Festival Announces New Publications Manager Marlo Ihler

By Liz Armstrong

The Utah Shakespeare Festival is thrilled to announce Marlo Ihler as the new Publications Manager.

Following Bruce Lee’s retirement from the position after 31 years, Ihler will be taking over the position after working part time at the Festival for 16 years as part of the Communications and Marketing team.

“After recently retiring as Festival publications manager for over three decades, I am thrilled to see Marlo as the new director,” Lee said. “She has the perfect combination of creativity, knowledge, and dedication to lead Festival publications into the coming decades.”

Ihler has been a longtime patron of the Festival, attending plays since she was nine years old.

“When I was young, we would visit our grandparents in Cedar City where my mother grew up. I remember seeing my first Greenshows and plays at the Festival with my family and cousins, and falling in love with the theatre in part because of the time we spent there.”

The first Shakespearean play she recalls seeing was The Merry Wives of Windsor, and while she has seen nearly the whole canon since then, her favorite Shakespeare plays are Henry V, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing.

She’s an alumna of Southern Utah University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Music with an emphasis on voice. She also earned her Master of Fine Arts in Arts Administration and was part of the inaugural class that graduated with this degree at SUU.

Ihler has also been part of the performing company at the Festival, as she was in the 1996 production of The Mikado and in The Pirates of Penzance in 2001. She began working as a part of the Festival administration in 2006.

Ihler was born and raised in Littleton, Colorado. She now calls Cedar City home and resides there with her husband Wyett of 23 years and their three children, ages 11, 14, and 18.

“I am really excited to continue Bruce’s legacy of amazing work behind the scenes and to contribute to this organization I love,” Ihler said.