Cedar City’s lively Utah Shakespearean Festival (435/586-7880 general info, 435/586-7878 or 800/752-9849 box office, www.bard.org) presents three Shakespearean plays each season, choosing from both well-known and rarely performed works. Most of the action centers on the Adams Shakespeare Theatre, an open-air theater-in-the-round, which is closely designed after the original Globe Theatre from Elizabethan London.

The indoor Randall Jones Theatre presents the “Best of the Rest”—works by other great playwrights such as Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, and Arthur Miller. A total of nine plays are staged each season late June–mid-October.

Costumed actors stage the popular free Greenshow each evening (7 p.m. Mon.–Sat.) before the performances with a variety of Elizabethan comedy skits, Punch and Judy shows, period dances, music, juggling, and other good-natured 16th-century fun. Backstage tours of the costume shop, makeup room, and stage show you how the festival works.

At literary seminars each morning, actors and Shakespearean scholars discuss the previous night’s play. Production seminars, held daily except Sunday, take a close look at acting, costumes, stage props, special effects, and other details of play production.

The Greenshow and seminars are free, but you’ll have to pay for most other events. Tickets cost $20–48, and it’s wise to purchase them well in advance; however, last-minute theatergoers usually can find tickets to something.

The theaters are on the Southern Utah University campus, near the corner of Center and 300 West. Rain occasionally dampens the performances (the Elizabethan theater is open to the sky), and plays may move to a conventional theater next door, where the box office is located.