By Samantha Baird
With a little behind the scenes look at shows from previous seasons, the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, UT is hosting weekly production seminars virtually throughout the summer. This week’s production seminar takes a look at the production, process, and tour of Every Brilliant Thing. These seminars stream live on Facebook and will continue to be available on Facebook afterwards, as well as on the Utah Shakespeare Festival website.
Every Brilliant Thing, written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, first published in 2013 and first produced at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2019, is a single-performer immersive piece that tackles the hard subjects of mental illness and suicide. After a successful run during the 2019 season, four performers took the show on the road for a tour to various high schools throughout the state of Utah during the 2019-2020 school year. I had the privilege of seeing the show in Salt Lake City at the Utah Theatre Association conference for high school students in January 2020. It is an incredibly moving show, and hearing first-hand from the performers just strengthens the experience.
Utah Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Brian Vaughn and Education Director Micheal Bahr act as mediators for this seminar/panel. They talk about how the idea of touring the show came to be by mentioning that Utah has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. After learning this fact, they wondered what bringing this production to young people in Utah could do for the youth of the state. After the panel and the production are introduced, time is given to Vince Cardinal, director of the USF production, to speak. “It’s not about audience participation,” he says. ”It’s about audience immersion.” I also loved his statement that, “You can’t talk about depression or suicide too much. This play is so funny and community-based and is a great way to put this topic onstage.” Too often, mental illness is a taboo topic, but it definitely needs to be talked about. Relative to the writing of this review, I want to share with readers that I have been dealing with some mental illness this weekend, which caused this review to be submitted three days later than was originally hoped for, but mental illness is real and we all just work with what we are given.
After hearing from the USF director, the next speaker is the USF performer (who also stands as the touring production director), Michael Doherty. The tour of Every Brilliant Thing was his directing debut. Doherty’s comments on his experience performing the show particularly stood out to me. He says that the moments of unknown, when the audience is pulled in to help create the production, were the parts that grounded him the most during the run, as opposed to shaking him. He says that those are the moments that remind us all that we’re all breathing the same air as the audience and that audience members are all a part of creating the art. Those are the moments that create trust between the audience and performer. That is one of my absolute favorite aspects of this play: there is no fourth wall.
Finally, I want to share with our readers one statement from each tour performer of the show that stood out to me from their panel. Jeremy Thompson (Blue Team) reminisces, “When we came back together at the end of the tour, we could see how much we had diverged, developed, and grown.” The other half of the blue team, performer Kat Lee, reminds everyone, “You never know what you are capable of until you do it.” Red team’s Samae Allred tells viewers, “It was beautiful to see the direction each actor took with their performance.” Last but not least, Cordell Cole (Red Team) says, “The immersive element of this show brings it to life in ways that other shows can’t.”
There are so many beautiful moments that the performers and directors remember about the process of creating this very deep and moving piece of art. This is not a seminar that you want to pass on. Bahr closes the seminar by reminding everyone, “you’re not alone, you’re not weird, it gets better, life goes on.” It does.
Utah Shakespeare Festival Summer Seminar Series presents Every Brilliant Thing – Production, Process, and Tour
Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 W Center St, Cedar City, UT 84720
Live Facebook Seminars on Thursday and Friday, and streaming on their Facebook page and YouTube Channel.
Utah Shakespeare Festival Facebook Page
Previous & Upcoming Events:
PLAY SEMINARS
PRODUCTION SEMINARS
- July 10, 1:00 PM: The Props Treasure Trove. A Peek into the Festival’s Prop Warehouse With Properties Director Benjamin Hohman
- July 17, 1:00 PM.: The Technical Director’s Approach to Scenic Design
With Scenery Director Dan Giedeman - July 24, 1:00 PM: Cue 1, Go!: Stage Management at the Utah Shakespeare Festival with Tanya J. Searle
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