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Tyler Morgan Tells Us about The Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City
Tyler Morgan Tells Us about The Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City
By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong
Cedar City, Utah is a friendly mountain town with amazing views, friendly people, ample dining options, and fantastic arts and theatre choices. We asked Tyler Morgan, MA, MBA, Marketing and Communications Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival to tell us more.
How would you describe the Utah Shakespeare Festival in one sentence?
The Utah Shakespeare Festival is a destination rotating repertory theatre company that produces classical and contemporary plays as part of an immersive theatre experience that entertains, educates and enriches our state and region.
What is special about the Utah Shakespeare Festival?
I believe the Utah Shakespeare Festival is very special and unique when it comes to the theatre experience. With other venues, you go to the theatre, watch a play, then go home. Perhaps you discuss it with your partner or friends you went with, then you are back to your regular life.
Here, you can see 6 plays in 3 days, all the while experiencing play orientations, literary play seminars, actor, prop and costume seminars, and a nightly greenshow all free of charge.
To add to the experience you can pay for backstage tours or Repertory Magic (where you are walked through the process of switching sets between the matinee and evening performances while watching the crew actually do it), luncheons with actors, etc.
At the end of each day, you go back to your hotel, B&B, or Air B&B/VRBO and find that the other guests have just come from the same shows. You talk about the plays, get to digest them and then unpack them in the play seminars the next morning which are led by PhD Shakespearean scholars, where questions and dialogue are encouraged in an audience that is very well prepared to experience Shakespeare.
Add to this the tradition of the Festival, which is just completing its 57th season, and what has been created here is a family. We have guests who have brought their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to the Festival. Families taking 4-generation photos at our Shakespeare bench, a popular photo op spot, is a regular occurrence. What is wonderful to me is how ready this “family” is to welcome any and all to join in.
Once you are here, the Festival is now yours. You have ownership in it. Guests come and come back year after year because it feels like family and it is a theatre and vacation experience you can’t get anywhere else.
To top it all off, the quality of theatre is second to none. The Festival won the Tony Award in 2000 for outstanding regional theatre. We hold more equity contracts than any other theatre in the region. Most of our cast and crew come from New York, LA, and Chicago. Our costume and set departments are nationally and internationally recognized as some of the best in the country. If you want world class theatre in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet, then the Utah Shakespeare Festival is where you want to be.
What kinds of productions are offered at the Utah Shakespeare Festival?
Each season at the Festival is grounded in Shakespeare, as you might imagine. But this is not all. We typically produce 3 - 4 Shakespeare plays each season and 3 - 4 contemporary plays with an American classical musical as well. These plays are presented in our 3 theaters.
The Englestad is an open air 900 seat recreation of the Globe Theatre and houses the majority of our Shakespeare plays.
The Randall is a 700 seat proscenium theatre that houses the musical and comedies as well as a possible 4th Shakespeare play.
The Anes is a 200 seat studio theatre that holds smaller more intimate productions, generally of contemporary works.
All of these theaters run at the same time with multiple plays in each theatre in what is know as rotating repertory.
Our actors in each season’s company are in 3 plays at a time, sometimes more. They will play one role for the matinee, one role in the evening, then another role the following day. The audience gets a chance to see the range of each actor and can see a comedy in the afternoon and a tragedy in the evening, or the other way around.
We have some guests who come year after year and only see our Shakespeare plays. We have some who come year after year and only see our non-shakespeare plays. We have many guests who come and see everything every year.
Each guest gets to create their own experience.
We also have a nightly Greenshow that is free and open to the public. This is a musical review and crowd warm-up for the evening performances in the outdoor theater, and a tradition that has lasted for as long as the festival has been around.
While we provide Shakespeare in period costume, etc., we are not interested in museum pieces. Theatre is about experimentation and having a conversation with your audience. For instance, this season had us presenting Henry VI Part One and The Merchant of Venice in period costume, but with different gendered roles, such as a greater emphasis on Joan of Arc and some roles portrayed as women in Henry and having Shylock and Antonio in Merchant acted by women portraying men.
In Othello, we made it more intimate in the studio space and removed reference to time, but vaguely hinted at 20th century. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, gender roles were traditional, but the period was brought forward to the 1910’s with turn of the century costumes, setting, and music/singing added. These decisions allow us to pay homage to the Bard, but keep his works relevant for our time.
We have a current project going on called Complete the Cannon. Starting in 2012, we made the commitment to produce every one of Shakespeare’s plays by the 2023 season. As part of the project, we are producing all 10 of Shakespeare’s history plays in chronological order starting with King John through to Henry VIII.
In 2019 we will be producing Henry VI Part Two and Part Three as part of this commitment. This is unusual, as the Henry VIs are usually presented as one play in a greatest hits fashion. We are giving full due to each play, skipping none. All Complete the Cannon plays for 2019 are Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and the two Henrys. To add to these shows we will be producing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (a perennial Utah favorite and only the 2nd time the festival has ever produced it) as the musical, The Book of Will, The Price, and Every Brilliant Thing.
Why is Cedar City a great destination?
Cedar City is magic. I can think of no other word for it. Here we sit in the middle of some of the greatest natural wonders of the world. The National Parks and Monuments are right outside. A 30 min drive up the canyon to Cedar Breaks National Monument takes you to a view that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world. Bryce Canyon and Zion’s National Park are close by, and the red rock beauty is stunning.
The first settlers to come to Cedar City were here for the iron mines. They were immigrants from the British isles and brought their culture with them. In the first week of settlement, the pioneers put on a production of The Merchant of Venice, so Shakespeare is in the very blood of this town.
With the Utah Shakespeare Festival as the cornerstone, Cedar City is called Festival City. Here you can find the Neil Simon Festival, the Wildflower Festival at Cedar Breaks, the UtahUFO Festival, the Utah Summer Games, Championship PRCA/WPRA Rodeo, Frontier Homestead Folk Festival, the Livestock and Heritage Festival and the Red Rock Film Festival.
Along with all of these festivals, the Arts flourish in Cedar with a healthy Recreation, Arts, and Parks tax, the arts are more accessible than in many larger communities.
With Southern Utah University and Southwest Technical College, educational opportunities are also plentiful. We consistently hear from our guests that they have chosen Cedar City to retire to, and many have summer or permanent homes here.
Along with all of these opportunities, I would say that Cedar City is Volunteer City, not just Festival City. There is a passion for volunteerism here that I have not experienced anywhere else I have lived. The Festival couldn’t run without our volunteers, of which we have many. Finally, I would say that in Cedar City you find a great balance of the great outdoors and great cultural experiences.
For more information, visit www.bard.org
By Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong
Cedar City, Utah is a friendly mountain town with amazing views, friendly people, ample dining options, and fantastic arts and theatre choices. We asked Tyler Morgan, MA, MBA, Marketing and Communications Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival to tell us more.
How would you describe the Utah Shakespeare Festival in one sentence?
The Utah Shakespeare Festival is a destination rotating repertory theatre company that produces classical and contemporary plays as part of an immersive theatre experience that entertains, educates and enriches our state and region.
What is special about the Utah Shakespeare Festival?
I believe the Utah Shakespeare Festival is very special and unique when it comes to the theatre experience. With other venues, you go to the theatre, watch a play, then go home. Perhaps you discuss it with your partner or friends you went with, then you are back to your regular life.
Here, you can see 6 plays in 3 days, all the while experiencing play orientations, literary play seminars, actor, prop and costume seminars, and a nightly greenshow all free of charge.
To add to the experience you can pay for backstage tours or Repertory Magic (where you are walked through the process of switching sets between the matinee and evening performances while watching the crew actually do it), luncheons with actors, etc.
At the end of each day, you go back to your hotel, B&B, or Air B&B/VRBO and find that the other guests have just come from the same shows. You talk about the plays, get to digest them and then unpack them in the play seminars the next morning which are led by PhD Shakespearean scholars, where questions and dialogue are encouraged in an audience that is very well prepared to experience Shakespeare.
Add to this the tradition of the Festival, which is just completing its 57th season, and what has been created here is a family. We have guests who have brought their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to the Festival. Families taking 4-generation photos at our Shakespeare bench, a popular photo op spot, is a regular occurrence. What is wonderful to me is how ready this “family” is to welcome any and all to join in.
Once you are here, the Festival is now yours. You have ownership in it. Guests come and come back year after year because it feels like family and it is a theatre and vacation experience you can’t get anywhere else.
To top it all off, the quality of theatre is second to none. The Festival won the Tony Award in 2000 for outstanding regional theatre. We hold more equity contracts than any other theatre in the region. Most of our cast and crew come from New York, LA, and Chicago. Our costume and set departments are nationally and internationally recognized as some of the best in the country. If you want world class theatre in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet, then the Utah Shakespeare Festival is where you want to be.
What kinds of productions are offered at the Utah Shakespeare Festival?
Each season at the Festival is grounded in Shakespeare, as you might imagine. But this is not all. We typically produce 3 - 4 Shakespeare plays each season and 3 - 4 contemporary plays with an American classical musical as well. These plays are presented in our 3 theaters.
The Englestad is an open air 900 seat recreation of the Globe Theatre and houses the majority of our Shakespeare plays.
The Randall is a 700 seat proscenium theatre that houses the musical and comedies as well as a possible 4th Shakespeare play.
The Anes is a 200 seat studio theatre that holds smaller more intimate productions, generally of contemporary works.
All of these theaters run at the same time with multiple plays in each theatre in what is know as rotating repertory.
Our actors in each season’s company are in 3 plays at a time, sometimes more. They will play one role for the matinee, one role in the evening, then another role the following day. The audience gets a chance to see the range of each actor and can see a comedy in the afternoon and a tragedy in the evening, or the other way around.
We have some guests who come year after year and only see our Shakespeare plays. We have some who come year after year and only see our non-shakespeare plays. We have many guests who come and see everything every year.
Each guest gets to create their own experience.
We also have a nightly Greenshow that is free and open to the public. This is a musical review and crowd warm-up for the evening performances in the outdoor theater, and a tradition that has lasted for as long as the festival has been around.
While we provide Shakespeare in period costume, etc., we are not interested in museum pieces. Theatre is about experimentation and having a conversation with your audience. For instance, this season had us presenting Henry VI Part One and The Merchant of Venice in period costume, but with different gendered roles, such as a greater emphasis on Joan of Arc and some roles portrayed as women in Henry and having Shylock and Antonio in Merchant acted by women portraying men.
In Othello, we made it more intimate in the studio space and removed reference to time, but vaguely hinted at 20th century. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, gender roles were traditional, but the period was brought forward to the 1910’s with turn of the century costumes, setting, and music/singing added. These decisions allow us to pay homage to the Bard, but keep his works relevant for our time.
We have a current project going on called Complete the Cannon. Starting in 2012, we made the commitment to produce every one of Shakespeare’s plays by the 2023 season. As part of the project, we are producing all 10 of Shakespeare’s history plays in chronological order starting with King John through to Henry VIII.
In 2019 we will be producing Henry VI Part Two and Part Three as part of this commitment. This is unusual, as the Henry VIs are usually presented as one play in a greatest hits fashion. We are giving full due to each play, skipping none. All Complete the Cannon plays for 2019 are Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and the two Henrys. To add to these shows we will be producing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (a perennial Utah favorite and only the 2nd time the festival has ever produced it) as the musical, The Book of Will, The Price, and Every Brilliant Thing.
Why is Cedar City a great destination?
Cedar City is magic. I can think of no other word for it. Here we sit in the middle of some of the greatest natural wonders of the world. The National Parks and Monuments are right outside. A 30 min drive up the canyon to Cedar Breaks National Monument takes you to a view that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world. Bryce Canyon and Zion’s National Park are close by, and the red rock beauty is stunning.
The first settlers to come to Cedar City were here for the iron mines. They were immigrants from the British isles and brought their culture with them. In the first week of settlement, the pioneers put on a production of The Merchant of Venice, so Shakespeare is in the very blood of this town.
With the Utah Shakespeare Festival as the cornerstone, Cedar City is called Festival City. Here you can find the Neil Simon Festival, the Wildflower Festival at Cedar Breaks, the UtahUFO Festival, the Utah Summer Games, Championship PRCA/WPRA Rodeo, Frontier Homestead Folk Festival, the Livestock and Heritage Festival and the Red Rock Film Festival.
Along with all of these festivals, the Arts flourish in Cedar with a healthy Recreation, Arts, and Parks tax, the arts are more accessible than in many larger communities.
With Southern Utah University and Southwest Technical College, educational opportunities are also plentiful. We consistently hear from our guests that they have chosen Cedar City to retire to, and many have summer or permanent homes here.
Along with all of these opportunities, I would say that Cedar City is Volunteer City, not just Festival City. There is a passion for volunteerism here that I have not experienced anywhere else I have lived. The Festival couldn’t run without our volunteers, of which we have many. Finally, I would say that in Cedar City you find a great balance of the great outdoors and great cultural experiences.
For more information, visit www.bard.org
Article by Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong
Copyright 2018 Sunny Harbor Publishing Sunny Harbor Publishing, PO Box 560318, Rockledge, FL 32956 Phone: 321-252-9874 Email: [email protected] Website: www.SunnyHarborPublishing.org |
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the best cruise & travel news, tips & reviews for the sensible gay traveler
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