Cedar City » Michael Bahr jumped into the middle of a circle of children, held his hands near his face and frantically moved his head from side to side.

"What are you doing?" one of the children asked.

"I am eating a burrito sandwich with my nose," replied Bahr, education director for the Utah Shakespearean Festival.

It wasn't exactly Shakespeare, but it made the kids -- all aspiring thespians playing an improvisation game -- laugh. The children may not have known it at the time, but it was all part of their training to become productive citizens, as well as theater lovers.

"Not only are we building the next generation of Utah Shakespearean Festival patrons, but we're building the next generation," Bahr said. Though the game may have seemed silly, it was actually meant to teach the children to express themselves and to act as team players.

As USF's education director for the past decade, it's Bahr's job to spread the gospel of Shakespeare and make sure theatergoers leave the festival feeling not only entertained but also enlightened. That way they might come back for more.

He oversees the literary seminars that follow each play, the orientations before each show, the costume, prop and actors' seminars, as well as the annual Shakespeare Competition for high-school and middle-school students and summer classes and workshops. There's also the Shakespeare-in-the Schools Tour, in which professional actors perform full-length plays at schools throughout Utah and surrounding states.

"People come for the plays," Bahr said. "They keep coming for the other events. Those other events provide a more whole and complete experience. Suddenly a play is not just entertainment; suddenly a play has deeper resonance."

It's a big job that Bahr, a wiry man who stands 5 feet 6 inches tall, tackles with a seemingly endless supply of fresh enthusiasm. Festival founder Fred Adams, who originally hired Bahr for the job, calls him the "energizer bunny." "He's walking inspiration in capsule form," Adams said.

"He has a never-ending energy," agrees Colleen Lewis, artistic director at Salt Lake City's Theatre Arts Conservatory.

Carrie Bittmenn, an aunt of one of Bahr's students this summer, called him "dynamite." "He has more energy than my 5-year-old," Bittmenn said.

Bahr, a 45-year-old father of four, has heard all the nicknames before. "I've just been blessed with inordinate amounts of energy," he admitted recently after spending two hours playing improvisation games, directing a song-and-dance number and explaining the plot of "Macbeth" to a group of kids ages 8 to 16 -- all as if it were the most exciting thing he could imagine doing.

His energy, Bahr said, is a tool. "I'm like this all day long and then I go home and ..." He finished the sentence like an actor, by cocking his head to the side and pretending to snore.

But that's Bahr in a nutshell: part actor, part teacher, part idealist and part manager -- all roles he's played at one time or another.

As a child growing up in Provo, he started to love acting at age 8, playing Kurt in a school production of "The Sound of Music."

He continued to act throughout high school, sometimes in university productions. He jokes that he played young boys until he was 32 because of his small frame and youthful appearance.

Once in college at Southern Utah University, Bahr struggled to reconcile his love for theater with his desire to eventually support a family. He didn't see theater as a practical career. Though he continued to study theater, he ultimately became a teacher.

As a drama teacher in Bakersfield, Calif., he accompanied his students to Cedar City, where they competed in various categories and received feedback from professional actors.

"I was a passionate believer in it when I was a high-school teacher," Bahr said. "It's an extremely important event. You're being held against a standard."

That's why when Bahr was offered the job of education director for the festival, he committed to continuing the legacy of the competition.

But he didn't just continue the program -- he grew it. When he started as education director in 1998, about 45 to 50 schools competed each year. Now that number approaches 95.

Lewis, with the conservatory in Salt Lake City, claims she isn't a big fan of drama competitions, but she loves bringing students to USF's competition. "It's so hard to judge something like that because everyone's ideas are so different," Lewis said. "Yet Michael has made this an environment where you feel safe to go into a competitive field and not feel like you're going to get beaten down."

It's a chance, she said for students to "get Shakespeare's words in their mouth."

Bahr's passionate about that idea: He truly believes in the transformative power of the Bard.

"Shakespeare knows us better than we know ourselves," Bahr said. "We can become closer to ourselves through the lens of the greatest playwright in the world."

Bahr doesn't just invite students to Cedar City for Shakespeare; he also takes Shakespeare to them through the school tour that's part of a National Education Association program funded partially by the National Endowment for the Arts.

"He really is seeking ways to affect all middle- and high-school students across probably some of the most rural areas this program goes to," said Christy Dickinson, a program director for Arts Midwest, which administers a grant for the program.

So far, the program has exposed about 21,000 students throughout the state to Shakespeare, Bahr said. The program tours several months a year performing about 70 shows annually.

"We are in spaces that have never seen a professional performance, let alone Shakespeare," Bahr said.

Sometimes, students can be rude. Once, a youth stepped on stage and helped himself to a prop biscuit in the middle of a performance of "The Taming of the Shrew," Bahr said.

Characteristically, Bahr's actors didn't stop the show, kick the student out of the play or pretend nothing happened. Instead, cast members knew Bahr would want them to turn the incident into a teachable moment.

After the show, the lead actor sat next to the student in the audience, bringing a hush over the crowd. In front of all the other students, the actor calmly told the boy he had stolen a moment from the actors and the audience, and if he wanted to be on stage he should study acting like all the other cast members had.

Bahr said students at that school never did anything like that again during a show.

"Audiences don't know how to behave because we have not trained them how to behave," Bahr said. "We have not made them accountable."

To Bahr, his job is not just about teaching people to enjoy Shakespeare, it's about teaching them how to be good audience members. He teaches them to understand the plays at a deeper level -- how to appreciate theater for years to come.

"It's an investment," he said. "We are investing in the patrons, our future generations and our artists in the work of the theater."

That's why he works so much that he can barely track how many hours he devotes to the festival's educational programs.

To him, the hours are beside the point. "I am so lucky," Bahr said. "I found my place. I found exactly where I need to be."