CEDAR CITY — The 2000 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre will be presented tonight to the Utah Shakespearean Festival during the 7-8 p.m. (MST) broadcast from Radio City Music Hall on KUED, Ch. 7.
PBS is broadcasting the first hour of the three-hour event, with CBS picking up the remainder of the 54th annual awards presentation, from 8 to 10 p.m. on KUTV, Ch. 2.
The Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards were first presented beginning in 1947. Twenty-nine years later, in 1976, the regional theater award was added to the presentations, honoring a theater —outside of New York City — that has "displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally."
Previous recipients include the Mark Taper forum, the Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis, San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago, Goodspeed Opera House and the Denver Center Theatre Company.
(Surprisingly, one company not on the list of former winners is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, one of the nation's oldest Shakespearean festivals — and the initial pattern for the Utah festival.)
Fred C. Adams, founder and executive producer of the 39-year-old Utah Shakespearean Festival; R. Scott Phillips, USF's managing director; Cameron Harvey and Douglas N. Cook, producing artistic directors, and Sue Cox, who chairs the festival's board of governors, will accept the award in New York City on Sunday evening.
According to Donna Law, marketing director for the festival, a big Tony Awards bash is planned for Sunday evening in the Randall L. Jones Theatre, the venue for three of this season's productions.
The entire USF company will be on hand to watch the awards projected onto a large screen.
Locally, "Bringing the Tony Home" celebrations are planned Tuesday, June 6, in Salt Lake City and Cedar City.
The USF entourage is expected to arrive at Salt Lake International Airport at 10:11 a.m. aboard Delta Airlines flight 1429 from New York.
Law said there will be costumed Shakespearean characters, Gov. Michael Leavitt, several other local dignitaries — and lots of balloons — greeting them at the gate.
Following a layover of nearly five hours, Adams and his colleagues will take a SkyWest flight to Cedar City where they'll be met about 4:15 p.m. for a red-carpet motorcade from the Cedar City airport to the Southern Utah University campus.
Festivities there will include a water arch by the city's fire trucks, and the entire company of actors and crews from this season's festival line-up will be present, passing the Tony medallion from hand to hand.
Excitement is still running high in Cedar City, where the regional theater Tony was publicly announced by Adams on May 8.
Law said a writer from the New York Times has called to arrange a visit to Cedar City during the first week of the festival, which opens June 22 and continues through Sept. 2.
The festival's 2000 season includes the world premieres of two works — Adams' new adaptation of "Peter Pan," with original music by Brian Baker and Christine Frezna, both of whom have worked with the festival for many years; and Howard Jensen's "The War of the Roses," an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Henry VI" trilogy.
The latter will be staged in the outdoor Adams Memorial Theatre, along with "The Merchant of Venice" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor."
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com