With nearly 2 1/2 times more seats - plus acres of free parking - this summer's LDS Church sesquicentennial production, "Barefoot to Zion," will have tickets that are drastically reduced in price.
Instead of being staged in the historic Promised Valley Playhouse, 132 S. State, the show will be mounted in the much larger Bountiful Woods Cross Regional Center - the former Valley Music Hall in North Salt Lake. (The Playhouse was temporarily closed last fall by the LDS Church due to concerns over its safety.)Tickets for "Barefoot to Zion" are not actually available - yet - but advance order forms have been available during LDS general conference at a new booth on the lower level of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
According to Blaine Jay Smith, the Playhouse's general manager, the JSM Building booth will remain in place throughout the summerlong run of the show. A second ticket office will open at the regional center immediately after Memorial Day.
No longer a theater in the round, regional center's seating was reconfigured several years ago into a basic "stadium" style, with all of its 2,300 theater-style seats facing a stage at the west side of the circular hall. Because of the greatly expanded seating (compared to only 900 seats in the Playhouse), ticket prices for the 1997 summer production will be only $4 for the lower concourse and $2 for the rear concourse, compared to tickets that ranged from $8 to $12 for previous Playhouse performances.
Smith said advance ticket orders will be taken throughout April, and tickets will be printed in May.
Performances will be Tuesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. from June 19 through Aug. 23. All seats will be reserved (although an early edition of the theater's seating chart indicates that rear concourse seating had been initial designated as general admission).
Smith said that the new ticket booth in the Joseph Smith Building, 15 E. South Temple, is being installed in space that was previously used as a security office. It's located directly across the hallway from the building's LDS Distribution Center.
Tickets may be charged to either Visa or Mastercard. For show information, call 240-7469.
The regional center is located at 835 N. 400 East, North Salt Lake (Exit 318 off I-15). Patrons should be pleased with the parking; during previous shows at the downtown theater, parking cost $2 in the Regent Street Parking Terrace - but only after several sticky problems were ironed out.
There is plenty of free parking available surrounding the North Salt Lake venue.