2-2-07
Shakespeare in the Mountains of Utah
Brian Vaughn, Aaron Galligan Stierle, A. Bryan Humphrey and Rick Ford in the Utah Shakespearean
Festival’s 2006 production of Room Service. (Photo: Karl Hugh)
Think Utah is all indy films and national parks? Puh-leeze! The Utah Shakespearean Festival kicks off its 46th season this summer. Fifty actors from around the nation will spend the summer performing in plays such as King Lear, Twelfth Night (directed by Northlight artistic director B.J. Jones) and Coriolanus. In addition to the Bard, contemporary classics such as George Bernard Shaw’s Candida and Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker are also included in the season. The festival will even present a world premiere musical version of Lend Me a Tenor with music by Brad Carroll and book and lyrics by Peter Sham. The summer repertory season runs June 21 through Sept. 1 in Cedar City, Utah. Not a bad place to spend your summer and, all snarkiness aside, it is about an hour away from six of our nation’s most beautiful national parks.
Although in name it is a Shakespearean Festival, their mission is to “present professional repertory, which illuminates the human condition,” which accounts for the non-Shakespeare repertoire. In addition to the works of Shakespeare and contemporary classic plays, the Festival produces a reading series of new work highlighting “the Shakespeares of tomorrow.”
The Festival was founded in 1961 by Fred C. Adams and held its first performances in the summer of 1962. Adams was inspired by the number of tourists he saw taking advantage of the beautiful Utah summers, and the festival strives to create a total experience for families to come and enjoy themselves. Utah Shakes even provides child care during performances.
The company is hosted on the campus of Southern Utah University, where they have built an Elizabethan theatre so similar to the Old Globe that in 1981 the BBC used it as a location for filming some of their Shakespeare series. In fact, part of their mission is to present the works of Shakespeare in a way that is true to the period in which he wrote. That means, as B.J. Jones put it, “You won’t see Bob Falls’ King Lear at Utah.”
A production of HMS Pinafore at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. (Photo: Karl Hugh)
Jones notes that for Twelfth Night, Shakespeare set the action on the coast of what is now Albania, so the Duke of Orsino is a gypsy pirate (think Pirates of the Caribbean) and Malvolio is a strict eastern sect Muslim, which are both true to the early 1600s. “It reflects the tenor and the politics of the time,” says Jones.
Utah Shakes is one of the few remaining repertory companies in the nation. Jones, who “grew up” in a repertory tradition, notes that producing theatre in this way is logistically complicated. “There is a special rhythm and use of time,” says Jones. “Your work is really focused around the time frame because you may have your cast available for four hours one day then eight hours the next.”
As a repertory company, casting for the festival season is an intricate process. Associate artistic director and casting director Kathleen Conlin describes where she is at this point in the process as being “in the zone.” Although casting is a year-round endeavor, things kick into high gear from January through March. “This is the heightened period,” she says. “I’m so deep into assembling what is in my head and judging and mathematically getting this to all fit in. It’s a very tight grid we have to fill.”
Over the course of a year, Conlin will see more than 500 actors audition for the 50 contracts the festival will offer this summer season. These are “contracts” as opposed to “roles” because as a repertory company, each actor will play more than one role over the season.
Throughout the year Conlin travels to various cities (New York, Chicago, LA, Seattle and San Francisco, for example) to see shows and hold auditions. She will also audition at some universities to fill out the non-Equity portions of the cast. “I see students from programs where I know what is being taught. If the training program is not focused on text, they aren’t worth my seeing,” she notes.
The auditions are by invitation only – either actors she has chosen from the submissions she’s received or people who come highly recommended by people she trusts. She notes that because she is casting for repertory, she does not have the luxury of looking for the ideal cast for any single play.
“Casting is based on the strength of each play and knowing how actors are playing roles in different shows,” says Conlin.
She looks for versatility; extraordinary intelligence in order for actors to be able to work their way through very dense text; strong vocal skills in voice production, speech, and phrasing; and physical endurance and flexibility needed for specific stage combat and for just keeping up with the pace of production. Some of the plays, in addition to the musical, will require actors to sing as well.
In addition to the new people Conlin sees each year, the cumulative pool of actors is quite large. “There are actors I may have seen for five or six years and haven’t been able to contract. Then suddenly everything is right and I get on the phone to contract them.” Of course it’s never that easy, but she does note that once you audition for the festival “it goes in the memory banks.”
However, just because a season comes along for which you are suddenly perfect, Conlin still insists on seeing actors again because, people being people, they may have changed physically over the years – for better and worse. “I’ve been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised over the course of the years. It’s the dynamism of the profession,” she says jokingly.
The tricky part of all this casting is that Conlin doesn’t see all the actors in one place at one time. “I’ll see a Romeo in Seattle, and won’t find Juliet until Chicago,” she laughs. “My notes have to be really good. I have to be sure I record all the right info and then I go back and check. It requires me to have all the resumes around my office, and I have to really work with them.” And no, she doesn’t videotape the auditions.
Despite the nonstop planning of putting the puzzle together, Conlin loves what she does. In addition to casting the entire season, she also directs one of the plays each year (this year it’s Candida). As casting director, she says, “I love getting into each of the directors’ heads. I can’t hire actors because of the way I think of Romeo and Juliet. It’s what the director is looking for and what are the reality and the logic of that production.” Even though she is a director herself, she says, “The danger is in assuming I’m a know-it-all and I know what Coriolanus is all about. Intellectually I become six directors and am forced to rethink the plays.”
The most moving part of what she does, though, is watching an actor in top form do their thing. “There is just something about watching the muscles and hearing the inflections and seeing the rage and the fire behind the eyes,” she says.
If you’d like to audition for the Utah Shakespearean Festival, send your photo and resume to Conlin (do not send tapes) at their office: 351 W. Center St., Cedar City, UT 84720.