St. George Musical Theater

St. George Musical Theater was the brainchild of playwright Mark Ogden, who wanted community theatre in a region where it didn't exist. Ogden died in 1994 and passed the organization to Don and Dawna Kenworthy, who built it into a fifty-thousand-patron-per-year operation running eight productions annually by 2007. Then it lost its downtown venue and was forced to close — a five-year gap that ended in 2014 when St. George City gave the organization access to the historic Opera House and the Kenworthys brought the company back.

Theatre in the Round

SGMT's signature format is in-the-round — audience on four sides, performers in the center with no proscenium between them. The intimacy is not an aesthetic choice made for budget reasons; it's the format the organization was built around from the beginning. The current venue at 212 N Main St hosts the performance program while the new facility — a 20,000-square-foot dedicated space for approximately 375 patrons on 2 acres south of downtown — works toward a 2026 opening that the St. George News covered at groundbreaking.

A Hiatus and a Return

The five years SGMT was dark (approximately 2009–2014) created a gap in St. George's community arts calendar that other organizations couldn't fill. When city officials offered the Opera House as a temporary home, the organization came back with sold-out performances immediately — a sign that the audience had been waiting rather than finding alternatives. The new campus, once complete, will be the first facility the organization has ever owned rather than borrowed or rented.

SGMT in the 435

For a register of locally rooted Southern Utah organizations, St. George Musical Theater is the community-theatre anchor of the Washington County arts calendar — the in-the-round company that was started by a local playwright, rebuilt by local operators, and revived by local city support. The new campus will make it a permanent institution in a way that renting never could.