Utah Shakespeare Festival Launches “Believe” Campaign

The Utah Shakespeare Festival has launched a new campaign hoping to inspire connectivity to the upcoming 2023 season and beyond, as well as asking patrons to embrace the “transformative power of live theare” and to trust the festival as a vehicle to bring that transformative power to the general public. The new campaign is called “Believe” and according to a press release is “a campaign where the festival is inviting you to feel emotions that are very genuine and real.” The campaign started out as a result of a brainstorming session held at the festival administrative office, and seeks to promote the expression the festival has regarding theatre and storytelling along with the power that has in transforming lives.

The Believe campaign was inspired by festival founder, Fred C. Adams. In 1960, Adams, along with his fiancee were doing laundry at a local laundromat where the idea to begin a Shakespeare festival born. From there, Mr. Adams was looking for someone who would believe in supporting the idea, and see a part of the vision he had for the festival in the area. That belief came from the Cedar City Lions Club which donated $1,000 to Adams, and that was all the encouragement he needed.

From that humble beginning, the Utah Shakespeare Festival has become a Tony Award winning organization, serving some 130,000 patrons a year with an operating budget of $7 million.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival continues to thrive because of the continuing belief of the year round staff, company members who give inspiring performances year after year, and volunteers who donate and dedicate time every year to produce world class theatre.

Most of all, the festival continues to be successful because if the patrons who purchase tickets in an act of support for and belief in the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

There is a unique mystique surrounding the Utah Shakespeare Festival. It is not just about the plays, the tarts, the actors, the staff, the theaters, the grounds. All of these things––and much more––are important individually, but all together, is when festival patrons truly start to believe in the power of theatre offered in Cedar City every summer. What makes the experience so unforgettable is the entirety of the experience, and the goal of the Believe Campaign is to epitomize that specific feeling.