The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's outdoor Elizabethan Stage seats 1,200 people. Shown here is a scene from the festival's 2005 production of Shakespeare's ”Love's Labour's Lost.” Top photo courtesy of T. Charles Erickson

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is in the middle of its 71st year exhibiting plays in Ashland. The season began in February and runs through October. Two plays, ”UP” and ”The Diary of Anne Frank,” have finished their runs, but nine more are on tap through the fall.

The following is a short synopsis of each play still in production.

Elizabethan Stage:

* ”The Merry Wives of Windsor”: Shakespeare’s popular comedy about the amorous overtures of the rotund knight Falstaff; runs through Oct. 6.

* ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona”: One of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, the production has been modernized so that an Amish community and a country club take the place of Shakespeare’s wildly dissimilar Verona and Milan; runs through Oct. 8.

* ”Cyrano de Bergerac”: The classic tale of tragic romance by Edmond Rostand, set in the 17th century, and featuring the man with the biggest nose in literature, outside of Pinocchio; runs through Oct. 7.

New Theatre:

* ”Bus Stop”: Written in 1955 by American playwright William Inge, the play follows a group of bus passengers who are stranded overnight in a small-town cafe; runs through Oct. 29.

* ”King John”: One of Shakespeare’s histories, about the English king and his struggles with the country’s nobility; runs through Oct. 29.

Angus Bowmer Theatre:

* ”The Winter’s Tale”: Part tragedy, part comedy, Shakespeare’s play concerns Leontes, King of Sicilia, and Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, in a treacherous romantic triangle that surprisingly gives way to a happy ending; runs through Oct. 29.

* ”The Importance of Being Earnest”: Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy; runs through Oct. 29.

* ”Intimate Apparel”: A drama by contemporary American playwright Lynn Nottage, about an illiterate African-American seamstress struggling to define herself in early 20th century New York City; runs through Oct. 28.

* ”Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”: An adaptation by playwright David Edgar of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous story about one man’s flirtations with psychosis; runs through Oct. 28.

For more details, as well as show times and dates, visit www.osfashland.org.

– Andrew Moore

If You Go

What: Oregon Shakespeare Festival

When: Through Oct. 29

Where: Ashland

Cost: Ticket prices vary (from $29 to $72 for adults)

Contact: 541-482-2111 or www.osfashland.org