Festival Costume Director Jeff Lieder Retires After Four Decades with the Organization

By Liz Armstrong Jenkins, guest writer

After 41 years with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Costume Director Jeff Lieder is retiring. We congratulate him on four decades of success and express our heartfelt gratitude for the instrumental work he has done season after season at the Festival. 

Lieder joined the Festival the summer after his first year teaching at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Sandy Robbins was the casting director at the Festival that season, and he proposed the idea of Lieder coming to Utah during his summer off. After a phone call with then-producing director Doug Cook, he was on a flight to Utah, despite having never visited the state. Lieder fell in love with Cedar City and the people and returned season after season.

“Soon after arriving, I kind of fell in love with the place,” Lieder said. “I didn’t realize, 40 years ago that I was gonna end up making my life here, but it just became a really lovely place to work with a satisfying artistic environment and wonderful people.”

Lieder was a professor of theatre for over 30 years and plans to continue to guest teach. He will be teaching a millinery class at Florida State University and a resume portfolio workshop at University of Mississippi in the coming year.

“I was able to tie in the work at the university and my teaching, to the work here, and give the students a professional opportunity to work in a really, really good theatre,” Lieder said.

He believes his connections in the world of education were instrumental in the talent brought to the Festival and the work that was achieved over his 40 years spent in Cedar City. 

Lieder was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award for Costume Design and Technology from the United States Institute for Theater Technology (USITT) in 2020. The following year, Lieder was made a fellow of the Institute––an incredible and well-deserved honor.

“Well, that was a remarkable distinction. I was totally surprised and flattered,” Lieder said.

On top of his responsibilities as Costume Director, Lieder also undertook an immense project in 2024, working to catalogue every costume piece the Festival has created and stored. The Custom Costume Inventory project was created by Randy Handley and implemented by Lieder. 

“We barcode the costumes, photograph them, document them, and then have a visual searchable inventory database,” Lieder explained. “I’m eager to leave that in good hands with somebody in the future––it’s a really labor intensive process.”

Although the system has been created and implemented the past couple of years, Lieder expresses that there is an immense amount of work to be done and doesn’t think it will be completed without the help of a grant or volunteer work.

“It’s like if you were running a library all by yourself and you got 1,000 new books every year, and you had to catalog those books all by yourself [while going through a backlog of years and years of other books],” Lieder said.

Regarding the years he spent at the Festival, Lieder expresses that it is difficult to choose a standout season. However, he reflects fondly on the 2012 season and his work on the productions Stones in His Pockets and Les Miserables. This past season also holds a special place in his heart, perhaps because he knew it would be his last full season at the Festival, specifically for the play Troilus and Cressida. 

Over the years, Lieder also became known for leading the Festival’s bi-weekly Costume Seminars. He was a favorite of both new and returning patrons for his knowledge and humor about designing, building, and maintaining the productions’ elaborate costumes.

Lieder will remain in Cedar City, where he moved to full-time when he retired from teaching. Although he is technically retiring from his Festival position in the next month, Lieder will return to volunteer for the 2027 season work on costumes for The Two Noble Kinsman, as he hasn’t done that particular play of Shakespeare’s.

“It’s also exciting because Britannia Howe is directing, and I’ve known her since she was a child,” Lieder said, remarking how the show will feel full circle. “And Tori Niemiec is designing costumes, and Tori was a young student when they first came to the Festival as an employee––I recruited them from Northern Arizona University.” 

Reflecting over his years at the Festival, Lieder kept remarking on the connections and friendships he’s made.

“The most important thing is the connections I’ve made here that have really sustained my creative work and allowed me to make a life here with a wonderful circle of friends from Cedar City and around the country,” Lieder said. “And, at the cornerstone and center of all of that was Fred Adams––he has been an inspiration to me.”

That friendship with Festival founder Fred C. Adams and his mentorships from other past Festival leaders Cam Harvey, Doug Cook, and Scott Phillips were critical to Lieder’s growth “in every aspect” of his life. 

“For over four decades, Jeff’s aesthetic and leadership set the standard for artistic excellence in the Costume department of the Festival,” says Festival Executive Managing Director Michael Bahr. “Jeff, as a major leader in the field, hired and trained generations of costumers, who came from all over the country. After working at the Festival they would then work in other shops, at universities and theatre companies, across the industry, cultivating leaders throughout the theatre world. We are so blessed that the Festival became his home and are grateful for his expertise and passion that have created the legacy of costumes and quality performance at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.” 

In his retirement, Lieder also has several trips to Europe planned and is working on a production of The Lord of the Rings in 2027 at the Hale Center Theatre. Throughout it all, Lieder plans to continue to be involved with the Festival in the years to come. 

The Festival has been extremely lucky to have Lieder as part of the company over the past 41 years. We look forward to maintaining connections in the future and wish him all the best in his retirement.