Page 47 - SOUTHERN OREGON MAGAZINE SPRING 2022

Director (and incoming Artistic Director) Nataki Garrett with
FAIR Assistant Director Raphael Massie in a rehearsal of How
to Catch Creation at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, June 2019.
Photo by Kim Budd.
important it was that we bring August Wilson back. I thought, “We can
bring in August Wilson. I just have to make sure that we can fit it into
the container.” So, the lessons are around right-sizing OSF, making sure
that if it costs a dime to do, we’re only going to spend a dime. We’re
not going to spend 20 dimes and then have to raise money to cover
operations because of it. I’m not going to be that artistic leader.

WHERE DID YOU GROW UP AND WHAT YOUR LIFE WAS LIKE?

NATAKI: I grew up in the Bay Area. I’m an Oakland girl. But I was
born in Washington, D.C. My parents were very active in a student
movement at San Francisco State. Afterward, they moved to Washington
D.C. where I was born. My mother and I moved back to the Bay Area
when I was about six years old. So, I’m from Oakland and Washington
D.C. I went back to D.C. every summer to see my dad until I was in
my teens. I ended up attending a historically black college, Virginia
Union University, which is where Douglas Wilder, the first and only
black governor of Virginia went. I was an English major with a theater
minor – my mother said that she wouldn’t pay for a theater degree.
After graduating I moved to Atlanta to work at the Alliance Theater
Company the first year that Kenny Leon took over as artistic leader.
In my formative years of artistic leadership I watched the first African-
American men lead theaters. I was there as primarily a stage manager,
but I knew I wanted to be a director.

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