Utah story
Cedar City's festival began as a college-and-town effort
Residents helped build Cedar City's first college building in 1897; six decades later, students and townspeople formed the Utah Shakespeare Festival's first company.
Cedar City’s college-town identity was built, quite literally, by the town. When the Branch Normal School was established in 1897, residents supplied labor and hauled timber through winter for its first building.
Old Main was dedicated in 1898. The institution’s name and scope changed over the following century, eventually becoming Southern Utah University, but the community effort at its beginning explains why the histories of the school and city overlap.
That relationship gained a second cultural anchor in 1961, when College of Southern Utah theatre professor Fred C. Adams founded the Utah Shakespeare Festival. College students and townspeople produced the first Cedar City season in 1962.
The shared history does not make the university and festival interchangeable. They are closely linked institutions with separate histories and visitor routes, and the founding story does not establish which productions, venues, tickets, or campus spaces are available today.
Read the university and festival histories together for the local sequence. For a visit, open each institution’s current pages and confirm campus access, the performance calendar, the venue, and ticket availability.
Where to see it
Southern Utah University's campus and the Utah Shakespeare Festival's venues are separate Cedar City stops. Check current campus access, productions, venues, and tickets before visiting.
Sources behind this story
Reviewed against these sources on August 4, 2026.
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