DramSoc Competitors

Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public’s wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City’s five boroughs, Public Works, Public Shakespeare Initiative, and Joe’s Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Their programs and productions can also be seen regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 60 Tony Awards, 190 Obie Awards, 57 Drama Desk Awards, 61 Lortel Awards, 36 Outer Critics Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, 62 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. Cover photo by Steve Brown

MISSION The mission of Shakespeare & Company is to deliver a sustainable and vital program of Performance, Training, and Education, integrated for the deepened experience of the artists, the audience, the Company, and the community. We embrace the core values of Shakespeare’s work: collaboration, commitment to language, visceral experience and classical ideals, expressed with physical prowess and an embodied contemporary voice. VISION Shakespeare & Company strives to be a thriving center of theatrical and creative excellence, rooted in Shakespeare’s work, and the Elizabethan ideals of inquiry, balance and harmony. We are committed to nurturing the creative impulse, exploring the universal themes of human experience, engaging with the widest possible audience, and influencing future generations, using the works of Shakespeare as our foundation.

Salt Lake’s only major regional theatre is located at the top of Broadway (300 South) and 1400 East. A fully professional theatre in-residence at the University of Utah, Pioneer Theatre Company produces a seven-show season, running from September through May. Each season includes a mixture of classics, large-scale musicals and contemporary dramas and comedies. Over the past ten years, PTC has developed a reputation for Broadway-quality productions and has mounted numerous Utah premieres and regional theatre premieres. Notably, Pioneer Theatre Company was the first regional theatre in the country to be granted the rights to produce Les Misérables, the closing musical of the 2006-2007 season. Running for a record 82 sold-out performances, Les Misérables cemented PTC’s reputation as a theatre capable of producing large-scale productions. In fall 2022, Pioneer Theatre Company produced the Broadway-bound musical, Shucked. The world premiere was directed by three time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien and written by the Grammy and Tony Award-winning team of Robert Horn, Shane McAnally, and Brandy Clark. Opening in April 2023, Shucked went on to receive nine Tony Award nominations. This marks the first time (ever) that a Utah-based theatre served as an out-of-town tryout for a Broadway musical.