Sizzling Strings and Showtime Utah Charissa Ganshorn
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Showtime Utah is a professional musical variety dinner theater located half an hour South of Salt Lake City and ten minutes north of Provo, Utah in historic downtown Pleasant Grove.
The Old West Dinner-Show Adventure, every Friday and Saturday night, is unlike any other theater experience in Utah. Due to its uniqueness and continuing popularity, full page articles on Showtime Utah have been written in top Utah News sources: The Deseret News, The Daily Herald, Focus, Utah Valley Magazine, UVU Review, and The Daily Universe.
Why is such a small venue (seating 140 total) raising such a stir in the small bedroom community of Pleasant Grove? It seems to be the high energy, family friendly, musically acclaimed atmosphere and the down home chuck wagon style dinner, which has been given accolades by some of the most finicky of palettes.
Showtime Utah began as the dream child of Joan Peterson, radio DJ for Clear Channel Broadcasting, casting director and talent manager. Following in the footsteps of her her father, Dan Speakman, who began his own dinner theater in Fillmore, Utah, but passed on before completing the project, she began with a handful of helpers swinging hammers and fixing up the 1926 theater. Opening with a skeleton staff, one band, The Mama’s Boys and a mostly catered dinner she was determined to finish what her father began.
“Things were tough the first few months,” Peterson said, “we couldn’t come close to meeting our costs, but we’ve hung in there and our audiences are finally starting to fill the theater. We now have our own chef, all our food is made from scratch and our entertainers just get better and better”. The Old West Dinner Adventure has added the nationally acclaimed Cowboy Poet and singer Michael “Boots” Robinson to their entertainment staff and this week will premier a family band, The Sizzling Strings.
David and Sherri Jensen have 8 children ranging from the age of 17 to 2, all of which are musically trained in at least one instrument and some in three and four as well as being vocalists with the exception of the two year old. The five oldest children hold down the show playing violins, violas, a guitar, string bass (half size since the bass player is only 11 years old) and mandolin along with a few percussion instruments such as a Cajon and tambourine. Mrs. Jensen, a musician herself, leads the group and accompanies the instruments on the piano, while Mr. Jensen joins the group on a few songs. Their two year old is the only child not seen on stage.
If Peterson is able to keep the growth rate she has seen so far in her theater, Showtime Utah will need to find a new home in a matter on months, but she plans on adding more nights for the Old West Show rather than moving out of the historical building. She also has a Monday night show which boasts of mixing seasoned performers with new up and coming talent giving the audience an array of entertainment through music, dance, comedy, video and even a magician or two.
More information on Showtime Utah can be found on their well made and easily maneuvered website ShowtimeUtah.com. A schedule of shows, performers, food choices, and even video links to the theater performers can be found there. Tickets can be purchased by calling 801-636-9669. Reservations are suggested since sell out performances are becoming the “norm” for the theater.
A preview of the Sizzling Strings, playing Friday and Saturday the 5th and 6th of September can be seen at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcKj8R5MPwQ
