Just a few short months ago, the 80-acre site known as Tuacahn, 10 miles northwest of St. George, was bustling with bulldozers, trucks and hard-hatted construction crews. In recent weeks, the machines and crews have been replaced by actors, dancers, scenery builders and costume designers - all scurrying to get "Utah!" ready for its public world premiere this weekend.
Doug Stewart's longtime dream of creating a year-round performing arts complex is no longer just an idea. It's firmly in place and - ready or not - the audiences are lining up.Much of the complex itself was completed and partially in use earlier this spring, including the Heritage Arts Foundation's performing arts school buildings and the 2,000-seat amphitheater (the site of a Mormon Tabernacle Choir per-for-mance one windy Sunday morn-ing in early April).
But the complex's centerpiece - a production billed as "America's most spectacular outdoor musical drama" - makes its formal debut tonight, after which it will continue Mondays-Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. through Sept. 2.
"The adrenalin is running, and there's a lot of energy here," Stewart said earlier this week, as last-minute touches were being put on the epic-scale production. "I'm very pleased."
The show has a cast of 80, and while many of the performers' names aren't exactly household words in Utah, many theatergoers in the region should be familiar with the creative talent behind the scenes.
- Composers Kurt Bestor and Sam Cardon have collaborated on the musical score.
- Stewart himself, probably best known as one of the creators of "Saturday's Warrior," wrote the lyrics.
- Jerry Argetsinger, who has directed the LDS Church's renowned Hill Cumorah Pageant for the past five years (1995 will be his sixth), is co-directing "Utah!"
- Seven Nielsen of Provo, renowned for his work at Promised Valley Playhouse and several major television projects, has designed the scenery.
- Derryl Yeager of Orem, one of the region's busiest choreographers, is working on the show's big production numbers, including a spectacular hoedown.
- Argetsinger's wife, Gail, who has been costume designer for the Hill Cumorah Pageant since 1980, has supervised the design and construction of nearly 500 costumes for "Utah!"
While "Utah!" may look like a pageant and sound like a pageant - at least from the preliminary promotional material - Arget-singer and playwright Robert Paxton insist that it is, definitely, NOT a pageant.
" `Cumorah' is a pageant, but this is, honestly, a Broadway style `book' musical," said Argetsinger. "This is much more intimate. Even the outdoor amphitheater, which appears larger than it is because of its canyon setting, is really smaller than some theaters."
For the first time, Argetsinger has been dealing not only with human actors but also horses and mules.
"This has been an incredible challenge," he said. "Actors usually hit their cue and make their mark, but horses and mules don't."
There are also some big special effects and technical aspects with "Utah!" not normally associated with other shows. Things like the nightly replication of a Santa Clara River flash flood.
"Last night it was more of a flash waterfall than a flash flood," said Argetsinger about one of the "tech" rehearsals. "But people in the front row had better come prepared with raincoats. The staged flood puts about 40,000 gallons of water on the stage, and it's supposed to drain into a grate right in the front of the stage - in the space where an orchestra pit would normally be."
(And, lest environmentalists get uptight about wasting of natural resources, the water is recycled.)
While the story itself, focusing on pioneer settler Jacob Hamblin and the history of southern Utah, is fairly intimate, the outdoor elements of both the story and the setting demand quite a bit of spec-tacle - horse-drawn buckboards, simulated fires and other large-scale aspects.
Argetsinger, who will shortly turn the show over to co-director David Grapes - so he can return to New York to begin working on this year's Hill Cumorah Pageant - is especially pleased with the high caliber of the production team for "Utah!"
Composers Kurt Bestor and Sam Cardon, long regarded as two of the most innovative and brilliant musicians in the business, have created "music that has a real `Broadway' feel to it. There are romantic ballads and wonderful `fun' numbers. One new love song, `First Star,' could be picked up by a pop singer. And the dramatic `This Is War' is reminiscent of the music in `Les Miserables,' when the young French students go into battle. It has the same emotional impact," said the director.
Argetsinger said a studio recording of the musical score, featuring the show's performers, should be available shortly.
The director also gave high marks to young playwright Robert Paxton, who was discovered by Stewart in the prestigious playwriting program at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas. (At the time this program was headed by Jerry Crawford, longtime seminar moderator with the Utah Shakespearean Festival.)
"Paxton has done a first-rate job with this script," Argetsinger said.
He was also excited about the work his wife and her busy crews have been doing with the costumes.
"When she started, we had envisioned a cast of 65 and about 270 costumes. Now we have a cast of 80 and nearly 500 costumes. The sewing machines are going all the time in the workrooms."
Argetsinger, who grew up in Klamath Falls, Ore., first got hooked on drama at the nearby Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. He has lived in Rochester, N.Y., for the past 20 years.
He said "Utah!" was "the most exciting project I have ever worked on."
- ROBERT PAXTON, the bright young playwright, was first commissioned by Stewart to write "Utah!" in July 1992.
"I was a student at UNLV and was singing in a group that had come up to St. George to sing in his LDS Church ward. I was introduced to him there, and later I came up to interview him for another project I was working on. He mentioned the possibility of an upcoming project involving some writers, and he came to Las Vegas to see some of my shows," Paxton said.
At that time, Paxton, who was intensely involved with the school's play-writing program, had written a one-act suspense thriller called "Niversville: Population 3," a full-length play titled "What Wondrous Things," and a one-man show about LDS Church Prophet Joseph Smith.
A short time later, both Stewart and Paxton traveled to Texas to see a long-running outdoor musical called "Texas!" . . . "so I could see just what kind of critter this was. Then we talked about the concept and various ideas and approaches before I began writing."
The production focuses on Jacob Hamblin's involvement in colonizing the area and settling the vast Utah territory, particularly his attempts to keep the peace in his relationship with local Indians - two tribes of Paiutes and their common enemy, the Navajos.
The story also delves into Hamblin's life with his second wife, Rachel. Because little is known about the real Mrs. Hamblin, Paxton's "Rachel" is a composite drawn from the journals and accounts of several pioneer women - those who found themselves in the harsh southern Utah desert and isolated from civilization and life's simple pleasures.
The production will be narrated by another historic figure: George A. Smith, a Mormon pioneer and early church leader. The Indians nicknamed him "Man Who Comes Apart" because of his false teeth and hairpiece. Paxton uses Smith to add sage bits of wit and wisdom to the performance.
Paxton wrote the first draft as a school project, and it was read by his classmates. Each of the students in the playwriting course had to have two readings each semester, and "Utah!" was one of Paxton's.
"The feedback from them and the instructors was remarkably helpful. It was far different from the kind of drama anyone else was writing or had written," said Paxton.
"Kurt and Sam were initially contracted to simply write some underscoring and arrange the period music. Then, about the 10th draft, we decided to add an original opening song," Paxton noted. "Then, over the next year and a half it evolved into a full-scale musical. We just kept adding songs."
When he's not writing scripts, Paxton is in charge of the theater program of the Tuacahn Center for the Arts.
- THE CAST of performers includes six professional Equity actors.
Leading players include Gordon Goodman and Rio Hibler-Kerr, both of the Los Angeles area, as Jacob and Rachel Hamblin; Sonny Bell of Macomb, Ill., as George A. Smith; Leonard John Crofoot of Los Angeles as Chester, the show's comic relief character; mezzo-soprano Lisa Gold, also of Los Angeles, as Minerva, Chester's domineering wife; Shaun R. Perry of Orem as Thales Haskell, Jacob's close friend and associate; and Nicole Fenstad, of Fargo, N.D., as Maria Haskell, Thales' young bride and Rachel's traveling companion.
Gil Birmingham, Jose R. Andrews III, Jack Kohler and Mark Gomez will portray Native American leaders Tutsegavits, Agara-poots, Panimento and Ket-che-nee.
- FOUNDER DOUG STEWART said this week that the Tuacahn Center for the Arts' school program is flourishing. Coinciding with the opening of "Utah!" will be a major music camp the week of June 26 with quality clinicians and a large group of foreign students. The two-week camp will focus mainly on string and piano, but Tuacahn's classrooms "will be a little beehive" of activity.
Stewart noted that while "Utah!" is scheduled for a 21/2-month run each year, the amphitheater can feasibly be used from mid-March up to as late as Thanksgiving. It could also be used year-round for some gatherings during the daytime or early evening.
He said tickets to "Utah!" have "been going like crazy."
Most patronage is from along the Wasatch Front, but there have been a lot of bus tours and travel groups purchasing blocks of tickets.
"The word is getting out," he said.
Stewart added that some aspects of the overall experience are not yet in place. A "greenshow" type of entertainment will be added later in the summer and, for now, there is no standard uniform for the hospitality staff. By midsummer the support staff should all be wearing pioneer costumes.
However, there will be some Western and bluegrass entertainment on the plaza where the nightly chuckwagon buffet is served prior to the show.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Where, when . . .
"Utah!" will run Mondays-Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. in the Tuacahn Amphitheater, from June 23 through Sept. 2.
All seats are reserved. Adult tickets are $14.50, $19.50 and $24.50, with children's tickets priced at $9, $14 and $16.
For telephone reservations, call 1-800-746-9882. Fax orders may be sent to (801) 674-0013. There is a $2 processing fee per order on all ticket sales.
Patrons may also take part in a Western dutch oven cookout on the Tuacahn Center for the Arts plaza between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. nightly. The buffet style dinner is $7.95 for adults and $5.95 for children (12 and under). Reservations are required.
Tuacahn is located 10 miles northwest of St. George near the mouth of Snow Canyon.