News From the Festival
Blog #2: My Favorite Memories
Rhett Guter as The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance.
By Rhett Guter
Editor’s Note: This is second installment in a series of blog posts from actor and choreographer Rhett Guter. He has appeared in numerous roles since 2005, including Tom Tucker inH.M.S. Pinafore,Tommy Djilas inThe Music Man,Peter inPeter and the Starcatcher,and this year as The Pirate King inThe Pirates of Penzanceand Houdini inRagtime*. He also choreographed this season’sThe Greenshowand in past seasons has choreographedThe Music Man, Peter and the Starcatcher,andAnything Goes.*
Hey, it’s Rhett again!
Thanks all for the responses from the last blog! The emails are still coming in. I’m loving the traditions and memories at the Utah Shakespeare Festival that are uniquely yours! I figure it’s only fair that I share some of my favorite memories at the Festival.
*Camelot,*2005: My very first show at the Festival was this legendary musical, with Brian Vaughn (now artistic director) as Arthur and Brad Carroll as the director.
*HMS Pinafore,*2006: This was my first Gilbert and Sullivan show. I played Tom Tucker the mute with no lines, but boy did I have a lot to say!
Lend Me a Tenor:*The Musical,*2007: This world premiere went on to play the West End in London! Fun fact—there is now a character in the show named after me!
*The Music Man,*2011: This was my first opportunity as a professional choreographer! To this day I think it is some of the best choreography I’ve ever created for the stage. I also played the role of Tommy Djilas
*A Midsummer Night’s Dream,*2011: I played Francis Flute in this Shakespearean comedy, and it was the only show I did that was directed by Festival Founder Fred C. Adams. The BYUtv live broadcast was a night to remember, and we won an Emmy to boot!
*Peter and the Starcatcher,*2013: My absolute favorite. I was the choreographer and played The Boy. I could write a whole blog on this one—perhaps I will. . . .
*Ragtime,*2021: Never have I been part of a more significant show. How can a story that takes place over 100 years ago, written over 20 years ago, still be so heartbreakingly relevant? Playing the role of Houdini, something of a hero to me, and the opportunity to bring my other passion (magic) to the stage makes this “one for the books.” I mourn it’s closing and hope you got an opportunity to see it.
Till next week!
Shakespeare's Heroines: Imogen in Cymbeline
Constance V Swain as Imogen in Cymbeline. (Photo by Karl Hugh.)
By Kathryn Neves
There’s no shame in reusing plotlines—and let’s be honest, Shakespeare was a pro. You’ll find the same stories over and over throughout his canon. And that’s not a bad thing! It just makes the stories more universal. Cymbeline is a great example of a play that reuses stories, yet is unique and compelling. Cymbeline’s heroine, Imogen, goes through plenty of Shakespeare’s classic plots. Just like Shakespeare’s other heroines, Imogen is made all the more interesting for her story’s archetypes.
One plot that comes up a lot in Shakespeare’s works involves a heroine dressing as a man in order to accomplish a goal. Rosalind, Viola, and Portia are all great examples. Rosalind dresses as Ganymede to protect herself and her cousin, Celia. Viola dresses as Cesario to work for Duke Orsino. Portia disguises as Balthazar to save Antonio. And, in Cymbeline, Imogen dresses as a young boy named Fidele to escape the wrath of her husband, Posthumus. Imogen, like the others, is a proactive heroine. She saves herself; she takes control of her own destiny—an important trait in a heroine, to be sure.
Shakespeare also really liked the idea of bringing people back to life. Throughout his plays, many heroines “die,” only to be revived at a crucial moment in the play. This revival adds a sort of emotional climax to the plays; whether moments of rejoicing or sorrow, “coming back to life” is an important plot point in many of Shakespeare’s plays. There are a few examples. Juliet comes to mind; she takes a potion and “dies,” only to be revived toward the end of the play (too late, unfortunately). Then there’s Hero, from Much Ado About Nothing; she fakes her death in order to teach her fiancé, Claudio, a lesson. The Winter’s Tale’s Hermione collapses at her trial, is declared dead, and returns in the end to be reunited with her husband. Imogen is no exception. During Cymbeline, she is “poisoned” by her evil stepmother; like Shakespeare’s other heroines, she seems to be dead, until she suddenly awakens—as it turns out, the “poison” was a sleeping potion.
Finally, the very crux of Cymbeline is a plot that Shakespeare used often, and effectively. Imogen is framed for being unfaithful to her husband; she is falsely accused and punished unfairly. Othello comes to mind in this instance; Desdemona, another of Shakespeare’s beloved heroines, is accused of infidelity, and murdered by her jealous husband. Then, there’s Hero again—her fiancé accuses her of being unfaithful, and breaks off the wedding at the altar. And once again we have Hermione; her husband Leonatus believes that she had an affair with his best friend, and imprisons her. However, these heroines eventually prove their innocence and live happily ever after (with the exception of Desdemona, unfortunately). Like the others, Imogen is a faithful and constant heroine.
Cymbelineis one of Shakespeare’s finest, full of stories we all know and love. Like Shakespeare’s other heroines, Imogen is complex and well-rounded. She may be at the center of plenty of reused stories; but if anything, she’s a more compelling character because of it. Her story may be recycled—but it’s no less universal.
Festival's Fall Food Drive: Helping Those in Need
The Utah Shakespeare Festival is once again partnering with the local Iron County Care and Share to give back to the community by providing food to those in need. Its annual Fall Food Drive is September 14 to October 9, and playgoers can get discount tickets for donating food to the cause.
By donating six items of non-perishable food, anyone can receive a half-price ticket to any show Mondays through Thursdays. However, this deal is good on the day of the performance only, not for advance sales; and the offer is limited to four discounted tickets per person. Food donation barrels will be located outside the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre, near the ticket office.
“It’s important every year to support this shelter, but considering the times we’re in and all of the damage caused by the pandemic, food insecurity has only gotten worse. So, the Festival is very happy to help where we can,” said Donn Jersey, the director of development and communication.
In addition to financial instability the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, devastating flooding has put local residents in an even tougher situation. Now, more than ever, the support of the community is critical to the success of the Fall Food Drive.
The Iron County Care and Share was founded in 1984 by local churches to address hunger in the community. Almost 40 years later, this organization is still working to help those in need.
The Festival typically receives over 3,500 pounds of food each year for the Iron County Care and Share. Hosting its seventeenth Fall Food Drive, Festival personnel hope to gather just as much—if not more—than in the past.
For those not purchasing tickets but who want to contribute, the Iron County Care and Share is also accepting monetary donations. Go online to https://kindest.com/iron-county-care-and-share to make your contribution.
The Festival’s 2021 season continues through October 9. Plays are The Pirates of Penzance, Cymbeline, Intimate Apparel, and The Comedy of Terrors. Tickets are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or visiting www.bard.org.
Tradition and the Festival
A scene from The Pirates of Penzance, with Rhett Guter as the Pirate King in the center..
By Rhett Guter
Editor’s Note: This is first installment in a series of blog posts from actor and choreographer Rhett Guter. He has appeared in numerous roles since 2005, including Tom Tucker inH.M.S. Pinafore,Tommy Djilas inThe Music Man, Peter inPeter and the Starcatcher,and this year as The Pirate King inThe Pirates of Penzanceand Houdini inRagtime*. He also choreographed this season’sThe Greenshowand in past seasons has choreographedThe Music Man, Peter and the Starcatcher,andAnything Goes.*
Hey, Rhett Guter here! It’s my pleasure to let you know that I’ll be taking over the Utah Shakespeare’s blog for the next couple of weeks! I’m an actor and choreographer appearing in the current season, and while Utah Shakespeare is celebrating its sixtieth season, it’s only my eighth!
My first few seasons at Festival I was a tour guide on backstage tours. It was a great way to make a couple extra bucks over the summer. We’d start at 10:15 in the lobby of the Randall L. Jones Theatre. While it was my job to explain the inner workings of the Festival to the patrons, it was, in fact, I who would learn the most about the Festival while giving those tours. . . . Let me explain. At some point on the tour, once I had rattled off enough facts to fill anyone’s head, I would turn the conversation to the patrons. I would often ask what shows people had seen or were planning to see; the response to this question was usually positive and complimentary and revealed the real reason they were there.
The patrons would share with me the number of years they had visited, their favorite places to stay or eat, how much they adored The Greenshow and the tarts, or which national park they planned to stop at on their way home. They would talk about the plays only briefly; they were much more eager to share their traditions. Somewhere between the Randall Theatre and the now retired Adams Shakespearean Theatre, I realized it was tradition, sometimes passed down through several generations, that was the lifeblood of the Festival. Much like Disneyland, people came here to create memories. (I don’t why this surprised me so much; after all, Founder Fred C. Adams loved Disney!)
This year has been a bit different, I can’t give backstage tours, and there has been very little interaction with audiences. However, I’d still love to hear about your favorite memories and traditions at the Festival. Whether from this year or years past please shoot me a note at rhett@rhettmagic.com. I hope to know more about you.
Twins: The Time-Honored Trope
Alex Keiper (left) as Jo Smith and Michael Doherty as Vyvian Jones in The Comedy of Terrors. (Photo by Karl Hugh.)
By Don Leavitt
I have had a lifelong fascination with twins. As a very young child, I, like many others, had an imaginary friend, but mine took the form of an identical twin who was like me in every way. We enjoyed the same things, finished each other’s sentences, and looked exactly the same. I was known as Donny, and my “twin” was known as Johnny. I was the clean one, Johnny was the messy one. For two years, my mother tolerated my insistence that, “It wasn’t me, Mom, it was Johnny.” It was perfectly reasonable for Mom to be confused; after all, we did look exactly alike. Today, my parents laugh about finding me in the bathroom, staring into the mirror and carrying on conversations with my reflected image, but at the time, the sheer depth of my commitment to this fantasy must have caused them more than a little concern.
Eventually, some time around first grade, I grew out of my imaginary twin, but my fascination with twins continued. I would look at classmates who were twins, or twins I saw in movies and on television, with a certain degree of jealousy. I loved their stories of being mistaken for the other, of playing pranks on people by changing places. I absolutely loved the movie, The Parent Trap (the original with Hayley Mills, thank you very much), and was fascinated by the twins’ plan to switch places so that each could spend time with the other’s custodial parent. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to be someone else and get away with it because you looked identical? To thoroughly and completely put one over on everyone else?
It is from this tradition that The Comedy of Terrors draws its comedy. The play, a farce by British playwright John Goodrum, relies on two actors to portray two different sets of identical twins, plus a younger brother who, as implausibly as farce allows, is also a dead ringer for his older, twin siblings. The plot of the play is nonsensical and almost irrelevant. It is the fun of watching two actors whiplash themselves through the various scenes, trading identities too quickly for even a plausible costume change, and the resulting confusion caused by the mistaken identities, that audiences will enjoy most of all.
The trope of using twins and mistaken identities as comedic devices is nearly as old as acting itself. As early as the Third Century BC, the Roman playwright Plautus was utilizing the mistaken identity in his work, much of which was adaptations of earlier Greek texts. Shakespeare famously used the device in The Comedy of Errors(which Goodrum makes pun of in the title of his play) and Twelfth Night. Both comedies involve twins, both identical and fraternal, and the consequences that stem from both the accidental and deliberate confusing of their identities. From Mark Twain to Stephen King, modern examples abound and extend beyond comedy and farce to drama, romance, and horror.
Shakespeare’s use of twins is particularly intriguing. Of the relationship between Shakespeare and Plautus, The Internet Shakespeare Editions notes: “One of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies is based closely upon two Latin originals. The Comedy of Errorstakes the plots of two plays by Plautus: the *Menaechmi,*a play about long separated twins who are mistaken for each other and are eventually reunited; and the *Amphitruo,*where masters and servants become confused. Shakespeare combined the two plots and added twin servants to the twin masters to complicate things further” (https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/ Library/ SLT/ drama/ classical%20drama/ plautus.html).
Goodrum’s The Comedy of Terrors bears no resemblance to Plautus, Shakespeare, or The Comedy of Errors, except for the deliberate play on words in its title. But it does build on the trope by relying solely on the concept of twins and mistaken identities to the point that it is the story. Goodrum, whose previous plays have been mostly noir or macabre adaptations of stories by Dickens, Conan Doyle, and Poe, toys gleefully with these concepts, adding just a dash of the macabre to which he is more accustomed for humorous effect.
There is almost no point in dwelling on the plot. The conceit of this play—that two actors play all the roles—is a vehicle for actors to have fun and flex their performing muscles; the audience is really just taken along for the ride. It is madcap and breathtaking and a lot of fun, but the saving grace is that it never takes itself too seriously. Goodrum cleverly, and quite wisely, allows the actors and the play to wink at themselves from time to time. Midway through Act Two, one character is suddenly introduced to the third identical sibling of another character and can barely conceal her disbelief. “Oh, my God! You’re not another one, are you?” she asks, to which the new character responds (in a funny homage to the trope itself), “If—by some strange and unnatural coincidence much favoured by comic playwrights from the Third Century BC Greeks onward—but I digress—if—by some chance—you’ve ’appened to meet both of my two identical elder brothers—then, ‘Yes! I’m another one!’”
Of course, the play relies heavily on frantic entrances and exits to make the mechanics of two actors playing all the roles work, and Goodrum has obviously had fun inventing reasons to get one character offstage so another character can come on. Even these machinations get a gentle tease: later in the scene mentioned above, the first character asks, “Do the three of you often get together in the same place?” And the other wryly replies, “Not if we can ’elp it, no.”
I was never able to conjure an identical twin, and I never had the identical twin offspring I was just sure I’d get to be a dad to. I didn’t fall in love with a twin and, to my knowledge, have never dated a twin. The jealousy I felt watching other twins growing up has mostly dissipated. But every once in a while, I read or watch something about twins that captures my attention. I devoured The Comedy of Terrors with rapt amusement, and when I was finished, I couldn’t help but think, “Damn, that sounds like fun!”
Get to Know Playwright Lynn Nottage
Playwright Lynn Nottage
By Martine Green-Rogers
“Nottage’s imaginative exploration of history, her ability to find resonance in unexpected moments in the past, and her sensitive evocation of social concerns have made her a powerful voice in theater. She is a dramatist who will continue to provide us with provocative plays in which her characters confront some of society’s most complex issues.”
— McArthur Foundation Website
Lynn Nottage, playwright and screenwriter, is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. She was born on November 2, 1964 in Brooklyn, New York, to Ruby Nottage, a schoolteacher and principal, and Wallace Nottage, a child psychologist.
She graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, and while there, she wrote her first full-length play, The Darker Side of Verona, about an African-American Shakespeare company traveling through the South. She earned a bachelor of arts in 1986 from Brown University, a master of fine arts in 1989 from the Yale School of Drama, and a doctorate of fine arts in 2011 from Brown University.
Her plays include Mlima’s Tale; By the Way; Meet Vera Stark; Ruined (Pulitzer Prize); Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play); Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy;Las Meninas;Mud, River, Stone;Por’knockers;The Secret Life of Bees (with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead), and POOF!
Her play Sweat (Pulitzer Prize), premiered at and commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival American Revolutions History Cycle/Arena Stage, moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at the Public Theater. Inspired by her research on Sweat, Nottage developed This Is Reading, a performance installation based on two years of interviews, at the Franklin Street, Reading Railroad Station in Reading, Pennsylvania.
In addition, she is the co-founder of the production company, Market Road Films, whose most recent projects include The Notorious Mr. Bout, First to Fall, and Remote Control. She was also a writer and producer on the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee.
Nottage is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Steinberg “Mimi” Distinguished Playwright Award, PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, Merit and Literature Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, Doris Duke Artist Award, Nelson A. Rockefeller Award for Creativity, The Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Helen Hayes Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University.
Last, but certainly not least, Nottage has received honorary degrees from Juilliard and Albright College.
About Playwriting
Nottage has said in numerous interviews that she feels that she writes with the marginalized in mind, and more specifically that she is interested in uncovering untold stories. She states, “not just theatre but art . . . has to reflect what is happening in the culture. Responsibility is not quite the right word, but I do think there is a role for us to play in asking difficult questions, reflecting back what we see” (Compton, Sarah, “Playwright Lynn Nottage: ‘We are a country that has lost our narrative” [The Guardian, 2 December 2018]).
As such, she recognizes the trials of getting plays produced. Plays with a large cast, such as Ruined, are harder to get to the production phase. She states “Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights’ minds are shrinking but because of the economics” (Nestruck, J. Kelly, “Interview with Playwright Lynn Nottage” [The Globe and Mail, 10 February 2010]). She feels that plays like Intimate Apparel, with its small, multicultural cast, makes it a popular choice for regional theatres.
Intimate Apparel is set in 1905 and centers on the story of Esther Mills, an African American seamstress, who makes lingerie for the wealthy women and the ladies of the night. Esther’s entire world shifts when the owner of the boarding house she lives in gives her a letter from a man in Panama and she begins to correspond with him. Digging into the world of blackness and immigration while also excavating what it means to be a newly married couple who, in the end, barely knew one another before marrying allows Nottage to bathe this world in all of the complexities of life in the 1900s.
Nottage has done many interviews about why she wrote Intimate Apparel. She has stated that the play is about the “confluence” of immigrants coming in from Eastern Europe and the African Americans moving from rural areas in the south to larger urban areas and what that means in the bedroom (Nestruck).
The genesis of the story began with a passport photo of her great grandmother that was a mystery to her. She knew her great grandmother was a seamstress, but the avenues to find out more about her and the photograph were cut off because her mother has recently passed away. She went to the New York Public Library in an attempt to find out more, and a year later, Intimate Apparel was written. As she states, “All my plays are about people who have been marginalized,” people “who have been erased from the public record” (Soloski, Alexis, “Lynn Nottage: Intimate Apparel and what lies beneath my plays” [The Guardian, 28 May 2014]).
Nottage talked to Alexis Soloski of The Guardian about the rather unconventional setting of the play. She states that she “placed a bed in the middle of every scene, ‘because I wanted to see the way in which it impacts interactions. Even if the bed isn’t used, even if no one sits on it, how does that change the sexual dynamic, the social intercourse?’” Soloski goes on in the article to state how that framing of the bed in the scenes “keeps the play focused on questions of intimacy. Relationships range from those which are physically passionate but devoid of emotional affection to those . . . which are rich in love, but entirely chaste.” These chaste but deep relationships anchor the play and the interest for Nottage in these relationships is evident in the depth of the friendship between Esther and Mr. Marks. As Soloski says, “To see Esther and Mr. Marks together is to feel the almost unbearable poignancy of love denied.” It is this type of emotional ride that makes the play both relatable and almost tragic. To craft a story like this, with some basic facts about her great grandmother, and a host of other stories from Black women of the time period, that makes this a genuinely heartfelt story.
Start School with a Student Discount
Dan Frezza (left) as Sir Nathaniel, Henry Woronicz as Holofernes, and Thomas J. Novak as Dull in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2013 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. (Photo by Karl Hugh.)
In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s character, Gremio, said, “O this learning, what a thing it is!” And what an opportunity it is, especially when students can supplement classroom learning with fun and exciting live theatre at the Utah Shakespeare Festival—all at a discount!
With summer coming to a close, students are heading back to school for another year of learning; and the Festival is offering them several deals, including the following:
**Student Access Pass:**Students may purchase the Student Access Pass for $40 and receive one ticket per performance to unlimited performances during the season. The pass can be purchased anytime and then used at the Ticket Office to receive a ticket on the day of the show, on as many days as you want. This pass is available for enrolled elementary through university students and home schoolers. An ID is required when purchasing the pass.Keep in mind that this pass excludes premier seating, and tickets are subject to availability. The pass expires Oct. 9, 2021, only one pass per student is allowed, and no refunds or exchanges are allowed.
Half-Price Student Rush Tickets: This discount is available one hour before each performance for half-off tickets to any of the plays. It is available only for in-person purchases at the Ticket Office. A student ID is required.
Child/Student $10 Off: If you prefer to purchase your tickets in advance or online, a child/student discount is available 24/7 online or by calling the Ticket Office during regular office hours at 800-PLAYTIX. This discount excludes premier seating, but can be purchased at any time.
Shakespeare said in Love’s Labour’s Lost that “study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,” and so it can be; but a break is always a good thing, especially when a play, whether comedy, musical, or tragedy, awaits at the Festival. So come and enjoy live theatre, and learn while you’re at it!
To purchase tickets and obtain these passes and discounts, call 800-PLAYTIX or visit the ticket office in person. You may also receive the Child/Student discount online at www.bard.org. The Festival’s 2021 season runs through October 9. Plays are Pericles, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, The Pirates of Penzance, Ragtime, Cymbeline, Intimate Apparel, and The Comedy of Terrors.
Blog #4: Freedom within "The Bubble"
Jeremy Thompson (left) as Brutus, Gilberto Saenz as Metellus, Isabella Abel-Suarez as Cinna, and Daria Pilar Redus as Cassius in the Utah Shakespeare Festival educational production of Julius Caesar.
By Daria Pilar Redus
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final in a series of blog posts from actor Daria Pilar Redus. She appeared at the Festival in 2018 inBig RiverandThe Greenshowand this year is playing Sarah inRagtimeand Kate inThe Pirates of Penzance*. She is also the recipient of the Festival’s 2021 Michael and Jan Finlayson Acting Award.*
In March of 2020, I was on the first national tour of The SpongeBob Musical experiencing so much artistic fulfillment while traveling to countless theatres around the country. It was a dream come true. Then, the pandemic canceled almost every show nationwide. With that chapter closed, I enjoyed my time at home with my family and watched an absurd number of movies with an even more absurd amount of snacks. It felt like a little vacation at first, but then the itch to work slowly crept back in. I left my parents’ home in Ohio and moved back into my apartment in New York City. Being in the city again made that itch even itchier, and I became desperate to find something that could cheer my heart back up. Right on cue, and completely out of the blue, I received a phone call with a Cedar City area code that would shape the next nine months of my life.
This random phone call came with an offer to be in Julius Caesar as Cassius in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming Covid-conscious “tour.” I couldn’t believe it. They remembered me? How can this brilliant director that I’ve never met trust me with this massive role? The Festival had never even seen me perform any Shakespeare. All of these head scratchers, combined with the fact that the mountains of Utah are where I have always been my absolute happiest, made this opportunity feel like a godsend. He knew that not only did I need to be back at my favorite place in the world, but I needed to work on material that would make the fire inside me to tell stories again hotter than ever. And that is exactly what happened.
Rehearsing and performing Julius Caesar was more fulfilling than I even prayed for it to be. The entire month-long process was done in a Covid-safe “bubble.” It began with Zoom rehearsals, and we eventually moved into the Anes Theatre, but were still isolated from everyone else inside and outside of the Festival. We wore masks at all times. The isolation and masks may lead you to believe that we felt trapped. But, the freedom and liberation we felt in getting to work again with an amazingly talented team, even under these new and odd circumstances, was stronger than any of the obstacles that stood in the way of making the process feel “normal.” I clung onto every second of that experience, but it ended too soon. Three weeks of rehearsals and two filmed runs of the show, no audience—it was a tease. I wanted more, I craved more. Then, well . . . fast forward to the Festival’s 2021 summer season. Here we are.
I’m so grateful. This Festival gave me my first professional job out of college. This Festival gave me my first job after the pandemic. This Festival gave me a dream role that I still can’t believe I’m getting the chance to play. I just hope that I’ve given it as much as it’s given me.
Prop Becomes Reality—with a Little Help from Mom
Hayley Parker (left), senior properties artisan; Ashlynd Cox, properties artisan; Ada Lauren Taylor, properties artisan; and Kelly Kreutsberg, properties supervisor.
Sometimes a prop in a play is so important to the storyline, or carries so much meaning, or is simply so intriguing that it almost becomes a character in the play. Such is the case of the crazy quilt in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of Intimate Apparel: the quilt should almost be a line in the cast list, all because of Festival Properties Director Benjamin Hohman, his talented crew—and his mom.
The quilt figures prominently in the play. It is visible on Esther’s bed in many scenes. Esther has sewn the quilt over many years from scraps left from the beautiful undergarments she has made for other women. But, more importantly, she has sewn into the quilt money she has made from her sewing; it is her “bank” where she is saving to someday open her own beauty shop for black women.
So where does one turn when he needs help making a quilt? His mother, of course! Making the quilt was a major undertaking, and Hohman knew that his mother, Patricia, was an avid quilter (making dozens a year) and could take the load off his small crew by making the basic quilt.
His mother jumped at the chance, saying: “I can make a quilt, and someone else will pay for all the components? Sign me up.”
“So we had the designer choose what he thought would work as a basic color pallet and then purchased and shipped the fabrics, thread, etc. to my mom in Ohio,” said Hohman. “She then created the quilt top and mailed it back to us.”
Once the quilt top arrived and was used in a rehearsal, director Tasia A. Jones said she wanted it “way more crazy.”
“So we dug through the costume shop scrap bins and pulled a few dozen fabrics and added pieces to the quilt for about a week,” said Hohman. “Once that was done, we embellished it with multiple trims, gimps, lace edgings, etc. and then finished by hand stitching floss, yarn, and other thread-like materials in various stitching patterns over the seams.”
The “trick” of the quilt lies in the construction of pockets that appear to be sewn closed, but are actually attached with Velcro, allowing the actor to slightly “tear” the quilt to add to or retrieve the money hidden within. “We sort of ‘cheated’ when we made the base quilt,” said Hohman. “We made all the pink pieces into pockets with Velcro, so the actress could choose anywhere on the quilt, and as long as she pulled on a pink fabric panel she would find the money.”
Overall, the quilt, which is just a bit shy of a queen-size blanket, has 416 individual pieces of fabric and trim and is hand-stitched with nearly 200 feet of detailed stitching on the top. It took 160 to 180 hours of work from various artisans to create.
So, character or not, the quilt is certainly a work of art that contributes greatly to Intimate Apparel and the enjoyment of playgoers. When you see the play, Hohman and everyone involved hope you enjoy the quilt, its beauties, and its tricks. And, of course, there is one twist in the plot and surprise of the quilt we won’t even mention. No spoilers here!
The Festival’s 2021 season runs through October 9. Plays are Pericles, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, The Pirates of Penzance, Ragtime, Cymbeline, Intimate Apparel, and The Comedy of Terrors. Tickets are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or visiting www.bard.org.
Festival to Present Sensory-Friendly Performances
Michael Doherty as Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors.
Richard R. Henry as Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance.
In an effort to serve those with autism spectrum disorders, sensory sensitivities, or other similar disabilities, the Utah Shakespeare Festival recently announced it will present sensory-friendly performances of two of its most popular shows.
The Comedy of Errors, the Shakespeare farce featuring two sets of twins, will be featured September 8 at 8 p.m. in the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre. The Pirates of Penzance, a hilarious family musical, will be September 18 at 2 p.m in the Randall L. Jones Theatre.
During these special performances, patrons will be able to enjoy the show together with family and friends in a welcoming, inclusive, and relaxed space. Tickets are half-price, with some additional education and group discounts available. More information about the plays is available online at www.bard.org, but tickets must be ordered by calling the Ticket Office at 800-PLAYTIX.
“Theatre rules will be relaxed for this performance. Patrons can freely respond to the show in their own way and without judgment,” said Education Director Michael Bahr. “This is our second time undertaking this type of performance, and our patrons enjoyed it so much that we are doubling the number of performances this year.”
These changes include the following:
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House lights will be left on slightly so patrons may see to easily move around. Some patrons may want to stand or walk a bit.
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Playgoers will be able to engage in self-expression, singing and clapping along—or talking or making other noises.
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Playgoers will have the freedom to take breaks during the performance; they will be welcome to come and go as needed. The cry rooms will be available to all patrons.
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Playgoers may bring a fidget toy or other calming object.
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Playgoers may look at phones and tablets during the performance, or they may wear headphones.
“Modifications will be environmental, not artistic, so that patrons can enjoy the same artistic product seen during other performances,” said Bahr. “However, we may decide to lower or dim any strobe lights or sudden, loud noises that could startle patrons.”
Children must be four years of age or older in order to attend this performance. Properly-worn masks are required in the Randall Theatre, but not in the Engelstad Theatre.