The middle of a pandemic was a terrible time to be trying to stage live theater. It was, however, a potentially fertile time to develop the idea for a theater company.

That was the opportunity taken by Jeremiah Sandberg and several local theater colleagues in developing Luminaire Theatre Company, which marks its one-year anniversary with an upcoming production of Ghost: The Musical. At a "Toni Awards" gathering in 2020 hosted by Toni Butler, founder of South Jordan's Kensington Theatre, Sandberg and the other company founders talked about their experiences working for other theater organizations.

"A lot of us were doing what I did: doing high school plays, directing at other theater companies, wanting to do more of that artistic management side of things. We all had a passion," Sandberg says. "It was COVID time, we have nothing to do, so let's lay the groundwork."

Those previous experiences of the founding members became a significant part of defining the mission of what would become Luminaire. In particular, they were driven by a desire to improve the theater experience for youth and young adults, compared to a lot of what they had seen in other organizations.

"A lot of us had some bad experiences, especially with youth theaters and high schools, and kind of the politics of everything," Sandberg says. "Even in the community theater setting, a person in their late-20s or 30s is being cast as younger roles, instead of younger actors. So let's build a theater company catering to young adults."

That sensibility extends from the casting of their productions to the opportunities offered behind the scenes. This summer will mark the launch of Luminaire's Silver Light Youth Theatre, which aims to address some of the issues Sandberg had identified while associated with other Utah-based youth theater organizations.

"I don't think a lot of people realize it, but there's not really a lot of supervision [in some youth theater groups]," Sandberg says. "The environment, the toxicity, can get to be a lot. ... Some of us had personal experiences at some of these youth theaters, and wanted to provide that space that some of them wish they had."

Tanner Tate—who will serve as Silver Light Youth Theatre's curriculum specialist for the educational outreach program—adds, "A lot of directors don't treat the young actors professionally. They take their time for granted. They'll make a schedule—six hours of rehearsal time, but they ask all the kids to come, but they're maybe doing just a few scenes, and they're wasting the kids' time. They're just sitting in a corner, getting bored. Young actors deserve to be treated as professionals."

Additionally, Tate believes that the kind of shows Luminaire chooses provide a more complex artistic experience than might be found at other youth theater organizations. "They tend to choose shows that are kind of surface level: there's a lot of fun and flash, and it gives kids a chance to make friends," he says. "But what I saw was lacking is, I didn't feel most of these companies were giving young adults the opportunity to explore the complexity of the world. There's not always happy endings. Maybe there's not a central 'bad guy' you need to defeat; maybe you need to make difficult choices."

As a result, Luminaire's own choices mix the pragmatic goal of trying to appeal to audiences with an attempt to dig a little deeper. The company's debut production last spring, the popular ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, was a popular success according to Sandberg, who directed the show. But Luminaire also staged the more dramatic production The Last Five Years, directed by Tate, which Sandberg noted with a laugh, "you're crazy for doing in this demographic." The company also plans a one-act theater festival for the fall, which will give students in the youth theater program a chance to shadow company members on all aspects of production, including holding some of the production slots for plays written by the young participants.

As Sandberg sees it, as much as there's a sense of serving the youth by giving them opportunities to develop skills and see how a theater production is mounted in every respect, there's also a self-serving desire to build a base of creative local people to be part of their productions.

"Ultimately if we want to put on good shows, we need to develop at the community level," he says. "Everybody's doing musicals, but some of [the young actors] can't read sheet music. Or a lot of them are great actors and actresses, but they're not strong singers. Or they bomb an audition because they don't know basic dance terminology. We say, 'here are the tools you need.'"