Scott Kaiser is the Director of Company Development at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, where he has been a member of the artistic staff since 1993. During his tenure at OSF, Scott has worked as an actor, a voice and text coach, an adaptor, or a director on every play in Shakespeare’s canon.
Scott is the author of three books on Shakespeare: The Tao of Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Wordcraft, and Mastering Shakespeare: An Acting Class in Seven Scenes.
Scott has created several original works and adaptations for the theatre. These include Love’s Labor’s Won, a sequel to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost; OSF’s critically acclaimed productions of Shakespeare’s three Henry the Sixth plays, which he also co-directed; Now This, an exploration of the human consequences of American consumer culture; and Splittin’ the Raft, a retelling of the Huck Finn story through the eyes of African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Scott has coached, taught, and directed at numerous theaters and actor training programs around the country, including the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Intiman Theater in Seattle, California Institute of the Arts, Indiana University, Duke University, Seattle University, the University of Washington, the University of Utah, Southern Oregon University, the D’ell Arte School of Physical Theater, and Rose Bruford College in England.
Scott holds an ADVS from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, an MFA from the University of Washington Professional Actor Training Program in Seattle, and a BA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
A note from the Director:
As a Jewish American, I treasure Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! as a rich, passionate expression of my own cultural heritage, a loving homage to the Ashkenazi Jews that fled the pogroms of Europe, settled in the United States, and scratched their way out of poverty over many generations.
This is the story of the Berger family. Here, under one roof in the Bronx, at the height of the Great Depression, three generations of working-class Jews live and struggle together.
Here, Bessie Berger, the strong-willed matriarch, strives to overcome harsh times and hold the family together, despite the romantic yearnings of her son Ralph, the proud cynicism of her daughter Hennie, the tight-fisted grip of her brother Morty, the socialist ideals of her father Jacob, and the ineffectual dreaming of her husband, Myron.
Here, in two rooms on Longwood Avenue, we witness the distinctly Jewish elements of family life: the speech pickled with Yiddish, the jokes that deflect and subvert, the questions that prick like thorns, the wrestling with ethics, the cross-examination of the universe, not to mention the chopped liver, the knishes, and the pastrami sandwiches.
But, in a larger sense, the Berger family could be any family, at any time in America’s history. It could be a Mexican family whose ancestors crossed the Rio Grande looking for work. It could be a Vietnamese family whose parents survived the war in Southeast Asia. It could be a Haitian family, who reached our shores in a leaky boat fleeing a cruel dictatorship. Or it could be a Syrian family, today, right now, desperate to come to America to escape the deadly civil war in their homeland. It could be any family who came to this country in search of a fresh start, struggling to carve out a place, find opportunities, earn advancement, and secure a better future for themselves and for their children.
And this is why Odet’s play endures, eighty years after it was written, as a true American theatrical masterpiece—a play that’s timely whenever you produce it. Because it is about the universal American experience—about families who risk everything to come to this country, who strive everyday to obtain the promise of America, who suffer everyday with hardship and heartbreak, and yet, who wake up each morning as Americans, open their throats, and sing!