(bright upbeat music) - Tanner Humanities is presenting "The Motive and the Cue", a new play by Jack Thorne, directed by Sam Mendez.

Humanities Ambassador John Boyack is here with all the details.

Hi, John, I'm so excited about these because I love National Theater Live.

- It's just such a wonderful experience for Salt Lake residents.

If you can't make it to London, this is kind of the next best thing.

And the Tanner Center has been putting these productions on since I think 2010 at about once a month.

And our great partners at the Salt Lake Film Society host these screenings at noon on Saturday.

And I gotta tell you, as a kid who grew up with a mother directing plays, I had to be convinced- (both laugh) That this was worth my time.

And each time I go, I am immediately pulled in with the writing, so I'm really looking forward to this new production.

Some are calling it "Hamlet" in rehearsal clothes.

- [Mary] I love it, I love it.

- Richard Burton, as you probably know, was at the peak of his game in cinema and chooses to do "Hamlet" and selects John Gielgud as his director.

And this is kind of, this play is a behind-the-scenes look at his new relationship with Liz Taylor, which is interesting, and just sort of the workings of what became the longest running "Hamlet" on Broadway and blockbuster sell-out.

- It's great.

So you get to see the play you couldn't see unless you went to London at the Broadway Theater.

- Yeah.

- And all about kind of behind the scenes with those iconic actors.

- Yeah, and rehearsing what is, I think T.S.

Eliot called "Hamlet" the Mona Lisa of literature, which is pretty apt.

And for an actor, I've been reading that this is the performance you need to master, if you can.

And so it's been played a bunch of times and there are a lot of questions surrounding that as a person from the College of Humanities, why do we keep revisiting these plays?

What do these productions and these performances mean?

And I was reading online, somebody had just gone to see "The Motive and the Cue" in London and was just so grateful that they could, to then go back and find Burton's performance online as well and watch that, yeah.

- Well, I'm excited for it.

So thank you so much for being here, thank you.

- My pleasure, thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming Tanner Humanities Center, you know, it's National Theater Live, "The Motive and the Cue".

May 11th at noon, Broadway Center Cinemas.

Go to thc.utah.edu.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching "Contact".

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Hi, I'm Mary Dickson.

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