restaurant with a chef that cooks a 3 course breakfast, and a wine bar that maintains a 5 star rating in Wine Spectator Magazine. It just doesn't get much better!


 

 
As for the plays, we wish we could have seen more, but time only allowed five. They were all fantastic! My favorites were a newly commissioned play by the New York Theater Company ("Universes") called Party People, a multimedia experience about the Black Panther and Young Lords movement, as well as another new historical play called All The Way, about the LBJ presidency.



 
Animal Crackers was great. The actor who played the Groucho Marx character was given complete artistic license to improvise as much as possible in each show...he was hilarious!

Time to hit the road? You won't regret it!

Lori