Cedar City has more theater seats per capita than most American cities ten times its size, and the reason is the Utah Shakespeare Festival. It started in 1961 as a summer-only repertory program at what was then College of Southern Utah — an experiment by professor Fred C. Adams in producing Shakespeare in a town of 8,000 people at 5,800 feet elevation. Sixty-plus years later it's a Tony-winning regional theater that runs from late June through early October, fields six to nine productions per season across three venues, and draws roughly 100,000 ticket buyers a year to a city of 36,000.
The Three Theaters
The Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre is the festival's outdoor anchor — a 921-seat replica Globe-style venue on the SUU campus that opened in 2016, replacing the original Adams Memorial Theatre that the festival used from 1977 to 2015. It hosts the Shakespeare productions of the season. The Randall L. Jones Theatre, indoor and proscenium-staged, holds the contemporary and non-Shakespeare classical productions and runs a longer season because weather doesn't limit it. The Anes Studio Theatre is the small black-box venue that hosts the more experimental fare. All three sit within the Beverley Center for the Arts complex on the SUU campus, walking distance from the historic Center Street downtown.
What "Tony-Winning Regional Theatre" Means
The festival received the Regional Theatre Tony Award in 2000 — the same award that has gone to the Goodman in Chicago, the Steppenwolf, the Old Globe in San Diego, and a small number of other institutions over its 50-year history. It's the recognition that places the Utah Shakespeare Festival in the top tier of American regional theater, not as a summer-stock or community operation but as a professional company on the same circuit as the LORT-A houses. The acting company is Equity-affiliated; productions tour or move; alumni include working Broadway actors.
Why Cedar City
The festival could have moved to a larger market a dozen times in its history. It hasn't. The case for Cedar City is the same one Adams made in 1961 — the elevation makes summer evenings cool enough for outdoor theater (Cedar's July highs run 85°F at altitude versus 105°F in St. George), the campus integration with SUU keeps the educational mission live, and the town has organized its summer culture around the festival in a way no big city would. Pre-show "Greenshow" performances on the Engelstad plaza draw families with picnic blankets. The Adams Memorial Plaza is a community gathering point. Restaurants on Center Street time their menus to curtain. Every member of the Iron County Chamber of Commerce treats the festival as the engine of their summer economy.