{"id":29165,"date":"2024-02-15T01:42:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T08:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-theater-program-to-host-utah-shakespeare-festivals-hamlet\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:50:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:50:04","slug":"montezuma-cortez-theater-program-to-host-utah-shakespeare-festivals-hamlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-theater-program-to-host-utah-shakespeare-festivals-hamlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez theater program to host Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s \u2018Hamlet\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Utah Shakespeare Festival will be performing \u201cHamlet\u201d at Montezuma-Cortez High School on Feb. 22, starting at 7 p.m. (Utah Shakespeare Festival website)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Utah Shakespeare Festival will perform a 75-minute rendition of \u201cHamlet\u201d at the Montezuma-Cortez High School auditorium.<\/p>\n

Tickets will be available for all who wish to attend the performance, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. Feb. 22.<\/p>\n

The Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is located in Cedar City, Utah, and is affiliated with Southern Utah University, was established in 1961 as a way to bring Shakespeare performances and theater to Utah.<\/p>\n

The festival later expanded, creating an educational branch in 1993 that travels to schools throughout Utah, Arizona and Colorado performing Shakespeare plays and educating students about theater.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the festival is traveling from Feb. 1 to April 20.<\/p>\n

According to MCHS Theatre Director Nicholaus Sandner, the troupe does more than just perform when they visit schools.<\/p>\n

The day of the performance, students will have the opportunity to spend time with the actors and participate in three workshops.<\/p>\n

All three workshops will take place at the same time, and students can decide which one they would like to participate in.<\/p>\n

Sandner said this year\u2019s workshops include stage combat, improv and acting for Shakespeare plays. Following the workshops, students help the troupe prepare their sets and are able to ask questions following the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool because they come and they do workshops with our students in the afternoon, and then the students help them move the show in and we get to watch the show and they do a Q&A at the end. Then our students help pack it all up and send them on their way,\u201d Sandner said.<\/p>\n

While the actors perform for free for schools in Utah due to government grants, they have to charge fees for out-of-state performances.<\/p>\n

Sandner said they were able to bring the troupe back thanks to the generosity of the LOR Foundation.<\/p>\n

A parent who knew of the Utah Shakespeare Festival and their education program brought it to the MCHS theater program\u2019s attention about five years ago, and the troupe has been coming every year except for 2020 during COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018Hey, we should get involved in this,\u2019 and we made contact with them and we\u2019ve been able to get on their radar,\u201d Sandner said.<\/p>\n

In 2020, they performed and recorded \u201cJulius Caesar,\u201d which was then sent to schools to be watched online. The troupe performed \u201cMacbeth\u201d in 2022, as well as \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d in 2023.<\/p>\n

Now, the troupe is revisiting \u201cHamlet,\u201d which was performed prior to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

According to the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s website, the story of Hamlet encapsulates Hamlet\u2019s journey to find truth, which they said is relevant for young people as they grow and begin to ask, \u201cWho and what can I trust?\u201d and \u201cDo I go with the flow or forge my own path?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandner said the whole experience is invaluable to theater students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really fun for our students to see the loading process of the show because they bring their own sets, their own costumes, their own lighting, their own sound stuff and our students help them set it up and set it up fast,\u201d Sandner said. \u201cThen they watch the play and do the Q&A and get to mingle again with the actors and see the sets taken down again \u2026 it\u2019s a fun experience to see how a touring show works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tickets for the Feb. 22 show cost $6 for students and seniors, $10 for adults. Children can attend for free.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit bard.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tickets are available for the Feb. 22 performance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,36,29,910],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-theatre"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80653,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29165\/revisions\/80653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29165"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}