Ashland Wants To Be Known as ‘Storytown.’ The Rogue Valley Already Has Plenty of Material.

By the time Matt Hoffman graduated from high school in his native Ashland, Oregon, he was ready to escape. “I wanted to spread my wings,” he said. “But you travel the world a bit and realize, I grew up in a pretty amazing place.”So after a couple of decades in Los Angeles directing commercials, Hoffman brought his wife and two children home again, eager to reconnect with the virtues of the Rogue Valley, its schools, trails, food and culture. But a lack of students forced two grade schools to close, he said, and the town’s premier cultural draw, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, or OSF, had hit a slump. Add a series of scary wildfires into the mix, and the region needed a boost.Hoffman thought it might be time for a rebrand: if Portland is Stumptown and Eugene is Track Town, maybe Ashland could be “Storytown,” a nod to the theater scene but also an opening for more investment in comedy and music.Loading...Matt HoffmanMikey Van BeurenLast year, he co-founded Storytown Ashland, a nonprofit that launched the Ashland Sarcasm Festival, taking place Dec. 4-6, and this year added the Storytown app, a calendar for everything happening in the valley. As the cultural capital of the Rogue Valle...