Current Show: Campfire Improv!
Campfire is a spooky improv comedy show where campers share and act out campfire stories. It’s half horror, half comedy, but all made up on the spot by the actors, inspired by audience suggestions. This is the perfect show for people that love a good ghost story by a cozy campfire. Come celebrate the fall season at this unique improv comedy experience, directed by Chris Last.
Location: Lightree Studios, 740 W 1700 S, Suite 5, Salt Lake City, UT, 84104
Scaffold Theatre is funded in part by Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts & Parks (ZAP)
Scaffold Theatre: Where We Came From
Scaffold Theatre was founded by Julie-Anne Liechty in 2017. The company originated from the advanced work of students in the Actors In Action Conservatory, created by Ms. Liechty in 2015. With over thirty years of professional experience and having studied the methods of Constantine Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, David Mamet, and others, Ms. Liechty developed her own acting technique which is taught exclusively at AIA. The specific and highly effective exercises and training methods developed by her streamlines the acting process, bringing a succinctness to the work and cohesiveness in her actors due to the fact that all AIA actors speak the same “language” of acting. This makes it possible to reach further and more quickly into the depths of great theatrical and film performances.
Scaffold Theatre was born from the need to have these specifically trained actors perform together.
Midsummer's Night Dream
Performed at the Regent Street Black Box Theatre SLC
Antigone
Winner Best of Fringe Fairly Fringy & Audience Choice Award 2022 Great Slat Lake Fringe Festival
Amber:Alert
Winner Outstanding Original Script 2019 GSL Fringe Festival
“Igniting
the Imagination
through Stagecraft.”
Julie-Anne Liechty, Artistic Director and Founder
of Scaffold Theatre
Our Mission
Scaffold Theatre produces classical theatre in a modern, minimalistic setting, designed to ignite the audiences’ use of imagination and make these great works more accessible to the modern theatre goer.
We follow the lead of Shakespeare’s original company using minimal set, costumes, and props instead creating the world of the play primarily through our movement, voice and acting. This way of performing opens the door to the audiences’ imagination, creating a world far richer than what we could attempt to muster with ornate sets and costumes. We believe theatre is one of the only places such magic can exist and encouraging such experiences is our primary aim.
The Mad Women of Chaillot
Performed at the Regent Street Black Box Theatre in Downtown Salt Lake City
How We Got Our Name
In the play, Henry V, by Shakespeare, in the first prologue the Chorus speaks these indelible lines:
But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object . . .
He (or she) continues the speech, enticing the audience to use their imaginations, turning what can only be presented as a “scaffold” of a story into a living, breathing adventure:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts . . .
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth.
What is more powerful than the imagination? And what better place than the theatre to wield that power? In Shakespeare’s time there was minimal use of props, costumes and sets. This lent to the actors using their bodies and voices to transport their audiences to faraway lands, massive battles, elegant castles with their Kings, Queens and courtiers. And it gave license for those “beholding the swelling scene” to “deck out imperfections with their thoughts”. For this exact reason we use minimal set, props and costume pieces. Our work presents the “scaffold” of the story, putting the focus on fine acting which in turn ignites the imagination of the audience. This choice is made to emphasize the acting and the dynamic relationships between characters in which sit the heart of a play. To us, that is what great theatre is all about.
Our Casting Is Unique
Scaffold Theatre is committed to color-blind, gender-blind and age-blind casting. We do this in effort to find the most skilled actor for the role—avoiding “type casting”—which again allows the focus to be on the acting and strengthens the delivery of the play. We draw strictly from our pool of trained actors and do not hold auditions as traditional acting companies do. We are also committed to doing classical theater, ranging from the 1950’s through ancient Greek Theatre, including Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Beckett, etc.
Where We Are Going
Our ultimate goal is to make Scaffold Theatre a company where we have a permanent pool of salaried actors from which to cast our productions. In Shakespeare’s time this was the norm for functioning acting troupes, but in modern times such entities are a rare exception. However, in the ballet and opera world, companies following this model abound. We look to reinstate this practice for theatre as well.
- Our Current Show -
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Something Wicked This Way Comes!
Opens 14 March 2024
Scaffold Theatre is a 501(c) 3 non-profit company.