“That’s kind of all I knew. The old saying is 'being born in a trunk.'” The theater has been part of James Parker’s life for as long as he can remember. Today, the Parker Theatre, located on State Street in South Salt Lake, is a 200-seat Art Deco playhouse that was once the Avalon Theater, a one-screen cinema from the 1940s that had fallen into disrepair.

“What we do is share stories. At the very heart of it, we take the written word, the passed-down tale, the brand-new idea, and we project it into real life so a room full of people can feel it together.” As Managing Director of Pioneer Theatre Company, Adrian Budhu lives by those words every day. His life traces a beautiful arc of places, people, and purpose - an arc that explains why that sentence lands with such conviction.

I always think of an art house as the new gathering place for stories and ideas. Film is such an accessible art form. You can have a film about anything. So, you can have a conversation about anything.” Tori A. Baker, CEO of Salt Lake Film Society,  has had her life shaped by that belief.