Utah’s visual and performing arts enrich the state’s culture and enhance its economy.
Not only do they deserve patronage, but they also merit recognition for their contributions to Utah’s communities and coffers.
Last week, representatives of the Tuacahn Center for the Arts traveled to Salt Lake City to preview their upcoming suite of Broadway productions.
If this year is anything like past seasons, nearly 300,000 people will come to Ivins, Utah (population 7,000) to catch a show. With an estimated economic impact of close to $80 million on the region, Tuacahn is among the greatest economic engines of Utah's Washington County, which also includes Zion National Park.
If the Beehive State were home to this theater alone, it would be a source of pride. Yet one need only head up a county to encounter one of the nation’s most celebrated summer theater experiences, the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. The festival has won a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater and attracts some 100,000 theater goers to the region each year. The economic impact is estimated at around $35 million.
Keep heading north and each year in Park City the Sundance Film Festival generates greater economic activity than both of these festivals combined. Meanwhile, Utah and Salt Lake counties are dotted with local stages and centers for the performing arts.
In addition to Salt Lake’s longstanding professional theater group, Pioneer Theatre Company, there’s the new Eccles Theatre in the heart of downtown and the nearly completed Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy. Plans are also in the offing for the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center in Taylorsville.
When one adds to this the offerings at local colleges and universities as well as the Cache Valley Center for the Arts and Ellen Eccles Theatre in Logan, the SCERA Center for the Arts in Orem and the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo, its clear that there's a demand for visual and performing arts in Utah, including superb musical, dance and other performances.
According to the most recent data from an annual survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, Utah has the highest percentage of adults, some 84.5 percent, who went out to watch a film in the theaters or went to a live theatrical or performing arts show.
Brigham Young famously said, “If I were placed on a cannibal island and given a task of civilizing its people, I should straightway build a theater.”
He observed: “On the stage of a theater can be represented in character evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards, the weaknesses and follies of man and the magnanimity of the virtuous life."
As Utahns continue to support the visual and performing arts across the state, tourists will increasingly take note of what locals already know — the Beehive State is home to some of the nation’s premier theatrical and artistic offerings. It's an economic asset that is too often undervalued for all it contributes financially and all it adds to Utah’s identity.
The state's performers, directors, producers and organizers deserve to take a bow. And, the state should remember that the best applause is support and the finest spotlight is public recognition for the way the arts immeasurably enhance the community's quality of life.