Tony Carter as Lucentio in the Tour production of The Taming of the Shrew

Tony Carter grew up in Nevada and just graduated from Southern Utah University with a BFA in Musical Theatre.

What are you looking forward to the most about this tour; why did you want to become involved? What do you hope to learn?

I love Shakespeare, and have wanted to be in the tour ever since I first saw it in 2011. I think young audiences are very exciting and that this kind of innovative production is something that they can really get into.

Have you ever done a similar tour like this before? Tell us about it.

I was a part of the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts Outreach Tour two years ago. It was aimed at a younger audience -touring to elementary schools in the central coast of California- but the energy and talent was much the same. There’s something fresh and exciting about putting up your set in a different space each day; it keeps a show new even after so many performances.

What do you hope to contribute or give to young audiences during this tour?

Live theatre is something many young people don’t get to experience. It’s one of the most thrilling forms of entertainment, and I’m excited to bring that to our audiences.

What are some of your favorite hobbies?

I enjoy rock climbing, reading, hiking, and playing games.

Why do you think live theatre is important?

It’s living, breathing art that the audience gets to be a part of, and no two performances will ever be the same. Your dvd player, your laptop, and your movie screen are entirely unaffected by their audience, but we respond to the people in the room with us. We run out and interact with our audience, and that’s something foreign to many of us in the digital-age. Remember, theatre was the original 3-D!

You can learn more about the Tour at

http://www.bard.org/education/tour.html

The Tour Hits the Road

A Scene from The Taming of the Shrew

From January to April, the Utah Shakespeare Festival will take its Shakespeare-in-the-Schools touring production of The Taming of the Shrew to more than 25,000 students in three western states. The tour will spend 13 weeks on the road visiting schools, community centers, and correctional facilities across Utah, Nevada, and Arizona with over 65 performances for 150 schools. 

In its 20th year, this educational outreach program features a 75-minute version of Shakespeare’s outrageous comedy,The Taming of the Shrew*,*including complete costumes, sets, and theatrical lighting. Also included is a fifteen-minute post-show discussion with the actors with optional workshops in Stage Combat, Performing Shakespeare’s Text, and Developing Character through Improvisation.

Littman (Petruchio), Hill (Kate), The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrewtakes on a gypsy carnival twist in this fast paced, slapstick comedy. The story ignites the fire for a classic battle-of-the-sexes challenge between two stubborn and shrewish individuals. The sweet Bianca wishes to marry, but Kate, her older unruly sister, must marry first. Rising to the challenge is fortune-seeking Petruchio, but can he match Kate wit for wit? The couple bickers and fights with each other right up to the play’s surprising conclusion.

“Schools and communities are going to love this highly energetic production,” said Education Director Michael Bahr. “It is accessible, relevant and dynamic! A perfect vehicle for introducing audiences to this compelling story.”

Professionals from all over the country will perform in this production of The Taming of the Shrew. This ten-person group serves as both the acting company and the support crew with seven actors, a company manager, a stage manager, and a technical director. 

The Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Taming of the Shrew is part of Shakespeare in American Communities: Shakespeare for a New Generation, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest. The Taming of the Shrew is funded in part by the Utah State Office of Education, UBS Bank, Mountain America Credit Union, and Mountain West Small Business Finance.

For a complete tour schedule visit:

http://www.bard.org/education/tour.html.

Photos by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2014

Christina Leinicke and Ben Hohman – Designers for The Tour

Rehearsals are in full swing for the Educational Tour production of The Taming of the Shrew. Designing for a tour is a challenge. It has to appeal to school age audiences, many of whom have never seen a live theatre production. Venues vary in size from a theatre to a gymnasium to a cafeteria. The costumes and set has to withstand lots of wear and tear.

Christina Leinicke is the costume designer and Ben Hohman designed the set, and we learned how they are making this work.

First Christina. This is her second year designing for the tour. She did her undergrad in Theatrical Design and Production at Illinois State University and she has a MFA in Costume Design & Production from the University of Alabama. In addition to her work at the Festival, she has worked at Illinois Shakespeare Festival and toured with Lord of the Dance.

When you’re designing for a show, where do you start?

First, the director sends me thoughts. I got a list of things Shelly had been thinking about and a few research images. Then I went and created a research response to that initial conversation. “Why this show, what we like about the show, what we don’t like about the show, what we saw and thought and felt while we read the show… that initial conversation turned into a research response with lots of visual images. The result is a combination of Victorian circus, gypsy carnival and commedia dell’arte – very colorful and active.

Shelly Gaza (the director) told us that “The Zanies” are playing many roles. How will the costumes help differentiate?

Everybody has a base costume and then from there we add and subtract pieces to create an evolution of character, to indicate a different character and a different time. It can be as simple as an apron and neckerchief for the servants or it can be as complex as a whole change of clothes for the Petruchio wedding.

What considerations do you include for a tour?

The performers are changing and maintaining the costumes themselves, so it has to wear well with minimum maintenance. Before they go on tour, the actors have a wardrobe workshop. They will learn some basic hand sewing, machine sewing, and emergency quick repairs.

What considerations do you include for a tour?

The performers are changing and maintaining the costumes themselves, so it has to wear well with minimum maintenance. Before they go on tour, the actors have a wardrobe workshop. They will learn some basic hand sewing, machine sewing, and emergency quick repairs.

Ben Hohman, Director of Props and Displays, has been with the Festival for 21 years. This is the 13th tour for which he has designed the sets. He has a BFA from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Tell us about the set…

For the backdrop, we started with the idea of gypsy curtains. It was a great idea for a backdrop but all gypsy curtains are really colorful. So we decided, knowing what Christina was doing with costumes, we would create the look with all neutrals and texture. We sewed them seam forward so that breaks them up as well so the lights can create shadows.

For this show, it’s a lot of locations. Shelly wanted some pieces she can move around to show the different locations. She also liked the idea that they’re a traveling troupe; we’ll see them putting their costumes on and off, so some trunks make sense in this world. We used trunks and ladders and painted them bright colors. That gives you levels – you can stand on the trunks or ladders.

Tell us about the set…

For the backdrop, we started with the idea of gypsy curtains. It was a great idea for a backdrop but all gypsy curtains are really colorful. So we decided, knowing what Christina was doing with costumes, we would create the look with all neutrals and texture. We sewed them seam forward so that breaks them up as well so the lights can create shadows.

For this show, it’s a lot of locations. Shelly wanted some pieces she can move around to show the different locations. She also liked the idea that they’re a traveling troupe; we’ll see them putting their costumes on and off, so some trunks make sense in this world. We used trunks and ladders and painted them bright colors. That gives you levels – you can stand on the trunks or ladders.

It’s a very simple set. There’s so much going on with the costumes and the characters that we didn’t want the set to get in the way. The director wants the audience to be engaged, watching the character transformations: open a trunk, grab a cloak, put on the costume, change their physical nature so we engage the audience’s imagination.

Any other thoughts about this show?

This is one of those fun shows where you don’t need to know anything about it. You can come in and pick up the story very easily. It’s a great introduction for young kids. They’re all going thru this angsty love thing in their world. I think Shelly because of her history with the Festival, having done the tour and now being an educator herself gets the idea of the show, how to pass that info onto the audience.

The Tour, beginning late January and ending in mid-April, will visit three states and over thirty cities. In future guest blogs, you’ll meet the cast. You can learn more about the Tour at

http://www.bard.org/education/tour.html

Shelly Gaza, Taming of the Shrew Tour Director

Shelly Gaza returns to the Festival to direct the Educational Tour production of The Taming of the Shrew. We last saw Shelly here in 2007; she played Viola in Twelfth Night and Cordelia in King Lear. Since then, she’s settled in Colorado where she is on faculty at Northern Colorado University, teaching voice, speech and Shakespeare.

Is this your first time directing?

It’s not my first time directing but it is my first time directing for USF which I’m really excited about. I have done some directing in Minnesota and Colorado and I just finished directing As You Like It for UNC this past fall. I do focus mostly on Shakespeare, which I love.

What’s your experience with Shrew?

I was an actor in the Educational Tour in ‘05 and we did Shrew. I played Kate. It was just an accident that this is the one I’m directing and it’s a happy accident. It’s fun to come back to the show.

How do you cut the script to allow for an acting company of seven?

I made some adjustments; we refigured the casting doubling. We’re doing something I’m really excited about. The 4 lovers (Petruchio and Kate, Bianca and Lucentio) play only those characters throughout. And we have 3 actors who play what we’re calling “The Zanies.” They are splitting up every other character in the show.

Can you describe the production?

We have combined different periods and genres. The concept was developed with the help of Christina Leinicke (Costume Designer). The ideas she presented really pushed me toward the direction I was kind of flirting with. We drew our inspiration from three worlds: circus, commedia dell’arte and a gypsy carnival. We’re really creating our own look, period and style. Colorful, exuberant, musical. Those are the three worlds.

How will you make Shrew relevant for this audience?

It’s certainly a challenge. I think it’s safe to say that it did have misogynistic overtones when it was written. It was a different time and gender roles were very different. I think it’s ok to cut Shakespeare some slack on that. He was writing for his time.

In order to make it relevant for today we have to take that into account. As far as Kate’s final speech – when you look at it on the page, the words are much more about learning to be a good life partner with someone as opposed to being a subservient wife. Mostly it’s about playing it correctly, it’s about choosing the right actors who can give it the right nuance. It’s more about compassion – teaching women and men who want to be in a loving relationship that it’s not about getting your way all the time. It’s not about being negative. It’s about humbling yourself to your partner. To me that speech could be said by Petruchio as well as Kate.

This year’s tour will play in three states (UT, NV, AZ) between January and April. You can learn more at

http://www.bard.org/education/tour.html

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Happy Holidays!

We at the Utah Shakespeare Festival wish you a happy and healthy holiday season.

We are taking a blog break and will be back in January with news about the 2014 School Tour and updates about our exciting 2014 season.

You can find the latest information on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/utahshakespeare and our website www.bard.org.

Until then, stay warm and safe.

World Premiere of Sense and Sensibility in 2014 Season

Our 2014 season features a world premiere of a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved Sense and Sensibility. Authors Joe Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan shared their thoughts about the play and their creative process.

When were you approached by David Ivers and Brian Vaughn (USF’s artistic directors) about creating this adaptation?

J.R. Sullivan: Conversations about a USF commission of the work to premiere at the Festival began in 2011. An agreement to move forward was reached in 2012.

What are the challenges of adapting such a well known work to the stage?

Sullivan: Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is a lengthy nineteenth century novel and the first difficulty is devising a dramatic scheme that will tell her story in a compact but dramatically effective way. Taking place over the course of nine months, there are multiple settings, both exterior and interior. As with Pride and Prejudice, it has been our method to devise a production scheme that can tell the story swiftly, imparting a theatrical ingenuity to its style while also realizing dramatic momentum and suspense.

Joe Hanreddy: The initial challenge is getting past the hubris of doing it at all. Sense and Sensibility  is a finely detailed, sublimely subtle masterwork of fiction—a perfect work of art…The great fear is coming off like a graffiti artist desecrating a great monument.

What do you think is the essence of the book?

Hanreddy: The antithesis of the title reflects two very different mind-sets towards love, courtship and marriage. Marianne’s notions of love aren’t different from those at the heart of popular romantic movies, books and songs today. She believes that love happens at first sight, and she straightaway falls for a handsome young stranger who heroically comes to her aid in a storm. Elinor, on the other hand, loves more slowly. Elinor realizes that time is, in fact, essential to nurturing a truly deep connection.

Sullivan: As Austen’s title suggests there is sense and sensibility at issue in the story, abstract concepts that are much in play in the real lives of the characters. Reason and emotion might be another way to talk about this now. While Elinor is a character that governs her feelings and is circumspect in her expression of them, Marianne is one who acts impulsively and is passionate and emotional about her likes and dislikes…Jane Austen’s interest in examining the value of Sensibility- which by the novel’s publication had evolved into the full blown cultural trend of Romanticism – forms the basis of the novel and so it is that Marianne’s journey from sensibility to sense forms the arc of the play.

What role will you each play in the production?

Sullivan: Joseph Hanreddy will be directing the premiere of the play for the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I will be in residence for the first week of rehearsals and then return when the production is in tech and dress rehearsals.

How have the recent readings and workshops influenced the script?

Sullivan: Hearing the play read by good actors makes an enormous difference to the progress of the work. Important adjustments were made after each of the play’s readings – the first in Chicago in March of 2013, and then in Cedar City in October 2013.

Why will we love it?

Hanreddy: Jane Austen was the first great realist of literature and wrote brilliantly entertaining, revealing and funny stories that transcend time, culture and gender. At their core, modern relationships have almost everything in common with the ones Austen writes about in Sense and Sensibility.

Sullivan: It’s a great story filled with great characters. Its romance is balanced with its drama, its comedy with insight and sharp perception into human nature. Jane Austen created a deeply memorable and much beloved tale with Sense and Sensibility and it is our hope that this adaptation does full justice to her times and ours with an exciting rendition.

Sense and Sensibility opens June 24, 2014 and is one of eight plays in the 2014 season. You can learn more about the season and purchase tickets at www.bard.org

JR Sullivan

Joe Hanreddy

“To have faith is to have wings” 52nd Season Soars at the Utah Shakespeare Festival

2013, Peter and the Starcatcher

Mattfeld (Blackstache) and Galligan-Stierle (Smee), 2013 Peter and the Starcatcher

The Utah Shakespeare Festival soared this year in more ways than one. Not only did the Festival produce a regional premiere of a Tony Award-winning play, it continued the Complete the Canon initiative, started the History Cycle, and the company is preparing to break ground on a new arts center. The Festival continues to push the envelope and through countless hours and a resilient company of artists, the Festival once again received tremendous praise this year for an artistically successful season.

Jones as King John

Judith Reynolds, a journalist for the Durango Herald, said it best, “With its multimillion-dollar production budget and cast heavily sprinkled with Equity Actors, the Utah Shakespeare Festival continues to mount spectacular and thought-provoking productions.”

Ivers (Richard II) and Bull (Bullingbrook), 2013 Richard II

The biggest coup for the Festival this year was receiving the rights to produce the regional premiere of Peter**and the Starcatcher. It played to sold-out houses and broke the million-dollar mark at the box office. “It was an amazing experience, and to top it all off, the Festival received positive comments and kudos from Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Group,” said Festival Artistic Director Brian Vaughn.

Peter and the Starcatcher, by Rick Elice and based on the novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, was a thrilling, imaginative, theatrical experience about Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, and all the memorable characters he encounters on his journey to Neverland. Festival guests raved about the production, and many returned to see it for a second, third and even fourth time.

In 2012, the Festival announced an exciting new initiative to produce the entire canon of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays called Complete the Canon. This year, the Festival introduced the second phase of the Complete the Canon program, the History Cycle. Audience members can expect to see all of Shakespeare’s 10 history plays in chronological order starting this year with the rarely-produced King John and Richard II. One of the goals of the History Cycle is to give a cohesiveness to this series that will be engaging and dramatic.

According to Barbara M. Bannon, reviewer for the Salt Lake Tribune, “King Johnis not staged often, but this strong production makes it well worth seeing. Its vivid portrait of England’s unstable political climate sets the stage for the histories that will follow.”

“The superb acting and pleasant designs helped me realize that Richard II is one of the most underrated of Shakespeare’s plays,” said Russell Warne, managing editor for the Utah Theatre Bloggers Association. “The Utah Shakespeare Festival has created an excellent installment of their Complete the Canon initiative to produce every Shakespeare play over the course of 12 years.”

Last fall, the Festival joined forces with Southern Utah University in order to build the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts. The Center will include a long-awaited new outdoor Shakespeare theatre, studio theatre, the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA), and the Festival’s much needed artistic and production facility. This partnership has propelled the campaign forward, and in the spring, a $6 million gift was given from the Sorenson Legacy Foundation in order to create the multi-million dollar arts center.

The Beverley Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts will incorporate visual arts, live theatre and dynamic arts education and will dramatically enrich the cultural life of Cedar City. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the spring of 2014, and the Center will be completed for the opening of the Festival’s 2016 season. Construction will not impact the Festival experience, and guests can continue to expect exceptional customer service and quality entertainment.

The Festival continues to offer more than just plays; guests were able to experience the free nightly Greenshow, the New American Playwrights Project, Bardway Baby!, production and literary seminars, orientations before every show, backstage tours, educational classes, and Repertory Magic.

Other season highlights include the many community outreach programs that the Festival participated in. These include Military Appreciate Night, Free Night of Theatre, July Jamboree, Groovefest, the Iron County Care and Share Fall Food Drive and Relay for Life.

Although the plays have closed, the Festival staff is hard at work preparing for the 2014 season. “The Utah Shakespeare Festival is proud to continue to offer performances of the highest caliber for our thousands of guests from across the US,” said Executive Director R. Scott Phillips. “We continue to explore the power of live theatre and appreciate the on-going support of our loyal theatre patrons.”

“The Utah Shakespeare Festival once again proves that all the world’s a stage — and every stage is a world,” said Carol Cling, journalist for the Las Vegas Review Journal.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is located on the campus of Southern Utah University in Cedar City. Tickets for the Festival’s 53rd season in 2014 are available by calling 1-800-PLAYTIX or by visiting the Festival website at www.bard.org.

Schoolhouse Rock with Michael Bahr and Josh Stavros

This fall, the Festival’s Education Department is switching things around. Instead of a Playmakers where the local schools come to the Festival for a performance, they’re taking Playmakers to the schools with a production of Schoolhouse Rock. During November, Schoolhouse Rock will perform for five Iron County schools.

Tell us about Schoolhouse Rock.

Rehearsal

Michael Bahr: Schoolhouse Rock was very popular during the 70s and 80s.

Josh Stavros: It was originally a series of television commercials, cartoons, that would air on Saturday morning on a number of different educational topics: How a Bill Becomes a Law, Multiplication, History, Parts of speech, etc.

Bahr: My daughter knows the preamble of the Constitution because of the song, “We the people…”

Rehearsal

Describe the production.

Bahr: We’re taking a group of 33 kids and we’re performing the music of Schoolhouse Rock: it’s 14 songs and 45 minutes long. These songs are very catchy while teaching great lessons. They have great resonance with a crowd.

What do the performers learn?

Bahr: It’s really great training ground if you’re trying to teach someone how to act, sing and dance. Which is harder - tour or production? They both bring different challenges and they teach different things to the kids.

Having a touring production, I can teach kids how to set up, how to walk in and perform in a different space. That’s a very different skill set. During auditions we told the parents “it will be your job, parents, to get them to the schools, to rehearsals at this time.” This is an experiment; there is no lead here. This is an ensemble piece. All the kids perform every time. The youngest is 8 and the oldest is 17.

Who are some of the performers?

Stavros: Some names familiar to Festival patrons would be Britton Gardner (Gavroche in Les Mis), Bailey Duncan (Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird), as well as Eliza Allen and Kailey Gilbert who were fairies in Midsummer.

How is this program funded?

Bahr: SUU’s Beverley Taylor Sorenson College of Education funds this via the Center for Innovative Education. This is money given to SUU specifically for educational outreach.

Any closing thoughts?

Bahr: I know the kids will love it - it’s high energy and interactive. The teachers will love it - they’ll probably sing along. And I don’t want to minimize the training opportunity with this group of 33 kids. Every kid sings, every kid dances, every kid is part of an ensemble. Every kid will tour.

My first dream is to take these students out touring in the schools. And the second dream is that we can tour all year because it provides training for those that are performing and curricular engagement for audiences. We can provide a construct for them to have conversations about the educational material.

You can find examples of the Schoolhouse Rocks cartoons on YouTube. Here’s the link for the Preamble to the Constitution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OyU4O80i4

and Nouns http://www.schooltube.com/video/21001073474c19344891/.

You can learn more about the education programs of the Festival at http://www.bard.org/education/index.html

David Ivers & Brian Vaughn on Casting

Brian Vaughn

Have you ever wondered what goes into casting for six plays that open in three days and play in repertory? We spent some time with David Ivers and Brian Vaughn, artistic directors, to get those questions answered

David Ivers

Where do you start?

Brian Vaughn: The very first thing we do is find out how many roles there are in the season and then we break it down - based on the numbers of actors budgeted and how many people we need to fill each show.

We also have an Actor Count Comparison Chart - how many roles in each show are needed and then you think about that in the rep scenario. For example: Starcatcher had 12 actors - 11 men and 1 woman and it played opposite The Tempest, which had 18 actors. We look at that comparison - how many people are available per night and then it’s fitting the number of people we have in the budget and the number we have to cast.

David Ivers: We use an Excel spreadsheet with the plays across the top and the actor column is classified by equity, associate artist, non-equity, Greenshow performer, interns and understudies.

Where are you auditioning this year?

Ivers: This year, we will conduct auditions in Cedar, LA, Chicago, NY and Alabama. We have auditions by invitation based on submissions - actors apply and we invite them based on their headshot and resume. For equity principal auditions, any equity member can come and they get an appointment when they show up.

How big will the 2014 company be?

Vaughn: There are over 100 roles and we’ll probably have an acting company of over 60.

What goes into the decision process?

Ivers: We tend to land actors in the equity company in major roles as our guideposts. We’ll have a landmark of one role and then that opens a window - here’s the only other place they could be available. Twelfth Night I’m sure will be a linchpin as Peter was because it’s the show that carries through into the fall. So the cast of Twelfth Night is going to dictate much of the fall casting. It’s a lot of Brian and I going back and forth and hammering it out.

Vaughn: There will be a lot of incarnations. It becomes about putting the right person in the right role. Where is this person going to be the most valuable? For example: Is it going to be more valuable for us to have Melinda Parrett play Reno Sweeney versus something in King John? Probably because we know she’s going to tap and sing her heart out. So let’s put her in there and where else can we use her? It also comes to what the director is looking for, so we cross-reference all the directors’ notes.

What’s the hardest part of casting

Vaughn: Narrowing it down. It’s not just one thing. You have to fit people into 2 or 3 things and then it’s a numbers game. We make sure we don’t overwork the non-equity people and make sure the equity people are used to their full potential.

Ivers: It’s the most important job we do, other than selecting the plays. And it’s probably one of the most labor intensive, between the travel, the auditions and the manipulation of all the information into something that makes sense. We’re always thinking about it on and off the job.

How important is the Company versus the individual?

Ivers: I believe in company. I believe in us having a company of people. I believe in promoting that for the benefit of the work. You have to find the right kind of people who remains hungry and doesn’t take things for granted. That’s the other component - finding good company members who play well with others and are willing to do heavy lifting - be part of the ensemble as much as they are a lead.

When will we know the cast for 2014?

Ivers: We hope to wrap it up by the end of December and we should announce by early 2014.

You can check our website at www.bard.org for casting updates and we will have a blog posted as soon as we know!

Meet Don Weingust, SUU's Director of Shakespeare Studies

Don Weingust directed his first play at age five, an imaginary western starring himself as gun-blazing cowboy, set in his best friend’s suburban Michigan home. Later in a high school drama class, he was introduced to the playwright who would shape his career, and though he has since professionally acted and directed every genre of play imaginable, as director of the Shakespeare Studies program and theatre professor at SUU, he has devoted much of his life’s work to William Shakespeare.

“This man understood extraordinarily 
the human condition and forged a path 
that no one even knew existed,” explains 
Weingust of the easy decision to focus 
so much of his talent and energy on 
one playwright. “Through Shakespeare’s 
plays, it’s possible to learn so much of 
what one needs to know about life: how 
to be a successful teacher, scholar, friend and family member.”

And with that, he now traces the Bard’s footsteps to unravel one of theatre’s most complex individuals with hundreds of students each year, making a 400-year-old subject relevant to 18-year-olds through the University’s growing ThunderBard Project.

The ThunderBard Project engages the entire freshman class in directed readings, discussion and a viewing of a professionally- produced Shakespeare play shortly after they arrive on campus— home to the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespeare Festival. Under Weingust’s direction, students glean meaning from the world’s greatest playwright as they acclimate to the University, the community and one another.

And though it may seem arbitrary to some with interests beyond the performing arts, Weingust has a clear vision for all of SUU’s students and is confident the Bard can help bring them along.

“The ThunderBard Project allows students to relate to Shakespeare, of course,” says Weingust. “But as importantly, we open their minds to ideas outside many students’ ways of thinking, and that experience carries over into the rest of their lives.”

The results are tangible, and Weingust’s efforts have directed many undecided students toward a minor in Shakespeare Studies.

On top of administrating ThunderBard and teaching theatre courses, Weingust is an active scholar and thespian. His first book, Acting From Shakespeare’s First Folio: Theory, Text and Performance, revolutionized the field by deciphering what the Bard meant in his first scripts and changing the way others interpret and perform Shakespearean plays.

“I see a light bulb turn on when a student realizes the incredible power, artistry and depth of humanity available to them in Shakespeare’s works.” He adds, “That’s when I know I am doing something right. It ensures me I am right where I need to be.”

Since his early days as a heroic cowboy, Don Weingust has become a vengeful Hamlet, a terrorizing Richard III and even a lovesick Romeo. No matter the character, his ability to excite today’s college students in a centuries-old subject matter and inspire a similar passion in their own academic pursuits shines brighter than any spotlight.