BACKSTAGE with Evalyn Hansen

Over 300 interviews with extraordinary theater artists.

For more than a decade, BACKSTAGE columnist Evalyn Hansen, M.A., interviewed prominent actors, directors, designers, writers, musicians, and filmmakers personifying Ashland, Oregon's flourishing theater scene.

Accompany Evalyn Hansen as she visits hundreds of celebrated theater artists. Through casual conversations, they reveal their personal life stories, describe their passion for their art, and disclose their personal artistic practices, theories, and techniques. They portray the vision, authenticity, and strength of character it takes to produce life-changing significant theater. They bring new insights into the history of Ashland's enduring Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Through fascinating anecdotes, theater's most creative talents relate personal pivotal moments leading them into a life in theater. They depict the unique lifestyle vital to thriving in professional theater. They relate the sacrifice and steadfast determination required to succeed in this everchanging and competitive art form. They speak of the trust, discipline, and commitment it takes to deliver world class theater. Their delightful performance stories bring out their overwhelming excitement and love of shared creativity - when artists meet on stage to produce - a play.

A lifelong, passionate, and dedicated enthusiast of theater in its many different forms, Evalyn Hansen initially heralds from the San Francisco Bay Area where she earned a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary from San Francisco State University. Author of numerous plays and adaptations, she trained as an actor at The American Conservatory Theatre; performed with San Francisco's Magic Theatre and the Berkeley Improvisation Ensemble; directed plays for the Ashland Contemporary Theatre and Oregon Stage Works; and is Co-founder (with Ann Beckom) and Director of Oregon's Literacy Theater.