The first weekend of the 10th Great Salt Lake Fringe (GSLF) is in the books. Shows for the second weekend resume Friday, Aug. 2 and run through Aug. 4 at the Alliance Theater, connected to the Utah Arts Alliance, at Trolley Square. The Fringe campus is accessible in the near downtown area, just north of … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part 2 of a two-part feature about the Great Salt Lake Fringe (GSLF) festival’s 10th anniversary, This year’s festival will comprise two weekends of performances (July 26-28 and August 2-4) at the Alliance Theater, connected to the Utah Arts Alliance, at Trolley Square. See Part 1 here, for a feature about … Read more
Awards in visual arts, film and literary programs have been announced for the 48th Utah Arts Festival. FEAR NO FILM Twelve awards were announced today in the 21st annual Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival, including a Grand Jury Prize, Fearless Filmmaker Award, three honorable mentions and seven audience awards. This year’s … Read more
For the third year in a row, the Utah Arts Festival is highlighting its Emerging Artists program, which has institutionalized broadly the experiences of newcomers to UAF and how their presence is adding to and reshaping the next chapters of Utah’s arts and cultural evolution. This year’s representative artists are in the Artist Marketplace, dance, … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review begins its preview coverage today of the 48th Utah Arts Festival, which will be held June 28-30 (noon to 11 p.m. on June 28-30) on the Library Square in downtown Salt Lake City. As this is the state’s largest multidisciplinary arts and cultural gathering each year, The Utah Review considers … Read more
In the introduction to her superlative biography Joan of Arc: A History (2014), Helen Castor wrote about her subject’s unique position as historical figure and as an epitome of Medieval Age culture, military history, politics and religious faith: “Unsurprisingly, the effect of Joan’s gravitational field – the self-defining narrative pull of her mission – is … Read more
The idea of turning even a rather small part of Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War and Peace into a musical would seem daunting, if not damn near impossible. However, Part 8 of the story, which occurs just before the novel’s midpoint, inspired Dave Malloy to do precisely that. Tolstoy, who achieved the epitome of rich … Read more
The two actors in the fabulous Plan-B Theatre production of Melissa Leilani Larson’s Bitter Lemon persuade the audience to reconsider Shakespeare’s Macbeth, not just as a chronicle about the fatalistic machinations of power but also as the moral conflict about good and evil. This conflict is manifested in Larson’s character creations of Lady Helen Macduff … Read more
In February, Plan-B Theatre mounted a world premiere production of Balthazar, Debora Threedy’s fresh reimagining of The Merchant of Venice’s Portia. As The Utah Review noted at the time, Threedy’s play is a well-crafted piece of fan fiction. In her two-hander script, she successfully sustained the broader integrity of Shakespeare’s literary world while reconfiguring characters … Read more
Plan-B Theatre’s world premiere production of Debora Threedy’s Balthazar is a crown jewel of intimate chamber theater, in every measure. Directed by Cheryl Ann Cluff, the 70-minute production is gratifying in the finest sense, with Threedy’s well-grounded fanfiction take on Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice, the ebullient elegance of Lily Hye Soo Dixon and Jason … Read more