There are a like number of music groups, a Bach festival is held nearby, and Southern Oregon University is chockablock with offerings. The festival has three separate theaters with afternoon and evening performances, so even in the space of a weekend one could see six plays.

Out of 11 offerings through the nine-month season, five of them are Shakespeare's. The others are from different playwrights, different times. Today, the festival even commissions new work by well-tested, but not necessarily well-known, playwrights.

Blockbusters like King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth are repeated every few years, but the company covers the entire canon in 20 years. To me, the new plays are the most fascinating. This year I saw Top Dog, Under Dog by Suzan-Lori Parks, which is a gritty, two-person play about brothers whose dreams are unraveling.

The other standout was A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, written in 1959. Both plays are by African American women; both are about family relationships; and both are about all of us. Above all, this is an American Shakespeare company, stresses artistic director Libby Appel.

And to that end, the company reflects the nation's cultural diversity, even though the town and the audiences don't—yet. Ashland itself is lovely, but its citizenry is appallingly homogenous. The audience looks as though it had answered a casting call for retired English professors and their wives.

It's an old crowd, a white crowd. The company, however, is dotted with people of color. If the company reflects the entire country, Ashland will eventually follow suit, is the reasoning. Play casting is done as though color blind, unless it's a play where racism is a key ingredient, as is the case in Raisin.

FRIDAY MATINEE: Quite a bit closer to home is another theater group, the Friday Matinee. It's an offshoot of an AAUW interest group that's been in existence for probably more than 50 years, and its mission is reading plays aloud.

"It's been around forever," says coordinator Felicia Pollock. Friday Matinee has some 25 members, but about half that number attend the monthly meetings at the library on the fourth Friday of the month.

The final meeting of the year was held at the Pollocks' last week, with a potluck lunch and everyone reading. The usual format is to present a play that has been cast earlier. At least one member is a professional.

That would be Isabel Schaffert, who played the original Faye in One Man's Family, one of the most popular radio shows of the '30s. Today she's 93—and still attends meetings. And she's not the only nonagenarian.

Anne Campbell and Ellen Kummerer are also in their 90s. Another long-timer is Martha Beverett, who now lives at the Villages. She was president of Friends of the Library and one of the founding members of the Book-Go-Round.

She and her late husband, Andy, were very active in the community.

HONORING G'DAUGHTER: Peggy and Warren Johnson held a backyard barbecue for their granddaughter Christy Harrison, 18, and her five Mission Year compadres recently. The six are working and living in Oakland's inner city, providing help to children, single moms and the elderly there.

It's a yearlong program similar to City Team Ministries, and participants solicit the money for their yearlong adventure. All six live together in a duplex. The three women and three men are from Hawaii, New Zealand, Michigan and Chicago.

Christy's father is director of Calvin Crest Conference in Oakhurst, a year-round Presbyterian church camp. In Oakland the volunteers are active in the neighborhood church, Cosmopolitan Baptist. One member plays the drums for church services.

NEW ROTARY SLATE: Newly elected president of Saratoga Rotary is Dan Floyd, taking over the reins from past president Dane Christensen. Other officers are Reiko Iwanaga, president elect; Charles Swan, secretary; and John Fraker, treasurer.

Gordon Case will be art show director. Other directors and chairpersons include Gary Brandenburg, club service; Wil Houde, membership; David Montagna, information management; Jim LeBlanc, international service; and Connie Palladino, community service.

Others are Robert Catalano, fellowship; Jim Slacke, vocational service; Chuck Page, youth service; Bryan Knysh, bulletin editor; Ed Porter, We Care; Warren Heid, historian; John Marian, sergeant at arms; Mark Linsky, Saratoga High Interact; and Fred Armstrong, Building Bridges.

NICK & NATURE: Aegis Gallery will hold a champagne reception July 3, 1­4 p.m., for nature photographer Nick Fedrick, whose work is showing at the gallery until July 25.

Got a tip for Saratoga Sampler? Send email to maryanncook@earthlink.net.