I was chosen to drive from Las Vegas to Cedar City, Utah to the last college on our West Coast Tour. After 2 nights in Las Vegas I was rested and everyone else was exhausted from trying to make sure they didn’t miss anything. It was not one of our more scenic drives.
On the other hand, we made good time. And, while there weren’t oceans of water, it got greener the further we went from Las Vegas.
We arrived at Cedar City in plenty of time for our afternoon meeting at SUU and, once again guessed wrong about where to start our search for the right place. We stumbled on a student housing tour that seemed likely so we took that first. Everything seemed right next door even
though the athletic complex was three or four blocks away and the the Open Air Shakespeare theater was three or four blocks away in a different direction.
The theater was important because both our West Coast College Evaluators are ardent Shakespeare enthusiasts. Things were going extremely well until our reviewers learned that the University was ceding control of the Cedar City Shakespeare Festival to a foundation and using the space occupied by the theater for something else. They saw this as a loss of commitment to theater arts and, somewhat precipitously, scratched Southern Utah University off their lists. It is important to note that, in no way did this unfortunate interpretation negatively impact our enjoyment of the evening’s performance of Henry IV – Part 2 or The Greenshow that preceded it.
One of the challenging aspects of having Shakespeare performances outside is being at the mercy of other outside activities. The director apologized that his actors were competing with Groovefest, and we could hear an occasional bluegrassy chorus from some other venue. If our Student College Evaluator reconsiders and chooses to attend SUU, I might have to make some hard choices.
