The Utah Shakespeare Festival is known for its Tony Award-winning quality. With several productions each summer, the festival has consistently provided entertainment to over 100,000 audience members annually. What many people don’t know when they go to the festival, however, is that the students of Southern Utah University are a major part of the festival’s lifeblood.
SUU students appear on stage at the festival courtesy of the Utah Shakespeare Festival Fellowship Program, but they are also working in front-of-house, company management and backstage crews for the shows.
SUU Student Saylor Hartner worked as part of the hair and makeup crew backstage at the festival and on the wig build crew for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Emma.”
“I really wanted to work at USF because it felt like a nice way to start learning what theatre in the real world is like in a safe little bubble because it’s still part of SUU,” said Hartner.
Hartner had worked on wigs in the costume shop at SUU for two and a half years before deciding to apply to work at the festival. The experience she gained building wigs on campus helped to equip her for the job at the festival, where she expanded her skillset even more.
“I learned a lot of different techniques and different ways to make wigs,” said Hartner. “I also learned how to do facial hair. That was something I never had done before, and I was absolutely terrified.” During her time at the festival, she made sideburns that were seen on stage in performances of “Emma.”
Other positions at the festival that were filled by SUU students included a vast majority of their house managers. House management is an incredibly demanding job and is vital to maintaining order in any theater.
“A full house in a theater can have anywhere from 200 to 900 people depending on the theater,” said Sophia Weaver, who served as a house manager supervisor. “It’s a lot of multitasking, managing multiple things at a time and knowing how to handle emergency situations.”
Weaver has worked in house management at the university for the past few years, but working the festival’s shows has been a different experience.
“Here at the university, we use an open seating system. You buy a ticket, and you sit wherever you want. At the Shakespeare Festival, you buy a ticket, and you have a specific seat,” said Weaver. Specific seat assignments require house managers to learn the seating charts of the theaters.
House management wasn’t Weaver’s only responsibility at the festival, making her the perfect example for how vital SUU students were to the effective running of business. She briefly ran the sound board for the Greenshow, covering when the person hired to run it got married. She also served as one of the SUU students to assistant direct a show at the festival. She assistant directed “A Raisin in the Sun,” working with the show’s director and the festival’s interim artistic director Derek Charles Livingston.
“It was mostly an observational role, which was extremely useful because I got to learn how a show starts from nothing and then builds into an actual production within the span of like a month,” said Weaver. As assistant director, Weaver also worked with the young actors in the show as well as helped the rest of the cast with their lines.
Any student working at the festival has the unique opportunity to work with professionals within the theatre industry while still in college, which provides both a boost to their resumes and practical experience and lessons.
“I loved learning from my superiors who’ve been in this industry longer,” said Hartner. “They were so kind in wanting to teach and just wanting to share their knowledge.”
While students working at the festival had the opportunity to gain professional experience, they also learned that the very professionals they were learning from were significantly less intimidating than they can seem.
“I worked with so many professional actors, and one of the actors that I really enjoyed working with was Corey Jones, who played Walter in ‘Raisin,’” said Weaver. “Working with him just made me realize actors are just regular people. They’re just living normal lives like we are but doing what they love.”
SUU students fill roles all across the festival, but it isn’t widely publicized that they do so, with the exception of the students who receive the acting fellowship through the festival and the university.
“All of these opportunities that they give, whether they’re paid or unpaid, whether it’s an internship, whether it’s a salary position — they all provide so much educational experience,” said Weaver. “Even just one summer alone I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge, and I’m definitely a lot more ahead in my career than I should be.”
Author: Tessa Cheshire
Photos courtesy of the Utah Shakespeare Festival
accent@suunews.net
This article was originally published in the October 2023 edition of the University Journal.
