(Cedar City, UT) - In conjunction with the creation of the Center for Shakespeare Studies (CSS) at Southern Utah University, Shauna Mendini, Dean of SUU’s College of Performing and Visual Arts, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Don Weingust as director of the program.

Don Weingust is a Ph. D. graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was fortunate to work with some of the world’s great Shakespeareans, including Stephen Greenblatt, Stephen Booth, W. B. Worthen and the late Janet Adelman and Marvin Rosenberg. He is the author of the Routledge text Acting from Shakespeare’s First Folio: Theory, Text and Performance and a book examining “original practices” in Shakespearean performance forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. He has contributed to a number of other publications, including one to accompany a major exhibition of Shakespeare’s First Folio at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C., and the forthcoming Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopedia. He has presented papers and chaired seminars at a number of national and international conferences, and is the founder and continuing co-chair of the Shakespearean Performance Research Group of the American Society for Theatre Research. An actor and director before becoming a scholar, Professor Weingust studied acting with the legendary Stella Adler. A member of Actors Equity Association, he has performed Off-Broadway and with major regional repertory theatres.

Professor Weingust is extremely pleased to be the inaugural director of the Center for Shakespeare Studies at Southern Utah University and with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Weingust feels that the extraordinary resource of the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespeare Festival, together with the keen interest in Shakespeare and performance among members of the academic, local and visiting communities make Southern Utah University one of the best places in North America to host a Center for Shakespeare Studies, offer a minor program in that field and help students and others to gain even fuller appreciation for the genius and theatrical potential of the works of William Shakespeare.

For more information about CSS and the Shakespeare Studies minor, contact SUU’s College of Performing and Visual Arts at (435) 865-8562