Utah Shakespeare Festival - Insider's Blog
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Utah Shakespeare Festival - Insider’s Blog
Welcome to 2012!
Happy New Year! Hope you enjoyed a lovely holiday with family and friends.
Here at The Festival, we are quickly ramping up to full speed for 2012. The Tour Company has arrived and is in rehearsal for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Melinda Pfundstein. They will head out in late January for their 60+ performances in front of 30,000 people across four states: Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho.
Casting for the summer and fall seasons is in process. Directors and designers have been selected and are preparing for the design meetings in late February. This is where the vision starts to come together.
I’m excited about the 2012 season. Of course, “Les Mis” will be terrific! I’m personally excited about the plays I’ve not seen before: Mary Stuart, To Kill a Mockingbird (have read the book and seen the movie), Scapin, and Titus Andronicus.
And, based on your suggestions, we’re modifying this blog. We’ll feature guest bloggers (directors, designers, actors, patrons), follow other theatre blogs we think you’ll like (suggestions welcome – please comment below), and hope for more “conversations” with you. We’re also changing our location – the new URL is http://utahshakespearefestival.blogspot.com. As before, you can find us via Facebook www.facebook.com/utahshakespeare or our web page www.bard.org.
Upcoming blogs include an interview with Melinda Pfundstein, guest blogs from tour designers and company members and 2012 season casting.
I hope you join us on our journey behind the scenes of the Utah Shakespeare Festival for 2012. If there’s a topic that interests you, if you have a question, or suggestion, we’d love to hear it! You can comment below or send an email to blog@bard.org.
Joanne Brattain
Patron and Volunteer Blog Coordinator
Anonymous
I noticed the same thing. I suspect some of it was because the audience knew what the characters didn’t (that Tony was evil, for example) and therefore found some dialogue “funny” because it didn’t ring true. Just my opinion though.
And glad you like the Festival so much!
Insider’s Blog - Utah Shakespeare Festival - Strike the Sets!
Wow – hard to believe after all the planning, great plays and celebrations that the 50th Anniversary Season for the Festival is over. Deep breaths. In the ten years that I’ve been attending the Festival, I think this season was the strongest overall. All the plays were excellent productions. Everyone definitely rose to the occasion.
Looking back, here are my favorite memories, in no particular order.
1. Opening Night. I’ll admit I was skeptical about the plan to have the entire company on stage as part of the curtain talks, but it worked! It was quite powerful seeing all those black shirts on the Adams stage and around the theatre. And A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a perfect opening play for this season – totally magical.
2. Doug Fabrizio, host of Radio West broadcast two shows live from the Adams Courtyard, one about Richard III and one about The Glass Menagerie. I loved both shows. The insights made for a more enjoyable experience while watching the plays. He is an amazing interviewer – he clearly prepared in depth and was quite knowledgeable. I hope he comes back.
3. First Folio – seeing an original First Folio and quarto – stunning! What an honor for us to display these during the season. And Kym Mellen’s discussion about using the Folio to inform her performance added to the experience.
4. The Music Man – What a treat. I have fond memories from my teen years of watching Robert Preston as Harold Hill. After the first of the three times I saw this production of The Music Man, all I could say was “Robert who?” Brian Vaughn was fabulous in the role. Additionally, Rhett Guter’s choreography and dancing were enchanting.
5. Richard III is one of my favorite plays, maybe because I majored in British History. I’ve enjoyed the mystery around the accuracy of this depiction (see Josephine Tey’s “Daughter of Time”.) I thought the production was very well done and I especially enjoyed the women: Leslie Brott as Margaret, Carole Healey as the Duchess of York, Kym Mellen as Elizabeth and Sara Griffin as Anne. These scenes are often cut from productions, so this was a special treat.
6. Romeo and Juliet – I enjoyed Magan Wile’s teenaged exuberance as Juliet, Jeanne Paulsen’s strength and quiet love as the nurse, and the youthful portrayals of Quinn Mattfeld as Benvolio and Matt Mueller as Mercutio.
7. Noises Off – I cannot imagine the timing and concentration needed to pull that off. What a tour de force for the entire cast!
8. Live broadcast of Midsummer by BYUtv. When I saw the BYUtv truck the Saturday before the broadcast, I knew this was big. The production team had spent lots of time here this summer, interviewing actors and production staff, watching the play several times to design the broadcast. Other than a slight adjustment to the lighting, the play was performed as it had been all summer. Inside the truck, the team decided which camera to use, just like during a live football game. Of course I recorded it and loved watching the broadcast (I had a “play date” with friends) to see just how wonderful it was. It will be rebroadcast during the Christmas season.
9. Designers. Learning more about the design process with interviews with the fall designers (costumes, lighting, and scenery) was a treat. I gained such an appreciation for how all the pieces come together to create the magic.
10. Being in the booth for Music Man. I was allowed to sit in the booth with the stage manager during a performance of Music Man. What an amazing experience. Such an intense job. The stage manager is in charge of all that happens in the theatre and calls all the sound, light and stage cues during the performance. And of course, just to make things interesting, a few things didn’t function as intended – totally transparent to the audience but interesting to observe the problem and solution. Some lights were misbehaving, a dancer sprained an ankle (luckily towards the end) and the school wanted their base drum back. Probably just a normal day but I was impressed with the calm manner in which all were handled.
11. Dial M for Murder – I thought Donna Ruzika’s lighting design was brilliant and the “murder” scene was very well staged.
12. A Winter’s Tale – Melinda Pfundstein’s fragile beauty and inner steel made her a lovely Hermione. And the comedic genius of David Ivers and Quinn Mattfeld was so fun to watch.
By the time you read this, the crew will have struck the sets and the directors and designers are already at work on the 2012 season.
If you have a favorite moment from this season, we’d love to hear your comments. And if you have comments or suggestions about the blog, we’d love to hear those too. You can comment on the blog site, our Facebook page or send an email to blog@bard.org .
Thanks for reading!
Anonymous
I don’t think so. It’s for use in theatre productions
