The play's the thing

Wednesday afternoons at Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre are anything but quiet.

"It can be chaos personified," said Kirsten Park, director of marketing for Pioneer Theatre Company.

This is just before curtain at the Wednesday student matinees — a program for Utah schools that PTC has offered for more than 15 years.

"We have ticket takers at each door trying to get them (students) in seats, and there are always entire schools that are running late, which makes late seating an issue. It's hectic," Park said.

Thanks in large part to Zoo Arts and Parks (ZAP) funding, PTC is able to offer tickets to Utah high school students at a very reduced rate, and PTC frequently helps bus the students to the theater.

"We had schools that were interested, but it was hard for them to come up for an evening performance," said Colleen Lindstrom, patron services manager who has worked with the program since its inception.

"First we only did a couple of shows a season, but now we have Wednesday matinees for all of our shows.

"In the case of many of these students, this is their only experience with theater, and certainly with any kind of professional theater, and that's why we take the time to make it available," Lindstrom said.

"We have a five-hour bus trip, so round-trip, 10 hours in a bus — I don't know if anybody volunteers for that," said Ed Alder, a teacher at West Desert since 1979.

"We all get here at 8 a.m. and we don't get home until midnight, and then those kids turn around six hours later and are back at school. But they clamor to get on the bus. It's a great adventure."

Though most schools have a much shorter trip, they all find the plays are a wonderful addition to English or drama classes, especially with the current production, "Romeo and Juliet."

"The kids were arguing over who was the funniest actor," Alder said. "It was hard for them to understand the language at first, but they all said, toward the end of the play, they could understand it a lot better."

And that offers another teaching opportunity.

"We talked about how language has changed and will continue to change. And they love it."

West Desert has been participating in the program for four years, trying to make several shows each season.