Pioneer in Eugene theater dies at 79

Ed Ragozzino, whose lifelong passion for theater helped bring about the creation of Eugene’s Hult Center for the Performing Arts, died of cancer Saturday morning at Sacred Heart Medical Center at River¬Bend. He was 79.
Ragozzino taught high school and college drama in Eugene, directed local theater shows and worked as a professional voice talent and actor in movies, television and radio. He campaigned for years on behalf of the performing arts here in ways both political and personal.
“Ed had a vision in terms of bringing the performing arts to Eugene that was extraordinary,” said Eugene arts patron and longtime friend Hope Pressman. “And I admired the way he helped youngsters who didn’t even know they had talent to become confident of their own abilities and blossom.”
One of those youngsters was Julie Payne, a girl from Sweet Home who never imagined she might have an acting career until her family moved to Eugene in the early 1960s and she encountered a darkly good-looking, no-nonsense young drama teacher.
Early days in Eugene
Born and reared in San Mateo, Calif., Ragozzino came to Eugene in 1950 to attend the University of Oregon as a broadcasting major; he quickly began performing in plays in the theater department run by Horace Robinson.
During the Korean War he was drafted into the Army, which sent him to the Signal Corps’ motion picture center on Long Island, N.Y. There he made training films, working with such contemporaries as dramatist and author Ira Levin, and acted in three off-Broadway shows. He returned to Eugene in 1955 and completed a master’s degree the following year at the UO.
His first job after graduation was teaching drama at Eugene High School, now South Eugene High School. He also deejayed on local radio.
He developed the high school theater program here into a spectacular success, known especially for its musicals. A production of “Music Man,” for example, sold out four performances in the high school’s 2,000-seat auditorium.
“It was very prestigious to be in one of his high school productions. As I recall, he had about 200 students try out for ‘The Music Man,’ my first show, in 1963,” recalled Very Little Theatre veteran Scott Barkhurst, who was a student of Ragozzino’s at Eugene High from 1962 until 1964. “I’m not sure it’s accurate to say it was like being on the football team, but it probably carried as much social capital among the student body.”
In 1968, Ragozzino became head of the performing arts department at the brand-new Lane Community College, a job he held until 1986.
That year he founded the Eugene Festival of Musical Theater, an organization dedicated to producing professional musicals at the Hult. It staged shows like “Peter Pan,” “Hello Dolly” and “Cabaret” before succumbing, in 1995, to an era whose tastes ran to cable television and the new Internet more than to live musicals.