News From the Festival
Jean Valjean Is Back!
Jean Valjean is back!
J. Michael Bailey, who played Jean Valjean in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of Les Misérables in 2012, is returning this summer to play the equally powerful role of Sweeney in the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd.
“I am excited to welcome J. Michael Bailey back to the Festival,” said Executive Producer Frank Mack. “He is a great Utah-based performer and I am thrilled our audiences will get to see his great artistry on the Festival stage again.”
“I am absolutely thrilled to be back at the Festival!” Bailey said. “It is my favorite place on the planet to perform—the outside venue, the talented acting company and artistic teams—I just can’t get enough of it.”
Besides his critically-acclaimed role as Valjean in Les Misérables, he has appeared at the Festival in Hamlet, Macbeth, The Secret Garden, Foxfire, and Great Expectations. He has also appeared at numerous other theatres throughout the United States and Canada, including Pioneer Theatre Company, Encore South Bay, Sundance Theatre, Salt Lake Acting Company, Encore Musical Theatre Company, West Valley Arts, Utah Musical Theatre, and Tuacahn Amphitheatre. He is also a singer-songwriter with three studio albums and the original cast recording for White Chapel the Musical as Jack the Ripper.
“I am very grateful to be here and for the trust Frank and the rest of the administrative and directing team have put in me,” said Bailey. “Sweeney is a bear of a show but the Festival production is going to be something else. The talent is huge! I am so blessed to be back here performing a role I love with people I love even more.”
The 2022 season of the Utah Shakespeare Festival runs from June 20 to October 8 and includes All’s Well That Ends Well, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, The Sound of Music, Trouble in Mind, Clue, The Tempest, and Thurgood, as well as all the experiences surrounding the plays, such as The Greenshow, seminars, orientations, and Repertory Magic. Tickets and information are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or going online to bard.org.
10 Things You May Not Know about Trouble in Mind
By Liz Armstrong
Originally written in 1955, Trouble in Mind only started to gain traction after the extremely talented playwright Alice Childress passed away. Well-written and powerful, this play tackles difficult subject matter in a deft and humorous way and is sweeping the nation with growing popularity. Here are some things you may not know about Trouble in Mind and Childress herself.
1–The play was supposed to move to Broadway in 1957, but producers told the playwright they would only do so if she changed the ending of the play. Childress refused, and it didn’t go on Broadway. Variety wrote, “Childress refused to bow to the demands of producers who urged her to ‘tone down’ the play’s powerful conclusion. It’s a good thing she didn’t.”
2–It recently received its Broadway debut after a sixty-five-year wait, premiering in November of last year at the Roundabout Theatre.
3–The playwright, Childress, was raised by her grandmother in Harlem, New York, who encouraged her to write. It’s a good thing she did, too, as Childress later became a pioneering black actress, playwright, and novelist.
4–Childress was a fan of Shakespeare, too! After hearing Shakespeare being read, she began acting and directing in 1941 at the American Negro Theatre.
5–Childress never finished high school, but that didn’t compromise her talent for writing. A Hero Ain’t Nothin but a Sandwich was named one of the Outstanding Books of the Year by New York Times Book Review. It also received the Lewis Carroll Shelf award, ALA Best Young Adult Book of 1975, and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Honor.
6–A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwhich reached the Supreme Court in a book banning case, one of nine to do so. The book was banned in several school libraries, but was then reinstated in all but one by court order in 1984.
7–She received a Tony Award acting nomination in 1944 for her role in Anna Lucasta.
8–Childress was the first woman to win the Obie Award, which she received in 1956 for the best original off-Broadway play.
9–Her other famous play, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, was also supposed to be staged on Broadway, but because it stirred up so much controversy, it never was. In 1972, it was produced at the New York Public Theatre and it was televised on ABC.
10–High praise is being given for this play, with The New York Times calling it “the play of the moment.” It has also been chosen as a New York Times Critic’s Pick.
Meet Playwright Alice Childress
By Rachelle Hughes
“I continue to create because writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.”
—Alice Childress
Born in 1916 in South Carolina, Alice Childress, born Alice Herndon, moved to Harlem at age nine to live with her grandmother after the separation of her parents. Her grandmother Eliza Campbell White raised her and encouraged her to write and pursue the arts. Despite dropping out of high school after two years, Childress pursued an education in the theatre. Like most New York actresses, she started by working low paying jobs in Harlem while getting her foot in the acting door. She eventually furthered her education and her theatre skill set by joining the American Negro Theatre where she worked as an actress, stage manager, personnel director, and costume designer for eleven years. In the 1930s she married and divorced Alvin Childress. They have one daughter, Jean Childress. Later, she married musician Nathan Woodard whom she eventually collaborated with on some musicals later in her career. The reality of Alice Childress’s childhood, her family history, and her experience seeped into her plays, giving her authentic insight into the black culture and experience.
Long before Childress became known for her unapologetic and authentic plays on black lives, she was a talented actress. Her acting credits included Natural Man (1941), Rain (1948), and The Emperor’s Clothes (1953). Her role in Anna Lucasta (1944) reportedly earned Childress a Tony Award nomination; however, there is some debate as to the accuracy of this claim that has been made in some of her biographies. In 1949, she began her playwriting career with the one act play, Florence. She also starred in her first play that explored the themes that would become the hallmark of her own plays: interracial politics, working-class life, attacks on black stereotypes, and empowerment of black women.
“She has been credited with many ‘firsts’” as Helen Shaw says in her 2020 essay for online magazine Vulture (“Alice Childress Didn’t Defang Her Plays, and Producers Said No,” <https://www.vulture.com/ 2020/01/ alice-childress-trouble-in-mind.html>, January 8, 2020). She became the first black woman playwright to have an all Equity cast with her play Gold through the Trees (1952), and this play along with Just a Little Simple (1950) helped bring her accolades as the first professionally produced black female playwright. When Childress’s first full-length, dramatic play, Trouble in Mind (1955) about racism in the theatre world was produced at Stella Holt’s Greenwich Mews Theatre, it brought her yet another first as the first black female playwright to be awarded an Obie Award. The comic drama Trouble in Mind ran for ninety-one shows initially but never made its way to Broadway in her lifetime despite predictions that it would. Producers wanted her to make changes that Childress was unwilling to make.
Of all of her plays, Trouble in Mind has seen the most attention on today’s stages. The 2022 Utah Shakespeare Festival is the latest regional theatre to take on Childress’s Trouble in Mind and itsheroine Willetta’s fight to overcome black stereotypes and racism in the theatre. However, it wasn’t always so. The play was written in 1955 and was optioned for Broadway but never opened there because Childress would not tone down the dialogue for the show’s white producers. The action around the play is eerily analogous to the play itself, where the white director in Trouble in Mind says: “The American public is not ready to see you the way you want to be seen because, one, they don’t believe it, two, they don’t want to believe it, and three, they’re convinced they’re superior.”
Unafraid of taking on the controversial topics of her time Childress’s next dramatic play Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, which dealt with interracial relationships, was a fight for Childress to get to the stage. As theatre critic Tony Adler wrote, “Written in 1962 but unseen onstage until 1966 because, the story goes, Broadway theaters were afraid to touch it (the premiere finally took place at the University of Michigan)” (“Who’s Alice Childress? We Should All Know,” Chicago Reader, https://chicagoreader.com/ arts-culture/ whos-alice-childress-we-should-all-know, 2017). By the end of her career Childress had written thirteen plays including some musicals in conjunction with her composer-husband Woodard. Together they collaborated on Young Martin Luther King (1968) and Sea Island Song (1977). As Shaw (2020) said, “Any list of great American playwrights is incomplete without Alice Childress—her cool eye saw deep into history, into the theater, into blackness, into whiteness.”
Childress also became known for her young adult novels including Those Other People (1989) and A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1973). The latter had the most literary traction and she later adapted it as a screenplay in 1978 starring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield. Never one to shy away from difficult topics, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich dealt with the social issues of racism, drug use, teen pregnancy, and homosexuality (M. Granshaw, “Alice Childress (1916–1994),”Blackpast.Org, https://www.blackpast.org/ african-american-history/ childress-alice-1916-1994/, January 31, 2019). After it was released some school districts and libraries banned the book. Just seven years later her novel A Short Walk was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Her words and work have been called savage, poetic, honest, and risky. She was not afraid to speak her mind and tell the stories she saw. Sometimes it brought her dazzling success even if it never brought her plays to a Broadway hit. She garnered many awards in her time for her incessant and passionate work, including a Rockefeller grant, a graduate medal from the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, the Radcliffe Alumnae Graduate Society Medal for Distinguished Achievement, a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and a Lifetime Career Achievement Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).
She died from cancer at 77 years old in 1994. At the time of her death she was working on a piece that was true to her themes, as always: a story about her African great-grandmother, who had been a slave, and her Scotch-Irish great-grandmother.
Trouble in Mind Finally Gets Its Due
By Liz Armstrong
More than sixty-five years after it first premiered, Alice Childress’s poignant and powerful play Trouble in Mind is finally getting the praise and attention it deserves, hitting Broadway in November and since then being produced in numerous theatres—including the Utah Shakespeare Festival this summer.
The play tackles sexism and racism in American theatre, and it was originally scheduled to move to Broadway in 1957. However, producers insisted Childress change the ending, and she refused. Childress’s refusal cost the playwright the chance to see her work on Broadway in her lifetime, but the play and her action both portray a mighty message about being true to oneself.
Melissa Maxwell will have her debut at the Festival directing Trouble in Mind. An award-winning playwright who has been directing for over twenty years, Maxwell has directed world premieres such as Tunnel Vision and Safe House, and she is proud Childress didn’t give in to the producers so many years ago.
“She is finally getting her due,” Maxwell said. “It would’ve been great had she been able to see her works on Broadway in her lifetime; but it wouldn’t have been the same story, and it wouldn’t have been true to her voice, and I don’t know that it would’ve been true to the history of the moment of what she was trying to capture.”
Now, well over fifty years later, Trouble in Mind is garnering high praise. “Hauntingly timely” and “intellectually curious,” said The Hollywood Reporter.
The New York Times called Trouble in Mind “the play of the moment.” Time Out wrote, “it’s as though an old curtain has been lifted from a mirror.” The New York Theatre Guide added, “Though the play was written in 1955, it pulsates with such vitality that it feels like it was written yesterday, showing the audience that while some things have changed in sixty-six years, others have stayed maddeningly the same.”
Maxwell voiced a similar sentiment.
“Things are slowly just now starting to change,” she said. “I’m hoping that people recognize the constructs that we’ve been put into that we’re all complicit in, the ways in which we add to those.”
“I’ve learned there are no victims and villains,” Maxwell said. “But I do think that each one of us is responsible for the relationships we have and maintain in our lives.”
Festival Director of New Play Development Derek Charles Livingston addressed why it’s especially important and exciting that the Festival produce this play this season.
The Festival has “committed to the principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in everything we do,” Livingston noted, adding that producing this play is a part of that commitment. “People have this misconception that when you start talking about race in America that it always has to be through this lense of tragedy and trauma, and Trouble in Mind does have that at its core . . . but people should realize the play’s not going to be a slog through trauma and accusations, but that it will be entertaining,” Livingston said.
Livingston and Maxwell both said that this a not-so-well-known classic that should be better known. It’s a layered play—Maxwell compared it to an onion—that addresses important issues with humor and grace.
“To any good storytelling, humor is what opens the door that allows people to accept the message, so any good comedy has heart, and good tragedy has humor,” Maxwell said. “What Alice Childress does beautifully is address a very serious, important message in a way that we can all enjoy. She makes it palatable for us to be reflective and hopefully opens the door for us to have those long overdue conversations,”
Livingston believes patrons will very much enjoy this play and that it will speak to them intellectually but also in terms with humor. “There’s a nuanced debate on a number of issues, and the play handles it in a way that is befitting of a Shakespearean audience,” Livingston said. “For our audiences particularly, they don’t just like Shakespeare, they enjoy good theatre.”
The 2022 season of the Utah Shakespeare Festival runs from June 20 to October 8 and includes All’s Well That Ends Well, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, The Sound of Music, Trouble in Mind, Clue, The Tempest, and Thurgood, as well as all the experiences surrounding the plays, such as The Greenshow, seminars, orientations, and backstage tours. Tickets and information are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or going online to bard.org.
Make Your Own Meat Pie
By Liz Armstrong
“Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies, savory and sweet pies.” Ah, Mrs. Lovett, that entrepreneurial baker, serving up London’s most popular meat pies, thanks to the secret ingredient provided by Sweeney Todd’s upstairs barber shop.
After watching Sweeney Todd this summer at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, that wild and revenge-filled play may leave you in the mood for meat pies. Okay . . . well, maybe not. But, just in case you would like a tasty meat pie (without the murderous ingredient), here is a recipe from the Utah Shakespeare Festival that just might fill your craving:
Ingredients
— 1 medium potato (peeled and cubed)
— ½ pound ground beef
— ½ pound ground pork
— ⅓ clove garlic (chopped)
— ½ cup onion (chopped)
— ¼ cup water
— ½ teaspoon mustard powder
— ½ teaspoon dried thyme
— ½ teaspoon ground cloves
— 1 teaspoon salt
— ¼ teaspoon dried sage
— 1 package refrigerated pie crusts (15 ounces)
Directions
Step 1: Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place the potato in a saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, cook until tender (about 5 minutes). Drain, mash, and set aside.
Step 2: Crumble the ground beef and pork into a large saucepan and add the garlic, onion, and water. Season with the remaining spices. Brown over medium heat, stirring to mix in spices and crumble the meat. Remove from heat and mix in potato.
Step 3: Place one of the pie crusts into a 9-inch pie plate. Fill with meat mixture, then top with the other pie crust. Pierce the top of the crust a few times with a knife to vent steam. Crimp around the edges with a fork, and remove any excess dough. Cover the edges of the pie crust with aluminum foil.
Step 4: Bake for 25 minutes or until the crust is browned.
And there you have it! A delicious meat pie, just like Mrs. Lovett’s, sans Sweeney Todd’s victims.
New Director Promises "Joyous" Greenshow
By Liz Armstrong
Last year, Utah Shakespeare Festival patrons enjoyed a fabulous production of The Pirates of Penzance, with a colorful and buzzing energy that entranced audiences throughout the play. This season, patrons can expect the same at The Greenshow. “It’s going to be joyous, fun, and nonstop,” director Cassie Abate said.
And Abate should know. She directed that acclaimed production of The Pirates of Penzance and this year is writing, directing, and choreographing The Greenshow, the Festival’s free pre-play entertainment.
Abate said that directing The Pirates of Penzance last year prepared her for directing The Greenshow this year. “Being at the Festival last year, I really got a sense about the traditions, and experiencing what the Festival is all about was awesome,” she said. “I’m so excited to be back.”
Directing The Greenshow will have its challenges, but this vivacious director is up for the task. “The Greenshow has been a fun learning experience for me because I’ve never fully written a show before,” she said. “So taking an [idea] all the way through has been a really fun, interesting, dynamic experience.”
Abate is also extremely excited about how collaborative the process of putting together The Greenshow has been. “What’s so great about this kind of production is because it’s new, the cast gets to be a collaborative part of it,” Abate said. “So things shift and change and adapt more so than when you have a set show that you are producing.”
“It’s a lot less predictable than when you’re inside a theater,” she said in discussing the outdoor space on the green. “I’m looking forward to experiencing how we fill that space and how we utilize it to its full potential so that we don’t just make it an entertainment, but an immersive experience for the audience—where they’re interacting with the performance.”
Abate plans to honor the traditions of the Festival and The Greenshow while adding fun and new elements. Jokingly, she promised to mention the Festival-famous tarts in each show.
Patrons can also expect an extremely fun soundtrack. Abate hinted that in addition to pulling from the musical theatre canon, the company will also be using more popular songs from the ’40s to the ’60s.
Because The Greenshow is presented every night before the plays, Abate’s biggest goal is to make sure it complements the shows being performed, as well as making sure each of the three versions of The Greenshow can stand alone as a fun and family-friendly entertainment. The Last Time I Saw Paris will play before All’s Well That Ends Well; British Music Hall before Sweeney Todd; and Coronation Day before King Lear. Abate promises each one is unique in its own way.
The 2022 season of the Utah Shakespeare Festival runs from June 20 to October 8 and includes All’s Well That Ends Well, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, The Sound of Music, Trouble in Mind, Clue, The Tempest, and Thurgood, as well as all the experiences surrounding the plays, such as The Greenshow, seminars, orientations, and backstage tours. Tickets and information are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or going online to bard.org.
The Place the Festival Was Born!
By Liz Armstrong
For the Utah Shakespeare Festival, it all started in a laundromat.
And now the Cedar City Historic Preservation Commission and Visit Cedar City • Brian Head—The Iron County Tourism Bureau have installed and dedicated a plaque highlighting the place where the idea of the Utah Shakespeare Festival was born.
Titled the Birthplace of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the memorial plaque is located near 100 North and 100 West streets on the east side of 100 West where the Fluffy Bundle Laundromat stood in the 1950s and ’60s
Local businessman W. Arthur Jones opened the Fluffy Bundle in 1959, and a young Fred C. Adams and his financée Barbara Gaddie were doing their laundry there in the spring of 1960 when the idea of a Shakespeare festival was born. At this time, Fred was the only drama professor at what was then the College of Southern Utah.
“Notes written on a yellow notepad while waiting for their clothes to dry would become the blueprint for the Utah Shakespeare Festival,” the plaque reads. “Little did [Fred and Barbara] know that those notes would drastically change their lives and help shape the future of this community.”
Those notes did change the Cedar City community. Over sixty years later, the Utah Shakespeare Festival has entertained hundreds of thousands of people from around the world and is recognized as one of the best professional theatre events in the nation.
It is with tender hearts that the Festival reminisces on the birthplace and beginning of Fred and Barbara’s dream. Without those inspired and candid notes scrawled during mundane daily chores in the Fluffy Bundle Laundromat, the Festival would not be the theatrical and entertainment jewel it is today.
Twelve Children Cast in The Sound of Music
By Liz Armstrong
The Sound of Music is an incredibly memorable piece of theatre, and the Utah Shakespeare Festival predicts that its production this summer will be made even more so with the casting of twelve talented children to play the six youngest von Trapp children.
Each of the six roles have been double cast to make it easier to work with the schedules of these young, part-time thespians and their diverse schedules. The twelve young actors are:
Gwynn Christ and Rubey Pearson as Gretl
Shelby Fawson and Molly Pearson as Louisa
Liv Harter and Kate Sowards as Brigitta
Penny Hodson and Ridley Hulse as Marta
Mack Lawrence and Ian Wilson as Kurt
Brooke Mellen and Joel Wilson as Friedrich
Michael Bahr, Festival education director who assisted in the recruitment and rehearsal process, is excited about the caliber of these children.
“I’m thrilled we are doing The Sound of Music because we can utilize talented youth performers from the region,” Bahr said. “It is a really great way to celebrate both their talent and for them to learn from professional actors.” The children cast are from the Wasatch Front and Las Vegas, as well as from the Cedar City and St. George area.
The auditions were a day-long process, with over eighty children ranging from ages 5 to 19 vying for the roles. Beginning at 9 a.m., they sang, danced, and acted; then over half of the children were called back for a second round.
Bahr said the large callback wasn’t about not breaking the kid’s hearts, but about finding the very best actors. “I said to Brian Vaughn [the Festival artistic director], ‘You didn’t have to call that many kids back,’ and he said, ‘I know but they’re really good, and I want to give them a chance, to teach them,’” Bahr related.
Bahr explained that in addition to looking for children that could sing, dance, and act, they were on the lookout for those with a kind of professional demeanor and teachability. Ultimately, Bahr, Vaughn, and director Keenon Hooks were asking the question, “Who is best at sharing?” “Theatre is about a conversation between the performers and the audience,” Bahr explained. “We need child performers that can share and connect with the audience and their cast members. When you find that, it’s a very special and unique thing, and I think they got that with this group.”
Bahr praised Hooks, explaining that because he has worked with all levels of actors, including children, he expects that as a director will be able to draw out their very best performances.
Although most everyone is familiar with the Julie Andrews’ production, patrons will get to see this specific show again for the first time. “They have never seen this production before,” Bahr said. “You will hear the songs again and go, ‘Wow, I’ve never noticed that before,’ because of what these performers and director have to offer.”
At the end of the day, theater is about representing humanity onstage so that patrons can see a bit of themselves in every production, and that is what the Festival will accomplish this year with The Sound of Music. “Shakespeare knows that you have to have all of humanity represented on stage,” Bahr said. “We want to make sure, as a company, that we are engaging with all of humanity, and children are part of that humanity. Having children onstage engaging with other children in the audience is important.”
Announcing the 2022 Season Cast of The Greenshow
“This summer I am so excited to be working with such an incredibly talented group of performers,” said Cassie Abate, director of The Greenshow. “This season The Greenshow has a total of nine performers with six performers in each cast. So along with three different shows, there will be three different cast makeups. There will be lots of song, dance, and fun!”
The Greenshow is the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s free, pre-play entertainment that is performed nightly before the evening play. All nine actors in this talented group of performers are looking forward to their work this year. They are:
Lucy Austin will be playing Johanna in Sweeney Todd and Ursula and Ensemble in The Sound of Music in addition to appearing in The Greenshow. She has appeared in Into the Woods, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline, and The General from America at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, as well as in Cabaret, Macbeth, Good Kids, Little Women, Cagebirds, and Carousel at The Boston Conservatory. She also acted in the film Little Women. She received her B.F.A. from The Boston Conservatory.
Whitney Black is performing, in addition to The Greenshow, the roles of Soldier, French Lady, and Ensemble in All’s Well That Ends Well. Elsewhere, she has performed such roles as Mother Courage in Mother Courage (Southern Utah University), The Witch in Into the Woods (Southern Utah University), Olivia in Twelfth Night Or What You Will (Utah Valley University), The Angel in Angels in America (Utah Rep. Theatre), Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice (Creekside Theatre Fest), and Witch in The Tragedy of Macbeth (Creekside Theatre Fest). She is working on her BFA degree in acting at Southern Utah University.
Black appears courtesy of the Southern Utah University Fellowship Program.
Augusto Guardado will appear in The Greenshow and in the Ensemble of The Sound of Music. Work at other theatres includes On Your Feet, Beauty and the Beast, West Side Story (Moonlight Amphitheater); White Christmas (Musical Theatre West); América Tropical (McCoy Rigby Entertainment); Something Rotten, Shrek the Musical (5-Star Theatricals). He received his B.A. from California State University Northridge.
Elizabeth Harlen is playing Sister Margaretta in The Sound of Music in addition to performing in The Greenshow. She has appeared in a workshop of Galt MacDermot‘s The Human Comedy at New York City Center, Rosa Bud in Manhattan School of Music’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Performer in Stephen Schwartz’s 70th Birthday Gala, and Performer in The Drama League Gala Honoring Sutton Foster. She received her bachelor of music degree from Manhattan School of Music.
Malory Myers, in addition to performing in The Greenshow, will fill the roles of Postulant/Ensemble in The Sound of Music. Other work includes Jerusha Abbott in Daddy Long Legs and Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker (radio) at Southern Utah University; Molly Aster in Peter and the Starcatcher and Rosalind Hay in Moon Over Buffalo at Dixie State University; and Soprano in Hunchback of Notre Dame at Tuacahn Center for the Arts. She was also a dancer in the Disney film High School Musical 2. She holds a BFA in musical theatre and minor in dance degree from Southern Utah University.
Samantha Paredes is in the ensembles of Sweeney Todd and The Sound of Music, as well as appearing in The Greenshow. She has also worked at Hale Center Theatre, Center Theatre Orem, Hopebox Theatre, Westminster College Opera Studio, Wasatch Theatre Company and On Pitch Performing Arts. She has also appeared in two films: Sol (SpyHop Productions) and Wallsburg (Crash Forward Productions). She won first place in the 2022 Grand Prize Vienna International Competition and first place in singing in the 2020 International Model and Talent Association Competition. She received a BA in vocal performance from Westminster College.
Taylor Tveten is playing Sister Berthe in The Sound of Music and Ensemble in Sweeney Todd, in addition to appearing in The Greenshow. She played Priscilla Presley/Dance Captain in the United States premiere of Elvis the Musical at Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre, Elizabeth in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde at Jobsite Theater, and others. She is the 2020 second place National Winner in Musical Theatre with the National Society of Arts and Letters and the first place St. Louis Regional Winner in Musical Theatre with the National Society of Arts and Letters. She has a BFA in musical theatre from The Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University
Ethan Van Slyke, in addition to performing in The Greenshow, will play Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd and Rolf Gruber in The Sound of Music. Other theatre work includes Newsies, Watch on the Rhine, and Oliver! (Arena Stage); Altar Boyz, and You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown (Forestburgh Playhouse); and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dogfight, Hair (University of Michigan). He is a 2017 Helen Hayes Award Nominee, and he holds a BFA in musical theatre from The University of Michigan
Spencer Watson is also appearing in The Greenshow. Other theatre work has included James Lingk in Glengarry Glen Ross, Snail (understudy) in A Year with Frog and Toad, Barnaby in The Matchmaker, Cinderella’s Prince/The Wolf in Into the Woods, Whizzer in Falsettos (Southern Utah University); Smee/Nana in Peter Pan (Pickleville Playhouse), and Younger Brother in Ragtime (Centerpoint Legacy Theatre). He is working on a BFA in musical theatre from Southern Utah.
Watson appears courtesy of the Southern Utah University Fellowship Program.
The Festival season runs from June 20 to October 8, featuring All’s Well That Ends Well, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, The Sound of Music, Trouble in Mind, Clue, The Tempest, and Thurgood. Tickets are now on sale. You can order or receive more information by visiting www.bard.org or calling the Ticket Office at 800-PLAYTIX.
BUY TICKETSMore Casting News
All’s Well That Ends Well Casting Story
Announcing the Cast of Thurgood
“The casting process for Thurgood was a little different,” said director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg when talking about the one-man play she will be directing this season at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. In fact, it was almost the opposite of how casting usually works at the Festival. Instead of the director being hired first and then casting taking place, “Derek Charles Livingston, Festival director of new play development/artistic associate, contacted me about directing the show with him already in the role.”
Sonnenberg and Livingston have known each other for over a decade, which will be a bonus as they work together to bring to the stage the life of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice. “The collaboration has to be different. We have to work more closely, collaboratively on character and intentions,” said Sonnenberg. “The entire play has to come from one actor, and it has to live comfortably in his mouth and body. Already having a prior working relationship means Derek and I can get right to the work, and that’s exciting.”
“And as long as he remembers I’m the director, it’ll be fine,” she joked.
Livingston has played the demanding role before, as well as numerous others across the country: Tupolski in The Pillowman, Simon in The Whipping Man, Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy, Nat Turner in Insurrection: Holding History, Billy Flynn in Chicago, Gregory in Love! Valor! Compassion!, Oberon (twice) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pridament in The Illusion, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Duke Frederick in As You Like It.
He has also worked as a theatre director, producer, and new play developer. He served for over four years as the managing artistic director of Los Angeles’s Celebration Theatre (the country’s second oldest, continuously operating LGBT-focused theatre). During that time and after, he produced and/or directed several acclaimed plays and musicals; those productions received over fifty Los Angeles theatre awards or nominations (including acknowledgements for Derek’s directing work on five productions). Later he lived in San Diego where he produced or co-produced a host of new play festivals, helping give life to over forty new plays. For San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, he directed the award-nominated San Diego premiere of Tru, depicting the life of Truman Capote.
In his position at the Festival, Livingston is responsible for re-envisioning and overseeing the Festival’s new play program, Words Cubed, as well as other artistic and senior staff duties.
The Festival season runs from June 20 to October 8, with Thurgood being performed from September 14 to October 8 only. Other plays in the season are All’s Well That Ends Well, Sweeney Todd, King Lear, The Sound of Music, Trouble in Mind, Clue, and The Tempest. Tickets are now on sale. You can order or receive more information by visiting www.bard.org or calling the Ticket Office at 800-PLAYTIX.
BUY TICKETSMore Casting News
All’s Well That Ends Well Casting Story