WESTERN MINERALS AND THEIR ORIGINS to Open UtahPresents' Season

UtahPresents, along with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory, will kick off its 2026/2027 season with Western Minerals and Their Origins by Utah-based artist Connor Johnson and Footpath Theatre Company. The show, part of UtahPresents' Stage Door Series at Kingsbury Hall, will play from Aug. 27 to Aug. 29, with a total of four performances.

While clearing her canyoneer brother's garage, a young woman embarks on a psychedelic quest through redrock, time, and her own memory. The house is being sold. The garage is overflowing. Ari has until morning to clear it. As she excavates the dusty clutter of decades, she is drawn deeper and deeper into the past; up the steep escarpments of remembrance, and down into the dangerous defiles of the long-forgotten. Part neo-western, part environmentalist, and fully theatrical, Western Minerals and their Origins excavates our relationship with geology and the geology of our relationships.

A Best of Fringe winner and sold-out show at 2024's Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, Western Minerals aims to push the bounds of fringe theater, incorporating a live electronic score and capturing the rough-edged, unhinged energy of independent theater without sacrificing the quality and clarity of story. How can you conjure a canyon, raise a flash-flood, or evoke a sense of geologic time onstage? Western Minerals endeavors to answer these questions through text, music, and pure theatricality.

Since its first award-winning drop down at the Fringe Festival, 'Nothing short of magical,' (SLUG Magazine), 'Awe-inspiring,' (Rhetorical Review), and subsequent performance at Salt Lake Acting Company, 'Breathtaking,' (Front Row Reviewers), 'Masterful' (Utah Theatre Bloggers), the show has continued to evolve, adding new layers with each subsequent production. This final iteration, in partnership with Flying Bobcat, promises to be the peak of the last three years of the show's development.

Now the show prepares for one last descent, deep into the canyons of Southern Utah, where beauty and peril await around every bend. Follow us there, for one final journey, follow us if you dare.

Playwright Connor Johnson talked about his inspiration for writing Western Minerals, and its evolution.

'The seed of this play was our shared love of the wild spaces of Utah, particularly down in the Colorado Plateau,' he said. 'We wanted to capture the essence of how it feels to look at a great big sandstone wall and put it onstage.

'I think the play has changed pretty dramatically while still holding on to its original soul. At the Fringe we were really just experimenting-- how can we create a massive canyon in a tiny Black Box? Our set also had to be transported in and out of the space in 15 minutes, so we were making design and story choices based on those parameters. When we moved to Salt Lake Acting Company as part of their Making Space for Artists Grant we suddenly had access to a larger space and the chance to build a semi-permanent set. As a result the play moved from a mostly imaginal plane, the contents of an old book, to a more physical, tangible one, the inside of an over-cluttered garage.

'Now, as part of the UtahPresents Stage Door Series, the play is evolving again in accordance with the space, including the truly incredible vertical height available on Kingsbury Hall's stage. As exciting as it will be to see it for the first time, I think there will be a unique pleasure for those who have seen each iteration of the piece, watching how it continues to reshape and change just like the canyons of our beautiful state (though in a much shorter time frame...).'

He also talked about his aims for the show.

'We want to tour this piece, regionally, nationally, and internationally,' he said. 'We believe that this piece could connect with any audience, paying forward the sense of awe and wonder that these places have given to us.'

Co-founder of Flying Bobcat and the director of the show, Alexandra Harbold, told us more about a week-long residency that took place in the space.

'In each iteration of Western Minerals, Connor, Jess and Harrison have focused on building to the space they're performing in, responding to its unique offers and idiosyncrasies and highlighting them through the storytelling,' she explained. 'During our week in Kingsbury, we worked with Tectonic Theater Project's devising process of Moment Work as a blueprint, which allows us to play together as a company. We each brought objects into the space (and a lot of boxes) to allow us to experiment, scaffold and score moments of sound, light, architecture, etc. This residency, in addition to our new cast member Amona Faatau and Flying Bobcat Co-AD Robert Scott Smith, we had the great good fortune to work with our Lighting Designer James Padilla, UtahPresents Technical Director David Braithwaite and Production Manager Rosemary Lisa Jones, who all know Kingsbury Hall inside out and are incredibly generous and collaborative.'

She also talked about what excites her about the play from a director's point of view.

'The physicality, exploration and raw magic of Western Minerals and Their Origins,' she said. 'Jess, Harrison and Connor's love of hiking and climbing in southern Utah is at the heart of the play. It's thrilling to share that embodied connection with place within the supposed confines of a theatre space. Working with Footpath always feels like homecoming; we have a shorthand with each other that allows us to work quite quickly, but we're also able to deep dive together.'

Co-founder of Flying Bobcat, Robert Scott Smith, talked about what excites him about collaborating with UtahPresents and performing this at Kingsbury Hall.

'Having seen earlier versions of the piece, we all felt there was more story to discover,' he explained. 'When Stage Door came up, it immediately felt like, 'Oh...this is the next version.' Not because we wanted to make it bigger just to make it bigger, but because the story deserved another chapter. What's exciting is that Footpath's moment work process gives us permission to keep discovering. We get to ask, 'What else is in this story? What haven't we found yet?' That's a really fun place to create from.

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