Sunday, August 24, 2008

My Heart Yearns for Southern Utah University's Shakespeare Fest

Every summer, I remember taking my youngest brother and daughter to Cedar City to see the Shakespeare Festival, kidnapping her from college, in a whirl-wind weekend tour of the area, seeing Hamlet, the play she'd studied in high school.

Our driving over Hell's Backbone at midnight! Our talks about life, and where we were all going in the next ten years.

With wistful longing, I yearn for the plays, the slot canyons, the red rock cliffs, the Pink Cliffs, Kanab, St. George, Zion Canyon, the 1930's Depression era WPA tunnel carved through Vermillion rock and sandstone, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Calf Creek, Hell's Backbone, the quiet and solitude, the family and friends.

And so I drove down to see Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac, yearning in my heart - seeing in my mind's eye the future settlement of the Great Basin in and around Fillmore.

What yearning this is I cannot explain. But it has to do with solitude and place.

Go see the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. Go to http://www.bard.org/ for a great weekend. Their Fall Season starts September 15 and runs till October 31.

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