Utah Shakespearean Festival

Cedar City, Utah

Since 1962, Cedar City, Utah, has been the home of the Tony Award–winning Utah Shakespearean Festival, which presents the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as plays and musicals by modern playwrights. Today, 246 performances are held each year in three theaters from June through the end of October, serving 140,000 patrons. The company presents life-affirming classic and contemporary plays in repertory with Shakespeare as the cornerstone. These plays are enhanced by interactive experiences which entertain, enrich, and educate. The festival has an extensive education program; Shakespeare-in-the-Schools, now in its 16 th year of touring, performs fully mounted, 75-minute productions of Shakespeare's plays for schools throughout Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming.

From January through April of 2009, Shakespeare-in-the-Schools will present Twelfth Night for schools and communities in their own spaces. Eight actors plus a stage manager, company manager, and technician will present the productions, and four workshops will be specially designed for this production. Workshops on movement, text, and acting styles will be taught utilizing Shakespeare's text. Twelfth Night presents many issues dealing with gender roles, relationships, and isolation, and a special workshop will be created that explores the dynamic and ethics of its characters' behavior. These workshops will be taught by teaching artists utilizing Shakespearean text. The company spends a day in residency at each school, which includes the play itself, workshops, and the load-in of the set, where the actors and six to ten students work together in setting up the set and lights. These events create opportunities for the students to readily engage with theatrical professionals. Special consideration is given when hiring the teaching artists for these educational productions; in addition to searching out actors who specialize in classic theater, actors with teaching experience are preferred. The teaching artists also engage in an in-depth preparation prior to going into the schools. This year, the festival's Shakespeare-in-the-Schools program will expand its present programming to include ten additional underserved schools, including inner-city schools in the Las Vegas area; Native American outreach in Montezuma Creek, Utah, and Whitehorse High School; and rural communities in northern Utah such as Rich, Morgan, and Summit counties. The festival is particularly excited about taking the play Twelfth Night to teenage audiences. There are many souls today who are shipwrecked and lost, as Viola is in Twelfth Night. Practically all of the characters are wearing figurative masks and are playing people they are not. Special emphasis will be placed on adapting the play so the resonance between our time and that of Shakespeare will connect to the audience.

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