Utah Shakespearean Festival

The tradition & historical record

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is a theatrical festival that performs works by Shakespeare as its cornerstone. The Festival is held during the summer and early fall at The Beverly Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts in Cedar City, Utah, United States, in conjunction with Southern Utah University. ¹

The Festival was founded in 1961, and presented its first season in 1962. The idea for the Utah Shakespeare Festival originated in Cedar City, Utah, when Fred C. Adams, a theatre professor at the College of Southern Utah (now Southern Utah University), and his fiancée, Barbara Gaddie, discussed the possibility of establishing a Shakespeare festival while doing their laundry at the local Fluffy Bundle Laundromat. Adams had visited the Oregon Shakespeare Festival the previous year (1960) and was inspired by its approach to producing Shakespearean theatre. He and Gaddie believed that Cedar City would be a suitable location for a similar festival because of the large number of tourists who traveled through the area each summer to visit nearby national parks. During their conversation at the laundromat, the couple recorded their ideas on a yellow notepad, outlining plans for the foundations that would later develop into the Utah Shakespeare Festival. In 1961, Fred directed a student production of The Taming of the Shrew to test community interest in holding a Shakespeare festival. This initial test was successful, and inspired Adams and Gaddie to pursue their idea. The two were able to garner support, and with the help of students and local residents, built a simple outdoor stage, props, and created costumes for the festival's first season in 1962. The inaugural season began on July 2, 1962 with productions of The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet. With the help of a $1,000 loan from the local Lions Club, and support from the community, the first season was deemed a success, enabling Adams and Gaddie to produce a second season. ¹

During the summer months of the festival, The Greenshow is performed outdoors before the evening productions. The Greenshow often includes comedic skits, sword fighting, and musical routines with dancing. In recent years, these performances have often been themed to coincide with the evening production (example: Greenshow actors wearing kilts and singing Scottish songs on the evenings Macbeth was performed during the 2025 season). During and before the performance people dressed (roughly) in period clothing walk around the courtyard (green) selling programs, telling jokes, and offering a variety of treats. The Greenshow is free to attend. Executive Managing Director of the festival, Michael Bahr, on The Greenshow: "It's a fundamental part of the festival experience... Since the first years of the festival, patrons have been immersed in a live theatrical experience, preparing them for the evening that awaits." ¹

Theatres currently or previously used by the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah. ¹

When the festival began in 1962, a temporary outdoor stage was built on a grassy site of the College of Southern Utah (now SUU) campus. The temporary stage had a capacity of 300 seats for festival goers. As the festival continued to gain popularity year after year, it became evident that a more permanent solution was required, and the Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre was commissioned. ¹

The Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre opened in 1977, and was retired at the end of the 2015 season. The "Adams" theatre was designed to replicate Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and had a capacity of 887 people. In 1981, the BBC used the Adams theatre to film a television program about William Shakespeare; at that time, the Adams was the best replica of The Globe Theatre. Actor Sam Wanamaker visited the Adams theatre for ideas while raising money to build the new Shakespeare's Globe in London, England. Actor Jeremy Irons, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company at the time of his visit to the Adams theatre remarked, "You come to Utah and there's your language, there's Shakespeare. It's wonderful, it's like coming home." After 38 years of operation, the Adams Theatre held its final performance on September 5, 2015. Festival founder Fred C. Adams carried a lit candle from the stage of the Adams to the new (Engelstad) construction site to signify the continuance of the festival's dedication to theatrical excellence. The Adams Theatre was returned to the stewardship of Southern Utah University to use for educational programs at the university. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Utah Shakespeare Festival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Utah Shakespearean Festival is annual theatrical festival at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah, United States, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 6 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²