One of the Best Movie Theater Near Me
The Utah Shakespeare Festival has vaulted the small southern Utah city of Cedar City onto the contemporary map. Held each summer at Southern Utah University, the festival now ranks as one of the top four Shakespearean festivals Best Movie Theater Near Me in the country.
Founded in 1962 by Fred C. Adams, it started with a $1,000 budget. Attendance was 3,276. Today, that budget exceeds $2.8 million. And attendance exceeds 125,000.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival
The Utah Shakespeare Festival has been acclaimed by critics around the world as one of the best Shakespearean festivals in the world. And it has something few other such festivals have. A theater which emulates… because it was designed from original drawings… the 16th century Tudor stages.
In fact, it comes real close to duplicating the original Globe Theater where Shakespeare presented his plays. So close… in fact… that the BBC used it to film their Shakespeare series after a worldwide search. The Adams Shakespearean Theater sits on the beautiful green grounds of Southern Utah University.
The one time we attended this Best Movie Theater Near Me event, we were enthralled by roaming allen theaters… Green Shows. Elizabethan dance and music. Punch and Judy shows. A raptor demonstration… hawks and golden eagles. And… of course… wonderful summer evening temperatures.
In fact, memories of that visit… and doing some of the research for this page… prompted us to plan another trip to the festival this summer… in 2011.
The festival won a Tony Award in 2000 for America’s Outstanding Regional Best Movie Theater Near Me. The festival’s newest theater… the Randall L. Jones Theater… was featured in Architecture magazine in 1990. A beautiful building. It is used throughout the year for plays and musicals.
The festival performs three or four Shakespeare plays throughout the summer. But they also present two other plays… usually contemporary works. You can also sit in on literary and production seminars which discuss the previous day’s plays.
Cedar City is in southern Utah. Things to see nearby include:
Zion National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park
Cedar Breaks National Monument
St. George
Lake Powell
The Pine Valley Mountains
The city of St. George is about 1/2 hour south on I-15. The St. George area is a “haven for outdoor buffs and retirees.” Travel and Golf Leisure magazine named St. George an emerging leisure mecca.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival runs from late June… the 23rd in 2011… through the middle of October. Tickets run from $22 to $71. As they say on their site, “Let’s Play! What is life without a little play?”
