Stitched Together: Schmid Family to Work Together at the Festival This Season
By Liz Armstrong, guest writer
A student at Southern Utah University at the time, Steven Schmid’s first year at the Utah Shakespeare Festival was in 1993. Working in the costume shop, Steven met Kathie, who was also acting that season. The two fell in love with theatre and each other and got engaged two weeks after they started dating. They’ve been married now for over 30 years and have since had three children, all of whom are pursuing a career in the arts in some capacity.
“We always joked with our kids, ‘There’s nothing wrong with an accounting degree,’ but they’ve followed us into the arts,” Steven said.
It’s been nearly 32 years since they worked side by side at the Festival, but the couple is thrilled to return to Cedar City this season, where their love story began over three decades ago.
“Cedar City has always felt like a second home,” Kathie said. “Even when we haven’t been working for the Festival, we try to come most summers to see the shows, and it always feels like coming home.”
August, their oldest son, will be joining his mother and father working at the Festival this season, making the 64th season a bit of a Schmid Family Affair.
As a child, August would attend rehearsal with his mother when she was designing for Tuacahn Center for the Arts. Exposed to the arts at a young age, he naturally drifted toward theatre. Last season, August worked as an electrician alongside Festival Electrics Director Scott Palfreyman and will do so again this season.
Steven also worked at the Festival last season, returning to the Festival each year since 2014, often working closely with Costume Designer Bill Black. This season, he will be the Black’s draper for The Importance of Being Earnest. A draper is the artist who takes a costume designer’s renderings as well as performers’ measurements and creates the patterns from them in order to build the costumes.
Kathie will work this season in the costume crafts department, primarily as a milliner, returning for the first time since 1993. Since then, she has worked as a milliner at Utah Opera and Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City. Kathie did freelance work at several other theatres before she was hired 13 years ago as a Professor of Theatre at Brigham Young University-Idaho.
“I’m returning to the Festival as part of my sabbatical experience from BYU-I,” Kathie said. “I am excited to have this break to come back to the Festival not just to work, but to learn from my colleagues and make sure I’m still training my students in the things they should know as I send them out into the workforce.”
Steven said he is excited for his wife to come to the Festival and praises her talent and organization.
“It is rare that Steve and I get to work together,” Kathie said. “When he taught full time, I did freelance work and now that I teach full time, he travels for freelance work. It will be fun to be in the same place, at least for a [short amount of time].”
Although Steven didn’t see August much last season due to their busy schedules, having three of the six Schmid family members working at the Festival this summer is a unique opportunity and will allow them to experience their “home away from home” in Cedar City together.
Steven is excited to return again because of the quality of the work.
“When you walk up and down the corridor of the costume shop, you are just amazed at the caliber and quality and creativity of what is being produced,” Steven said.
Steven noted that the work is “exemplary,” and praised Costume Director Jeff Lieder’s organization and efficiency.
”The ‘incubation’ period we have of working and creating and collaborating…that build up to [opening night] is so exhausting,” Steven said. “But it’s so fulfilling because you get to see all the components come into play.”
To see the work that Steven, Kathie, and August contribute to this summer, purchase tickets to the 2025 season today.
