Menu

Utah Shakespeare Festival turns 50


Salt Lake Tribune, 16 June 2011

Article Summary:

Utah Shakespeare Festival:

  • business owners worried in the early 1960s that the proposed Interstate 15 would divert tourists from Cedar City
  • Fred C. Adams thought a theater festival might encourage passing tourists to exit the freeway
  • Adams studied the successful Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland
  • in 1962, townspeople and students built sets, props, and costumes and presented three Shakespearean plays on an outdoor platform
  • the festival was held on the campus of the College of Southern Utah, now Southern Utah University
  • Barbara Gaddie Adams, wife of Fred Adams and music director for the festival for decades, died in 2007