Jerry Turner (1927–2004) served as artistic director of OSF from 1971 – 1991, and 21 years later his influence on the company remains profound.
During his tenure he directed more than 40 productions, including his memorable productions of
Macbeth, The Tempest, The White Devil, Major Barbara, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Julius Caesar, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, King Lear and Mother Courage and
her Children. He directed a number of his own translations including Ibsen's
Rosmersholm,
Peer Gynt,
Ghosts,
An Enemy of the People,
Brand and
The Wild Duck. He also acted 19 roles in 14 productions, and produced acclaimed translations of Strindberg and his beloved Ibsen. Libby Appel directed his translation of
The Master Builder in 1992 at San Jose Repertory Theatre, and Bill Rauch directed his translation of
Hedda Gabler at OSF 2003. Both directors worked closely with Jerry in bringing those productions to the stage. Jerry also translated Strindberg's
The Dance of Death and
The Father for OSF and
Miss Julie for OSF and Tacoma Actors Guild. In 1977 he oversaw the opening of the Black Swan, an intimate black box theatre, designed especially for new and experimental work and offering new opportunities for OSF audiences.
It has been said that Jerry was a risk-taking traditionalist and that he pushed the Festival to be fresh and un-predictable. "Theatre is supposed to be disturbing," he often said. He was a lover of classical texts and equally dedicated to new work, always finding in any theatre piece a way to surprise and stimulate audiences. "Expanding an audience's horizons doesn't necessarily mean doing new work," he said in a 1987 interview. "American theatre in recent years has tended to turn away from the rich heritage of the past. The danger isn't so much not doing new work as in ignoring the old work. Besides, just because a play was written a long time ago doesn't make it old. There won't be anything old about The
Shoemaker's Holiday once we get through with it here." Insert any play title into that line and it would exemplify Jerry's work.
A graduate of the University of Colorado (BA, MA), with a PhD in Theatre from the University of Illinois, Jerry began his career at OSF as an actor in 1957 and director in 1959. During the academic year in the early and mid-1950s he was Staff Director at the University of Arkansas and Washington State College. From 1957 to 1964 he was associate professor of drama and department chairman at Humboldt State College at Arcata, California, and from 1964 to 1970 he was chairman of the department of drama and professor of drama at the University of California at Riverside. In 1970 he was elected the first chairman of the faculty of the college of humanities and received a UC Humanities Institute Fellowship to study theatre in Sweden. He learned the language, discovered Strindberg, saw Ingmar Bergman's stage work at the Malmo Civic Theatre and returned to the States with a new vision for theatrical work. He later learned Norwegian in order to be able to read Ibsen's work in the original. When he returned to OSF in 1971, it was to take up the post of Producing Director as successor to Angus Bowmer. Jerry continued to work with Angus on a few projects until Angus died in 1979. Jerry became Artistic Director in 1981 (a title change only), retiring in 1991.
Under Jerry's leadership, OSF received the Antoinette Perry Award (Tony Award) in 1983, and in 1991 Jerry and OSF's Board of Directors refused a $49,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts due to restrictive language. OSF subsequently received the 1990 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Commendation and 1990 Open Book Award for First Amendment Courage from American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). Jerry also received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters at Pacific University in 1985, the George Norlin Alumni Award from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1989, the Oregon Governor's Award for the Arts in 1991, and the St. Olav’s Medal from King Harald of Norway in 1996.
"Prodigious scholar, rigorous intellectual, boffo showman, heart as big as The Globe." —
Phil Davidson, OSF actor
"For my 20 years with Jerry, he was rascally poetic!" —
Todd Barton, OSF Resident Composer and Music Director
Quotations from Jerry Turner
Jerry Turner on the future of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival stated in 1971 after his return from Sweden:
"Changes, when they come, must preserve the continuity of our success. And that success is based upon the conservation of what is best in dramatic literature. We shall continue to be a playwright's theatre first and foremost. We must never be lured into the cheap or shoddy through pressures of ticket sales or financial needs. Our dedication must be to the best, the highest, the most meaningful in the art. We have all we need for a theatre of greatness: players, two stages, staff, playwrights and a rightfully possessive audience. May we be worthy of the task."
"We need things to reach for. If we don't have things to reach for, our lives get filled with things that are meaningless, that are momentarily distracting but have no exalting possibilities."
"I love to have quarrels over plays. I think it shows that the work is alive. But I hate to get letters about it. If you asked me, 'What's the mark of a very vivid production?' I'd say it's the controversy outside the theatre, the argument out on the bricks, that is the mark of a good show."
"Most people (including a lot of intelligent people) like to say they know what they like when they really mean they like what they know."
"It is important for us to recognize on every level that access to our highest culture is a meaningful right of citizenship, and not something to fill in the recreational gaps between commercial exertions. A culturally deprived individual is a poor individual, not able to achieve his potential in life. Likewise, a nation starved in its cultural expressiveness is a poor nation in its spirit, however outwardly prosperous it may seem."
"The theatre owes its artistic life to its singular ability to project uniquely human values to a large and diverse contemporary community.... We do not seek to startle our audiences into perceptions, but to interpret the plays with our own 20th-century skills and insights to bring them forcefully into our consciousness as living documents. Our motto, almost from the beginning, has been 'What's Past is Prologue.'"
"In the long run, a 'National Endowment for Nice Art' could prove more dangerous than we know."
"It is the complicity of actor and witness that, it seems to me, lies at the heart of the theatrical expression."
"Every generation not only has its own Hamlet, it has its own Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Melville and Arthur Miller. A great work of art is great in part because it has the capacity to live, that is to say, it has the capacity to change, as the world and the culture change."
"But always there was this nagging doubt that literature, and especially theatre, might not be respectable. Certainly they were trivial, and if not sinful, an absolute waste of good time." (on the arts in America)
"The great flowerings of civilization (the Renaissance, classical Greece and the like) were brought about by choice — a consciousness of the possibilities of cultural excellence." (1981)
"A steady diet of happy endings is not to serve an audience but to exploit it."
"The meaning of a good play is as elusive as truth. It's never really found but the search for it is omnipotent and important."
"Without passion, theatre is just another low-paying job."