- Doreen Woolley, 97, plays piano at Utah Shakespeare Festival, performing seven shows weekly.
- Woolley, with 90 years of piano experience, improvises melodies and interacts with audiences.
- Her performances foster connections, making her a beloved figure at the festival for 22 years.
CEDAR CITY — Doreen Woolley has a party trick. If someone gives her a rhythm, or just a few notes to start her off, she can make up a melody at the piano on the spot.
When asked how she does it, Woolley says, "That's just how my brain works." But she also has plenty of experience at the piano to back her up — nearly 90 years of it, in fact.
At 97 years old, Woolley is still using her unique skills as a pianist at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. For the last 22 years, Woolley has played in the lobby of the Randall L. Jones Theatre before the festival's matinee and evening performances — without sheet music, and usually while looking up to greet people as they walk by, all without missing a beat.
"Because I can do what I do, I can interact with people while I'm playing," she explained. "I'm not having to focus on what I'm playing."
And that's how Woolley likes it. Though her skill at the piano has made her a staple at the festival, she says she's not there to "show off." Instead, she wants to help festivalgoers feel "comfortable" and "happy" — and this year, as she plays before seven shows each week, she's just as committed to that as she has been for the previous two decades that she's played for the festival.
A resume of service and showmanship
When Woolley first started volunteering at the Utah Shakespeare Festival (which is on its 64th season this year) in 2001, it was not as a pianist but as an usher.
That was also the year she moved to Cedar City, after living all across the country and the world — her husband, Galen Woolley, traveled for his work with the military, and the couple also spent years serving as leaders in missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France and Hong Kong.
Woolley herself taught seminary classes for the church (she was a barrier-breaker, she says, in women teaching seminary full time and getting paid a full-time salary for it) and she earned a doctorate in gifted education.
Once settled in Cedar City, though, Woolley became enmeshed in volunteering for the festival. By 2003, festival founder Fred Adams was looking for volunteer pianists to perform in the theater lobby, and Woolley auditioned for R. Scott Phillips, who later became executive director of the festival until 2016.
She played eight bars of "All I Ask of You," from "The Phantom of the Opera," and Phillips told her, "'OK, that's enough, you're hired,'" Woolley said.
But her experience with the piano started long before then. Growing up in Sandy, Woolley began taking piano lessons when she was 8 years old, though the lessons only lasted four years. Her mother took a job cleaning laundry in order to afford it.
"I didn't have any advantages," she said. "We were poor."
She continued studying music in high school, however, and she later attended the University of Utah. While at the university, she needed a part-time job to help her afford tuition, and a friend suggested that she work as an accompanist at what is now the Children's Dance Theatre, part of the Tanner Dance Program.
Playing for the dance program was part of what helped Woolley develop her skill for improvisation.
"The idea was that Virginia (Tanner, who founded the program) would give me a rhythm," Woolley said. "And then I just had to make up the music."
And so, Woolley's party trick was born. She also found that she was able to carry on conversations while she was playing.
"I finally concluded that I have a talking brain and a playing brain," she said.
And that's been a huge benefit to her during her time at the Shakespeare Festival.
'Sometimes they'll smile back'
Woolley has plenty of people, playgoers and festival volunteers alike, who stop to talk while she's in the middle of playing in the lobby of the Randall L. Jones Theatre, whether it's to compliment her playing, to request a favorite song or even just to say "hi." And to her, that's as much a part of the "job" as the music.
"I can interact with people as they're coming by," she said. "And sometimes they come by with really grumpy looks. So I try to smile at them and talk to them. Sometimes they'll smile back. Sometimes they're still pretty grumpy."
She remembers one occasion when a visitor asked her to play "Edelweiss," from "The Sound of Music." The festival happened to be performing "The Sound of Music" that year, and because of that, Woolley had been asked not to play any of the songs from the musical during her pre-show performances.
The visitor was insistent, however, so Woolley agreed to play it — even starting the song over in a new key when the woman told her "my husband can't sing in that key."
As she began to play, the woman's husband began to sing along — and soon, Woolley said, the entire lobby joined in.
There are certain visitors who Woolley has come to recognize, because they return to the festival year after year — and request the same songs from her year after year, too.
"I have one guy who always comes, and he always, always asks for 'Moonlight in Vermont,'" Woolley says. "He just walks up and says, 'Moonlight in Vermont.'" And Woolley will play it.
Her connections with the playgoers, the festival's executive managing director Michael Bahr told the Deseret News, are part of what makes Woolley such an integral part of the festival.
"What she plays, it's 'Edelweiss' with an impact," Bahr said.
