"What's past is prologue"

 The Grassroots Shakespeare Company was co-founded in May 2009 by Alex Ungerman and Mark Oram, with founding members Tyler Harris, Jason Sullivan, Wes Tolman, Becca Ingram, Jyllian Petrie, Joel Petrie, Cherish Cahoon, Kacey Spadafora, and Davey Morrison. Inspired by the work of the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, Virginia, and encouraged by theater director Chris Clark (whose HCTO production of “As You Like It” incorporated elements of original practice, and included in its cast both founders, as well as founding members Harris, Sullivan, Ingram, Morrison, and Jyllian Petrie) and Shakespeare scholar Kate McPherson, Grassroots developed its first show, a production of “Much Ado About Nothing.” The show was put together, in the style of early modern theater, with no director — the ensemble of actors voted one another into roles, designed their own costumes and props, and helped stage the show collaboratively in a brief, weeklong rehearsal process. “Much Ado” toured to parks and Utah arts festivals from May through July of 2009 and received positive reviews in local publications. After the success of this first production, Grassroots decided to follow up “Much Ado” with an even more abbreviated production process for its next project, hosting its inaugural play-in-a-day workshop with “Hamlet” that same summer. In the workshop, members of the community were assigned scenes from the play, then showed up the morning of the show for a very brief rehearsal period of just a few hours (mostly to learn choreography and try to solidify memorization), then performed the show free to the public in SCERA park later that night. 

At some point early on, live music was added to productions to highten drama, highlight plot points, and add to each character. Additionally, much music is actually performed in the show as it is included in the script. Previous musicians have included Jason Fullmer, Jason Sullivan, Robert Starks, Brooke Bolick, Scott Robinson, Dan Anderson, Davey Morrison, Tim peay, Addison Radle and others. The current musicians you can find at any given show are Gary Argyle, Chase Schetsalaar, Scott Robinson, Kira Halterman, Davey Morrison and Brook Bolick. Early on, Balthasar and the Merry Grassroots Shakespeare Company Band Project was formed to provide preshow-- 30 minutes of songs to pump up the audience before every show. 

In 2012 They began their first Educational Tour with a rousing production of Comedy of Errors. They are the grateful recipients of the Orem CARE Grant which has enabled them to put on hundreds of shows for schools across Utah. The Educational Tour is now in it's 9th season and features two shows year-round in order to have a tragedy/history and a comedy available for all ages K through 12. 

Following a 2-night production of an unrehearsed All's Well That Ends Well in 2022 that was the brain child of current Artistic Director Soren Budge, since then Grassroots opens most productions with an unrehearsed performance. These have proven to be some of our most popular shows and can best be described as chaos incarnate. 

Over the years, Grassroots has put together over nearly 100 productions (We've actually lost count) and has their eye on sometime soon completing the entire body of work.