Since 1993, the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s education touring program––Shakespeare in the Schools––has brought professional theatre performances to schools and communities across the state of Utah and the Intermountain West. Our mission is to meet students where they are, and provide everyone with the opportunity to access and create theatre.
The tour is offered FREE to all Utah public and public charter schools thanks to funding from the State of Utah. At-cost and discounted rates are available for private schools, public venues, and out-of-state locations. The tour offers either a 75-minute fully produced performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays for middle and high schools, or an interactive 45-minute assembly designed for elementary audiences that explores elements of theatre and Shakespeare. Included in the experience are post-performance talkbacks and educational workshops.
February 3 - April 18, 2025:
Henry IV
Our touring company of nine professional theatre artists and educators return to schools next winter to bring Shakespeare’s historical drama to K-12 students across the Intermountain West. Directed by Marcella Kearns, this story tells of power, honor, and rebellion, with a healthy dose of humor from the popular character Falstaff. It will tour locations primarily in Utah with stops in Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, January 29 - April 19, 2025.
For questions regarding the 2025 tour, please reach out to us at:
Email: USFEducation@bard.org
Phone: 435-865-8333
Study Guide & Teacher Toolkit
Stay tuned for our Study Guide that will include added context, resources, discussion questions, and interactive classroom lesson plans to extend learning beyond the tour’s one day in your school!
From the Director:
Shakespeare’s cycle of English history plays follow a devastating upheaval in English rule and its consequences over generations. From the royal court to the dingiest tavern, from battlefields across England to towns under siege in France, the vicious fight over who should have the crown irrevocably alters the nation and its people. Over the course of this epic series, characters from anonymous soldiers to historical monarchs question their system of government, the reasons they fight, the moral code they follow. They test friendships, loves, alliances, faith.
The king of this production, Henry IV, came to the throne by means which rattled the nation. Did his predecessor, his cousin Richard II, abdicate the throne, or did Henry take it from him? Not even the people in the room when it happened could say for certain. As a result, when we drop in to this story, Henry is an embattled ruler facing dangerously dissatisfied English nobility and active military conflict on the borders of Scotland and Wales. Rebellion is stirring.
Turns out, however, that Shakespeare’s buried the lead. While his father is contending with a fracturing country, the teenage Prince of Wales, Hal, is enjoying his own rebellion. Running with a crowd of thieves and their ringleader, the entertaining and all-embracing Sir John Falstaff, Hal holds the wider world at arm’s length…until the summons from his father.
Hal is a teen. The country’s need never should have been his burden. But as the vanguard of a younger generation handed the mistakes and division of his elders, he can’t ignore the state of his country forever. Will he serve? Where does his moral compass point, when no one truly has an answer?
How Hal chooses to answer the call––to carve out his own way to lead, and to live––becomes the origin story of one of England’s most beloved kings.
––Marcella Kearns