Whenever you’ve bought two new faces in key roles, it will be straightforward for an inventive group to get caught up within the logistical particulars. As Utah Shakespeare Pageant welcomed Michael Bahr as Govt Managing Director and John DiAntonio as Creative Director in September 2023, there was rather a lot to do, together with diving proper into finalizing the plan for the 2025 season. However within the midst of all that, there was an understanding that they wanted to concentrate on the human aspect of their mission.
“[John] is available in in November and says, ‘Okay we’ll do a strategic plan—whereas we have been placing all the things else collectively,” Bahr remembers. “Who’re we, who’re we serving, what can we worth. … All of us got here out as a crew.”
Over the course of a 45-minute dialog, DiAntonio repeatedly insists that there is nothing “groundbreaking” in regards to the issues he desires to maintain on the middle of Utah Shakespeare Pageant. He name-checks the pageant’s late founder when he notes that he desires to keep up a “deep reference to the viewers in that spirit of Fred Adams. … The individuals right here speak rather a lot in regards to the ‘repertory machine.’ When you checked out our calendars, your head would explode. However we’ve got to search for the human within the machine. We would like a theater the place everybody’s title, [where] you fall in love with the corporate members. … Each day, we’ll deliberately make area to attach. The performs are solely a part of the puzzle right here.”
For DiAntonio, a type of methods to attach is not only to supervise the season’s productions as an observer, however to position himself in the course of one. DiAntonio will likely be taking part in Petruchio in Utah Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, reverse his spouse, Caitlin Smart, as Kate. He notes that the choice was partly a perform of the director’s imaginative and prescient for casting a real-life couple as Kate and Petruchio, but in addition a part of that very same need to foster connections.
“The largest professional was expediting the method of getting the viewers get to know me,” DiAntonio says. “The viewers simply latches on, particularly to the actors, in such a good looking, fantastic method. Quantity two, my model, for higher or worse, [is that] I am an ‘within the trenches’ man. I wish to be there with the crew as a lot as I can. As a result of I am not a previous firm member of USF, I knew it will be precious to expertise the depth of the method from the within. And boy have I realized it first-hand, the pressures which might be on it.”
For Bahr, private relationships are additionally important to his administration model. A veteran of greater than 25 years with Utah Shakespeare Pageant, together with as Schooling Director, he briefly departed the group to grow to be a college principal earlier than returning in his new position. And he believes there is a sturdy philosophical connection between these roles.
“Primarily, I am sort of a principal—a facilitator ensuring John has the sources to do his artwork,” Bahr says. “Did I do know what the job of govt managing director was [before taking it]? I did. It is a principal. And leaning into the private of it’s the way you preserve your humanity.”
That sort of private focus is important, Bahr believes, not only for relationships inside the group, however by way of understanding what the viewers desires. Bahr is sincere in regards to the struggles that USF, like so many arts organizations, confronted within the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, looking for the candy spot of programming exhibits which might be artistically wonderful and promote tickets, permitting the group to flourish.
“We had reserves and a relationship with the college that had us in sort of a safer place,” Bahr says. “However these reserves disappeared in a short time. And that runway for change may be very quick. Our viewers is an older demographic; we’ve got to ensure we keep related to the brand new viewers that is arising. … We’re doing Henry VIII in 2024. Why are we doing that? As a result of it is related. You have to thread a needle with that—inform the story in a method that is nonetheless accessible, nonetheless related, and speaks to the viewers and the artists.”
It is a difficult panorama, each DiAntonio and Bahr acknowledge, however there is a sense that all of it comes all the way down to the explanations Shakespearean performs themselves have endured: exploring truths of our shared humanity. And watching these tales in a communal method is a part of that very same understanding of the significance of connections. “For me,” DiAntonio says, “it is linked to Shakespeare: Watching actors painting people who aren’t that totally different from ourselves—even when they’re kings or queens—make errors. After which they’re going to pivot. … And all that, with a few of the biggest poetry ever written.
“At our core, most people have this want to assemble, to be collectively in an area, and to listen to a narrative. To expertise a narrative dwell. And that is what theater is constructed on. Irrespective of how tempting Netflix could be, it does not scratch that itch.”