The

has closed its most heavily used hall, the

, through at least Sunday because of a damaged support beam that has made the building unsafe. The unprecedented disruption includes the cancellation of 16 performances and has set festival staff scrambling to accommodate its out-of-town customers and to find a quick engineering solution to the crisis.

Although the festival, which started in 1935, closed for a few years because of World War II, canceling shows otherwise is unheard of. Media and communications manager Amy Richard said there'd been no previous cancellations since she started with the festival in 1998, even after 9/11.

But the safety of customers and employees is a different matter.

The drama began unfolding Friday night, when staff members heard a loud noise of cracking wood during a performance of "Measure for Measure." They first thought it was an issue with some element of the elaborate sets for that production, but further inspection on Saturday morning led to the discovery of a large crack in one of the building's main structural elements, a 70-foot beam that spans the ceiling from side to side in front of the stage and supports 30 other beams.

Completed in 1970 and named after the festival's founder, the Bowmer seats 600 and is used for about a dozen shows per week throughout the festival's nine-month season.

The cause of the damage is unknown, Richard said, and it's unclear if the noise heard Friday evening represented the start of the problem or merely was the first incident noticed. "The crack is front-to-back. They don't know why that happened."

OSF called in an engineer from the city of Ashland, who concluded that the building wasn't safe for public events and that the beam would need to be reinforced. Saturday and Sunday performances in the Bowmer were canceled, and OSF's leaders, artistic director Bill Rauch and executive director Paul Nicholson, rushed home from Los Angeles, where they had been attending a Theatre Communications Group conference.

By Sunday evening, the company announced the cancellation of the coming week's Bowmer shows.

On Sunday, crews from Adroit Construction of Ashland installed scaffolding about a third of the way along each side of the damaged beam to keep it in place. Additional bracing on Monday allowed an OSF crew to remove the set from "Measure for Measure" and restored access to the building's dressing rooms, which the actors use for Elizabethan Stage shows as well as those in the Bowmer.

An announcement regarding performances for the week of June 28-July 3 will be made by 5 p.m. Thursday.

If you have tickets

What to do:

People with tickets for the performances in the Angus Bowmer Theatre may exchange tickets for a performance in the other theaters (depending on availability), receive a voucher for another play, receive a receipt for a tax-deductible donation or receive a refund. Ticket holders must return their tickets within seven days of the performance.

While you're there:

OSF is offering free reimagined, restaged versions of the performances -- at the regular times -- at Ashland's Historic Armory to ticket holders of the canceled performances.

Contact:

1-800-219-8161 or

Website:

While shows in the smaller indoor space, the New Theatre, and on the open-air Elizabethan Stage have continued as scheduled, the Bowmer has been off limits, with a tape barrier across the entrances and festival staff posted outside to answer questions. Actors presented spare versions of the canceled shows -- with simple lighting, but no sets or costumes -- in the Historic Ashland Armory, a large assembly hall a couple of blocks south of the OSF campus.

"I want you to imagine that what you're looking at, instead of some folding chairs, is a three-story house," director Christopher Liam Moore told the audience for Sunday afternoon's "concert performance" of "August: Osage County."

Ticket holders were admitted free to the alternate shows and given a seven-day window in which to exchange tickets or get a refund, among other options (see box).

The situation is especially complicated for "To Kill a Mockingbird," which sold out its entire run early in the season and is due to close July 3.

Richard said customer complaints so far have been minimal. "People are being really generous."

The 16 canceled shows so far represent about 9,600 tickets.

It's too soon to determine the extent of the financial impact, Richard said. "It's not going to be good. We'll definitely take a hit."

The festival has insurance that may reimburse losses from disruption of normal business, Richard said, but, "It's really too early to know what's covered and what's not.

"We're also concerned about the future effect -- about people who might want to come here and don't have tickets yet, but might choose not to (plan a visit) because of this."

The alternate performances will continue at the armory through Thursday, but that building will be unavailable after that. OSF staffers were busy Monday trying to find another alternate venue and to figure out whether and how time could be found in the already fiendishly complex schedules of spaces and personnel for extra rehearsals so the performances can be adjusted.

"I am profoundly moved by how our company, our community and our audiences are rising to the occasion of the crisis," Rauch said in an email Monday. "People (are) pulling together in powerful and surprising ways, with a determination to share the stories we're choosing to tell this season despite limitations. It makes me proud to work here and to live in this community and to serve this audience."

--