Thanks to Our Volunteers

The evening of March 20 was set aside at the Utah Shakespeare Festival to recognize our wonderful volunteers. Over 200 men and women put in countless hours each year hosting, ushering, preparing mailings, and completely numerous other tasks.

Thus, at the Volunteer Recognition evening, the Festival honored them with short speeches, a lively performance by the Festival Playmakers, and dinner, as well as years of service pins to those who have served for five, ten, twenty, and more years.

Thank you, our indispensable volunteers and friends!

Nathan Detroits through Time

By Allison Borzoni

Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit

Guys and Dolls has been popular ever since it premiered on November 24, 1950. It has won dozens of awards throughout its runs and revivals, and, through time, there have been many faces for Nathan Detroit. From Bob Hoskins to Patrick Swayze, famously talented men have taken on the role in their own way. Here are just a few through the decades:

Sam Levene (1950): The man who first took on the role of Nathan Detroit was an American Broadway and film actor. He was prolific on Broadway, appearing in 37 shows over 50 years—a majority of which were original Broadway productions. Nathan Detroit’s solo of “Sue Me” was written in one octave because of Levene’s limited vocal range. A hit from the very beginning, the first production of Guys and Dolls ran for 1,200 performances and it won five Tony Awards along the way. If you’re wishing that you could have been there, just buy the original cast recording—it was transferred onto CD in the 1980s.

Frank Sinatra (1955): Ol’ Blue Eyes sold more than 150 million records worldwide and won eleven Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity. He produced his own record label and acted in movies, as well as musicals. Finally, he beat out Sam Levene for the role of Nathan Detroit in the 1955 film version of Guys and Dolls. Frank Loesser wrote three new songs for the movie version, and “Adelaide” was written specifically for Sinatra. The movie made over $5 million and has a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Robert Guillaume (1976): Guillaume toured the world as a cast member of the Broadway musical Free and Easy. He soloed on The Tonight Show and was a member of the Robert De Cormier Singers. He was also nominated for a Tony Award for his role as Nathan Detroit. Guillaume was a part of the all-black cast for the first Broadway revival of the show in 1976. Guillaume and Ernestine Jackson were nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards while Ken Page won a Theatre World Award for his performance. The show closed after 239 performances and 12 previews.

Nathan Lane (1992): Lane has covered all of the bases as an American stage, film, and television actor and writer. You may recognize him as the voice of Timon from The Lion King or from his roles on Modern Family. He had the role of Nathan Detroit for the most successful revival of Guys and Dolls since the premiere. The show ran for 1,143 performances and received eight Tony Award nominations. The show won four of those nominations, including Best Revival, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival. This run featured several revisions, including new music and redesigned orchestrations.

Henry Goodman (1996): He’s been in movies as well as theatre, such as Doctor List from Avengers: Age of Ultron. He has won the Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor three times, as well as a London Critics Circle Theatre Award. He brought his talents to the role of Nathan Detroit for a revival of Guys and Dolls in Great Britain. This rendition of Guys and Dolls received three Olivier nominations and won Best Supporting Performance in a Musical. The Critics Circle Theatre awarded the revival Best Direction and Best Musical.

In the summer of 2017,  the Utah Shakespeare Festival will introduce a new Nathan Detroit, who will continue the oldest established permanent floating craps game in New York, in Cedar City, Utah. Buckle your seats for Havana and back, ladies and gentleman—we’re bringing Guys and Dolls to Cedar City this summer.

Top Ten Shakespeare Plays in Pop Culture

By Allison Borzoni

There is no question that Shakespeare has influenced our language, our literature, and our way of looking at many things. But it may surprise you how much of the Bard’s plays have crept into our modern culture, not just words, but entire plots and characters in many cases. We are sure you can find plenty of examples of your own, but here are our choices for the top ten plays in pop culture today.

Melisa Pereyra (top) as Juliet and Chris Klopatek as Romeo in the Festival’s educational touring production of Romeo and Juliet, 2013.

1. Romeo and Juliet
The greatest love story ever retold has been done in dozens of different ways. From Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” to the animated movie Gnomeo & Juliet, we just can’t seem to get enough. There’s always another way to spin this Shakespeare classic, or you can snap it out to West Side Story instead. With all of these popular adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, it has definitely made a mark on our collective psyche, or on our brains like in the zombie movie Warm Bodies.

Danforth Comins as Hamlet in Hamlet, 2012.

2. Hamlet
The most popular scene of Hamlet may just be the misuse of poor Yorick’s skull during Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Even Nightmare before Christmas references it in “Jack’s Lament.” One of the most well-known adaptations is The Lion King, but one way to get everyone on board with a Shakespeare adaptation is to translate into—that’s right—Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute has taken Chancellor Gorkon seriously and brought the original Klingon version back to us humans in The Klingon Hamlet.

Chelsea Steverson (left), Lillian Castillo, and Monica Lopez as Weyward Sisters in Macbeth, 2010.

3. Macbeth
The witches seem to have taken the throne when it comes to references to Macbeth. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban contains a choir rendition of “Double double toil and trouble.” And even Spock shares his opinion of, “Very bad poetry, Captain,” when a version of the witches appears in the Star Trek episode, “Catspaw.” However, Beauty and the Beast takes it back to the main characters when Gaston appropriates Lady Macbeth’s line, “Screw your courage to the sticking place” while riling up the villagers—maybe he reads more than Belle gives him credit for.

Brian Vaughn (left) as Petruchio and Melinda Pfundstein as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, 2015. 

4. The Taming of the Shrew
The most shocking connection between Shakespeare and pop-culture may be that the word ‘Bedazzled’ actually comes from The Taming of the Shrew. And Katherine doesn’t use the word to describe how she has studded her hem or cat with plastic jewels, but to say, “so bedazzled with the sun” (4.5.46). One adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew is the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You, but the movie’s real achievement is giving to dads everywhere the hero that is Walter Stratford. The teenager’s explanation: “Mr. Stratford, it’s just a party.” The dad’s response: “And hell is just a sauna.”

Nell Geisslinger (left) as Viola (disguised as Cesario) and Grant Goodman as Orsino in Twelfth Night, 2014*.*

5. Twelfth Night
Shakespeare is the man to thank for inspiring this quote: “And when I close my eyes, I see you for who you truly are, which is UUUG-LAY.” Yep, She’s the Man is an adaptation of *Twelfth Night.*Although the plot of the movie follows pretty closely with the tangled net of love triangles in the play, don’t read the play looking for characters flashing each other in a soccer stadium.

Sam Ashdown as Henry V in Henry V, 2016*.*

6. Henry V
As BBC’s Sherlock comes to a close, there’s one more mystery to solve. “The game’s afoot,” did not originate with Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalking cap. King Henry shouts the phrase before his army goes, “once more into the breach.”  This Shakespeare quote has made its way into pop culture from the days Arthur Conan Doyle all the way to the present day through the household name of Sherlock Holmes.

Elijah Alexander as Richard in Richard III, 2011*.*

7. Richard III
Yet another quote we shout at one another has a misunderstood origin. The bulbous Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland was not the first to use the phrase, “Off with her head!” The subject of execution is a man in Shakespeare’s play, but Richard’s four-word answer to the problem of Lord Hastings is, “Chop off his head.” Another reference is the Netflix series, House of Cards, which borrows the soliloquy nature of its anti-hero from Richard III. In both play and show, the audience is in on the murderous plots from the very beginning. Whether its king or president, Richard and Underwood will make their way to their rightful place. 

Jonathan Earl Peck (left) as Othello and Lindsey Wochley as Desdemona in Othello, 2008*.*

8. Othello
This tragedy is also the source of a common quote. It’s usually used with the connotation of sharing your feelings with others as a sensitive soul, but when Iago said, “wear my heart upon my sleeve,” he was condemning it as a vulnerability. The name Iago should also ring a bell, as a certain parrot in Aladdin has the same name. Just like the real Iago, he acts harmless around the Sultan until the killer moment. 

Gary Neal Johnson (left) as Antonio and Tony Amendola as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, 2010. 

9. The Merchant of Venice
Speaking of, “I just want to be King”, Lion King II has a reference to The Merchant of Venice: “If you need your pound of flesh.” The young Kovu says the line when he crosses into the Pridelands by accident. For the Trekkies, Star Trek: The Next Generation also references The Merchant of Venice when the droid Data adapts a quote for his own use, “When you prick me, do I not leak?”

David Pichette (left) as Fool and Tony Amendola as Lear in King Lear, 2015*.*

10. King Lear
Adaptations cross cultures all the time (count how many American shows are direct adaptations from Great Britain’s shows, I dare you). This cross cultural adaptation is very evident with Ran (1985). The plot of King Lear is superimposed on the culture of Japan, and it’s as moving as the original. King Lear has also made it into song, in Elton John’s “The King Must Die.” The jester plays a major part in King Lear, and the first stanza of Elton John’s song references a jester, very possibly King Lear’s.

Take a Hilarious Look at William Shakespeare's "Long Lost First Play"

The Washington Post called William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) “a breathlessly irreverent and pun-filled romp!” DC Metro added that it is “vaudeville for our times!” And Metro Weekly called it “a non-stop crowd pleaser!”

Yet, the most apt description may come from one of the two playwrights responsible for this wacky Shakespearean send-up being presented this summer at the Utah Shakespeare Festival: “The show is a roller-coaster ride through the newly discovered first play that Shakespeare ever wrote and is not recommended for people with heart conditions, back problems, inner-ear disorder, or English degrees,” said Reed Martin, with his tongue firmly in his cheek. “The authors cannot be held responsible for expectant mothers.”

But seriously, what is this play, which is premiering regionally at the Festival from July 28 to October 21, all about? Austin Tichenor, the other half of this off-beat playwriting duo, told of touring the Folger Shakespeare Library vaults in 2010 and hearing from then-director Gail Paster that her holy grail would be an actual manuscript of a Shakespeare play in the Bard’s own hand. “Because we are nothing but givers,” said Tichenor, “we decided to hurry history along and create the long-lost manuscript we all hoped to find.” Seriously.

Martin plowed ahead: “The conceit of the show is that we find (in a parking lot in Leicester, England, of course!) the first play that Shakespeare ever wrote. He was seventeen at the time and it contained every character and plot device that we now see in his later plays, but they are all woven together into a brand new, 400-year-old storyline.”

The play they “found” was over 100 hours long, so the duo, thankfully, reduced it down to under two hours. Thus, William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) was born!

Christopher Edwards, who is directing the play for the Festival, added: “The play is a three-person comic romp. . . . That said, the three actors are taking on a daunting task trying to produce an un-producible play. The actors are a bit naïve, full of themselves, and ready for the challenge ahead, so conceptually they are actors putting on a play.”

Whew!

On the surface, the plot is simple: Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream has an ancient grudge against Ariel from The Tempest. As they call upon other characters and plot elements from various Shakespeare plays, however, things get frenetic as they turn the canon upside-down and in the process create such strange bedfellows as Hamlet and Lady Macbeth, Viola and Richard III, King Lear and the Weird Sisters, and Dromio and Juliet.

“The actual creative process involved equal measures of writing and archeology,” said Tichenor. “We wanted to dig around and find actual Shakespeare lines we could repurpose whenever we could. The fun part was mixing and matching characters and lines from throughout the canon and creating similar-but-new dramatic (and comic) situations.”

Martin and Tichenor are of course two of three actors who introduced the world to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) in 1987, a play that was popularly produced (with different actors) at the Festival in both 1999 and 2009. The humor and frenzied pace of that play carries over into William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged), but there are many differences.

“We wanted to write something in the spirit of all our previous Reduced Shakespeare Company shows but that was driven less by vaudeville and more by narrative,” said Tichenor. “Long Lost Shakes tells a single story from beginning to end and mostly features characters who aren’t even mentioned in The Complete Works. Also, at least 95 percent of ‘Long Lost Shakes’ is in verse!”

Edwards—who through his direction will be trying to take all this energy, focus it, and then let is loose on Festival audiences—is excited to be working on this comedy. “I love what David Ivers, Brian Vaughn, and R. Scott Phillips are doing at the Utah Shakespeare Festival,” he said. “It is a great opportunity to do this play for the first time in the United States outside of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Their plays are great and a blast to do as much for the creative team and the actors as they are for the audience.”

Okay. Now, the playwrights should get the last say on what this play is about and why Festival audiences will love it.

First Tichenor: “I think audiences are going to be surprised how familiar ‘Long Lost Shakes’ feels, which just shows how deeply Shakespeare is embedded into our cultural DNA,” he said. “As real as magic and the supernatural were considered 400 years ago, they serve today as a wonderful metaphor for the magic of theatre, which is what I hope ‘Long Lost Shakes’ ultimately celebrates.”

And Martin on what audience members should watch for: “Thieves and pickpockets. In keeping with Shakespeare’s original practices, we understand the Utah Shakespeare Festival employs gangs of roving vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells. [Editor’s note: No we don’t!] Watch your purse!”

Enough said!

Tickets are now on sale for the Festival’s 56th season, which will run from June 29 to October 21. Other plays in the season are As You Like It, Shakespeare in Love, Romeo and Juliet, Guys and Dolls, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Treasure Island, The Tavern, and How To Fight Loneliness. For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA).

Festival Announces 2017 Words³ Titles, Playwrights

CEDAR CITY, UT—The Utah Shakespeare Festival recently announced play titles and playwrights for its 2017 new plays program Words Cubed.

Featured in the play readings in the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre will be Shrew! by Amy Freed (August 4, 5, and 30, and September 1) and Pearl’s in the House by Art Manke (August 11, 12, and 31, and September 2).

The Festival announced last autumn a new name, an increased commitment, and an enhanced mission for its new plays program, and this season will see the fruits of these labors thus far. The new name of the program, Words Cubed, comes from a line in Hamlet, “Words, words, words,” and focuses the new program firmly on the text and work of playwrights. The two playwrights will spend a week at the Festival working with professional directors and actors to refine the plays which will then be presented as staged readings, followed by an instructive discussion between the playwright, actors, and audience members.

Shrew! by Amy Freed

Most people are familiar with Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, but what if a modern playwright were to reinterpret the play in an attempt to give it more gender parity, more balance? What would be different? The answers are in Amy Freed’s delicious Shrew!, a hilarious new take on Shakespeare’s classic battle of the sexes.

Amy Freed is the author of  Shrew!; The Monster Builder; Restoration Comedy; The Beard of Avon; Freedomland; Safe in Hell; The Psychic Life of Savages; You, Nero; and other plays.   Her work has been produced at South Coast Repertory Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Playwright’s Horizons, Seattle Repertory, Berkeley Rep, the Goodman, Arena Stage, and other theatres.  Playwriting awards include D.C.’s Charles MacArthur Award, N.Y. Art’s Club’s Kesselring Prize, and LA and Bay Area Critics’ Circle Awards.  She was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Freedomland.) She currently serves as artist-in-residence at Stanford University.                                                          

Pearl’s in the House by Art Manke

This small cast musical play focuses on the life of Pearl Bailey. A performer, writer, and special delegate to the United Nations in a racially-charged mid-twentieth century America, Bailey was a trailbrazer for African-American women and refused to be defined by the color of her skin. Yet, in Manke’s story, a talk-show host in 1987 questions many of her motives; so Bailey responds the only way she knows how—through her music.

Art Manke is also the playwright, along with Douglas Langworthy, of an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. He is an award-winning director whose work has been seen across the country at South Coast Repertory, Denver Center Theatre Company, Pasadena Playhouse, Milwaukee Repertory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and many others. He is the co-founder and former artistic director of A Noise Within.

“The Utah Shakespeare Festival has committed its resources and vision to support new works. The ideas of these works should inspire audiences to engage about the importance of fostering the ‘Shakespeares of tomorrow,’” said David Ivers, artistic director. “The plays we have chosen for 2017 will drive that vision forward.”

Tickets are now on sale for all Festival plays: Words Cubed readings of Shrew! and Pearl’s in the House, as well as regular season full productions of As You Like It, Shakespeare in Love, Romeo and Juliet, Guys and Dolls, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Treasure Island, The Tavern, William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play, and How To Fight Loneliness. For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is part of the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts at Southern Utah University, which also includes the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA).

Festival To Honor R. Scott Phillips on His Retirement

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is celebrating the legacy of Executive Director R. Scott Phillips on Feb. 27 from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Festival’s Livingood Artist Lounge. Phillips, who has worked at the Festival for forty years is retiring March 1.

Everyone is invited to the festivities to help celebrate Phillips and his contributions to the Festival. A brief program will highlight his career at 5 p.m.

Phillips graduated from Southern Utah University in 1975, with a double major in speech and drama and business.  He was the first full-time employee of the Festival and has worked as marketing director, manager director, interim Festival director and (for the past nine years) executive director.

While at the Festival, Phillips has contributed to many major milestones, such as expanding the Festival’s audience from 19,000 people per season to 113,000; the awarding of the Festival with the 2000 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre; and the crowning achievement of building the $39 million Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts.

Phillips has also served in many other organizations across the nation. He was the co-founder (1991) and past president, (1998-99) of the Shakespeare Theatre Association; past president, Rocky Mountain Theatre Association; and current theatre panelist, National Endowment for the Arts. Phillips’ outstanding work in the field has not gone unappreciated, as he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association in January and the Mark R. Sumner Award from the Institute of Outdoor Drama in October.

*Update March 1, 2017: Zachary Murray, the Festivals’s general manager since 2014, is serving as interim executive director until the position of executive director is filled. For more information on the open position, click here.

R. Scott Phillips Honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award

CEDAR CITY, UT– R. Scott Phillips was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) Conference this January in Baltimore, Maryland. The Shakespeare Theatre Association created the award to celebrate the memory of Douglas N. Cook, who was a co-founder of the Shakespeare Theatre Association and the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s producing artistic director emeritus. Phillips, the Festival’s executive director, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding work in the Festival and the Shakespeare Theatre Association.

Brian Vaughn, one of the Festival’s artistic directors, echoed the Shakespeare Theatre Association’s recognition of Scott and added how deserved this award is. Vaughn said, “deserved is an understatement of profound measure.”

Festival Founder Fred C. Adams had high praise for Scott Phillips’ contributions to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. “For almost 40 years Scott has been the engine that has pushed us forward. Not only is he the repository of our history, knowing most season’s plays and directors from memory, but he has caught the vision of the Festival and kept us on course,” Adams said.  

In response to the award, Phillips said, “I am overwhelmed by the generosity of this organization that has bestowed this honor on me. It is doubly significant that this award is given in the name of long time Utah Shakespeare Festival producer Doug Cook. I worked with Doug for over 30 years and to be given this Lifetime Achievement Award that bears his name is deeply gratifying. I will continue to follow the values and vision of this organization and hope that collectively we can continue to change the course of discussion in the world.”

Phillips announced his retirement from the position of executive director in September and will continue until March 1, 2017. His 40 years of work has culminated in great success at the Festival, including the crowning achievement of the new Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts and now the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA) was established to provide a forum for the artistic, managerial, and educational leadership for theatres primarily involved with the production of the works of William Shakespeare; to discuss issues and methods of work, resources, and information; and to act as an advocate for Shakespearean productions and training.

A Director's Vision

By Brooke Vlasich

Alexis Baigue (left) as Bottom and Marla Lefler as Titania.

January always marks an important time of year at the Utah Shakespeare Festival—the start of the Shakespeare-in-the-Schools educational tour. Developed by the education department, this annual tour visits different states including Utah, Nevada, and Arizona and performs in schools, correctional facilities, and community centers. This year’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is directed by Britannia Howe, a young woman with a vision focused on the power of text and storytelling.

Britannia’s directing experience began here in Cedar City at Southern Utah University where she graduated with a degree in classical acting and received her teaching license. Although she wanted to be an actor, she changed her mind after attending the American College Theatre Festival where she won a directing competition and was awarded the opportunity to attend workshops at the Kennedy Center. In addition, she has also been the assistant director to David Ivers and J.R. Sullivan on Festival productions and has taught the Shakespeare for Junior Actors class at the Festival for the past nine years. Her repertoire also includes work with the Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, Oregon, and the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut.

What attracted Britannia to A Midsummer Night’s Dream? This show was not only the first play Britannia ever read, but it is also a play she views as a touchstone for Shakespeare. She also thinks themes about parental disapproval, love triangles, and dreaming will resonate with younger audiences. Britannia’s concept for the show focuses on taking the text to the stage and showing how influential text and words can be. She’s developed this concept by incorporating images of the text into the scenic design and having the costume designer create costumes made of fabric which people can write on. Britannia sees these elements as a significant part of this production that will help audiences contribute to the show and give them the power to create.

What does Britannia hope to pursue in the future? She wants to continue to work with different types of storytelling, as well as bring theatre to new audiences. One of the main reasons she’s enjoyed directing the Shakespeare-in-the-Schools tour is its combination of education and directing.

Her next endeavor includes directing at the new theatre in Thanksgiving Point, Utah. Wherever her future takes her next, we’ll be watching and supporting this new and innovative director.

Festival Celebrates Champions at 2017 Gala

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is honoring the Ashton Family Foundation, Rocky Mountain Power, and Roy and Elizabeth “Tibby” Simmons, as well as retiring Executive Director R. Scott Phillips at the Festival Forever Celebration February 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

As in previous years at the Gala, the Utah Shakespeare Festival wants to celebrate the people, foundations, and corporations who have helped make the Festival’s dreams a reality.

The Festival is honoring the Ashton Family Foundation, led by Alan and Karen Ashton, for its faithful support and generosity for the past 25 years. Alan and Karen rose to great success from modest beginnings through their global software company, WordPerfect, and are widely considered a leading contributor to the quality of life in the state of Utah.

Rocky Mountain Power is being honored this year for its more than 25 years of corporate sponsorship. Rocky Mountain Power (formerly Utah Power & Light) began its Utah presence in Utah, when Salt Lake City became the fifth city in the world to have central station electricity. The Utah Shakespeare Festival reached a milestone in the early 1990s when Utah Power & Light became the Festival’s first-ever corporate sponsorship, a relationship that has continued for over twenty-five seasons.

The Festival is also celebrating Roy and Elizabeth “Tibby” Simmons who made annual trips to the Utah Shakespeare Festival each summer. In 1960, Roy and two colleagues purchased controlling stock in Zions First National Bank and later merged with Lockhart to form Zions Bancorporation. Roy was instrumental in expanding the Festival’s board of governors to include members of Utah’s corporate leaders. Roy passed away in 2006 and Elizabeth in 2009, but their legacy lives on at the Festival.

R. Scott Phillips is being honored for his more than four decades of work at the Festival. Phillips, who will retire February 28, has continually served the Utah Shakespeare Festival for the past 40 years as marketing director, managing director, and executive director. During his time, he expanded the Festival’s audience from 19,000 people per season to 113,000. His crowning achievement was the building of the $39 million Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts, the new home of the Festival.

The Festival Forever Celebration will be on February 4 at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Tickets are $200 per person, and tables of ten guests may be purchased for $2,000. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Tickets may be purchased at 435-586-7877.

Educational Tour Hits the Road

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is once again hitting the road with its Shakespeare-in-the-Schools touring production—this year performing the magical story of A Midsummer Night*’s Dream*.

The tour will be performing 65 shows for over 120 schools and 25,000 students throughout the states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. The cast and crew will be on the road for 14 weeks from January through April to bring this classic comedy to schools, community centers, and correctional facilities. Students will have the chance to watch the show and then participate in a post-show discussion and workshops in Stage Combat, Performing Shakespeare’s Text, Technical Theatre and Developing Character through Improvisation.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will premiere on January 25 at 7:30 p.m. in the Randall L. Jones Theatre. General admission tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the Festival ticket office at 800-PLAYTIX (800-752-9849) or online at www.bard.org. Tickets purchased ahead of time will be available at will call in the Randall L. Jones Theatre. On the night of the performance, only cash and checks will be accepted at the Randall Theatre door, whereas credit and debit cards will be accepted at the main ticket office next to the Anes Theatre. Admission is free for SUU students.

Britannia Howe is returning to the Festival as the director for the tour this year. She was inspired by the imagination of this famous play and said that each performance, “starts with an individual on stage opening up a book. Everything is text-driven, and it’s literally page to stage.” From the costumes to the First Folio in the background, the text is coming to life in this rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.    

“Because it’s one of their first touchstones to Shakespeare for many students, Midsummer is so great because it talks about imagination, dreaming and magic,” said Howe.

“I hope that the audience is able to see the power that the written word has and how Shakespeare is timeless and versatile, and that story-telling is transcendent,” she continued.

Howe is a graduate of Southern Utah University and has worked for the Cabaret Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center and the Innovative View Theatre Company. The tour has ten members in its traveling company, and they have come from all around the country to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

There are some familiar faces this season who have performed with the Festival before. Alexis Baigue (Demetrius/Bottom) acted last year in Henry V and Much Ado about Nothing. Brandon Burk (Lysander/Flute/Cobweb) began working with the Festival in 2015 and in 2016 performed in Much Ado about Nothing, Henry V, and The Three Musketeers. Luke Sidney Johnson (Theseus/Oberon) has previously worked for the Festival in the 2015 and 2016 summer seasons. Karen Thorla (Egeus/Helena/Snug/Mustardseed) worked with the Festival for the 2016 season in Julius Caesar.

The other actors in the cast have brought their talents to A Midsummer Night’s Dream from many different theatres and productions across the country. Madison Kisst (Puck) has worked with Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Arts Center of Coastal Carolina, Nevada Conservatory Theatre, and others. Mara Lefler (Hippolyta/Titania) has appeared at Indiana Repertory Theatre, Indiana Festival Theatre, Salt Lake Shakespeare, and PCPA. Stephanie Resnick (Hermia/Quince/Peaseblossom) has worked with Great River Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Nevada Conservatory Theatre, Jewish Repertory Theatre of Nevada, and TITAN Theatre Company.

The three crew members on the tour are returning to the Festival to make Shakespeare-in-the-Schools possible this year. Elizabeth Marquis (Technical Director) has returned to the Festival from recent work as master electrician/automation engineer at Gateway Playhouse and Haunted Playhouse, Long Island. Miriam Michaels (Stage Manager) worked last fall on Julius Caesar and The Odd Couple. Devery North (Company Manager) has worked previously with the Festival for the 2015 season and the 2016 educational tour of Hamlet.

In addition to support from the Shakespeare for a New Generation program which is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, this tour’s school performance partners are the Utah State Office of Education: Professional Outreach Programs in the Schools, Mountain West Small Business Finance, Ally Bank, and Southern Utah University.

For more information, visit www.bard.org/tour.