When Kent Gash comes home to direct the black-themed “Crowns” next year, he’s happy it will be under the new leadership of Kent Thompson. Because despite all the excellent work the company has consistently delivered, Gash hasn’t liked the message the DCTC has sent to people of color or fans of new work in general.
Gash, a 1978 George Washington grad who is associate artistic director of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, cited a lengthy list of recent Pulitzer- and Tony-winning plays the DCTC has passed on over the past five years – specifically Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Top Dog/Underdog,” about two black brothers; “Anna in the Tropics,” by Latino playwright Nilo Cruz; and the gay-themed “Take Me Out,” by white author Richard Greenberg.
It was a great coup for Shadow, Denver’s only year-round black theater company, to land the regional premiere of “Top Dog,” but the acclaimed production drew fewer than 1,000 people over five weeks, and for that Gash finds plenty of blame to go around. If the DCTC had presented the work, it would have been seen by at least 12,000.
“‘Top Dog’ should be done first by the largest professional theater in every major city in the country,” Gash said. “The most prominent institutions must be responsible for setting the cultural agenda for their entire communities. If you take on in your mission statement the responsibility to do the very best work that is being done in the country and the world, and then if you pass on plays that are winning Pulitzer Prizes, then I say, ‘Shame on you.”‘
That “Top Dog” struggled to break even at Shadow, Gash said, is bad for the entire theater community.
“The message the Denver Center sends by passing on a Pulitzer-winning play by a writer of color is that you are devaluing the material, and so they are just as much to blame for passing on it as Shadow audiences are for not going out and seeing it,” Gash said. “Shadow’s audiences don’t automatically see the value in a piece when the major voice in their city does not find it to be worthy of their time.”
The black community bears a “huge” responsibility for all of this as well, Gash said. “But if there was not a black audience for ‘Top Dog’ in Denver, it was because the black audience there has been underserved by a variety of institutions over a long period of time,” he added. “If the black community in Denver stays away from ‘Top Dog,’ what that tells me is they haven’t been getting enough of what they need, not only from Shadow but from the big dog in town.”
Shadow artistic director Jeffrey Nickelson said one problem in galvanizing the black community here is that it is not as residentially centralized as it is in other metro areas.
“There is no black suburb in Denver,” Nickelson said. “There is no certain place where black people meet and talk about things that are important to them here. I am glad we live in a community where black people can live anywhere and do whatever they want and live comfortably. But we can’t ever lose sight of who we are as a people.”
In particular, Nickelson called out the area’s most accomplished blacks. “The highly educated African-Americans in this town should be embarrassed that their only black theater company continues to struggle,” said Nickelson. “‘Top Dog’ (which closed July 2) should still be running.”
Ironically, Nickelson said a DCTC premiere of ‘Top Dog” probably would have cost him exposure and attendance. “My ideal would be for us to produce it and for them to present it at the Denver Center,” he said.
Thompson makes friends
A lot of great acts performed at the Colorado Theatre Guild’s annual gala Monday, but the biggest hit of the night was the DCTC’s Kent Thompson – just for sitting in the audience.
“It’s very important for me to get to know the professional theater community of Colorado – for future casting at DCTC, but also to see what each company is doing,” the new artistic director said.
“I want to see work in each theater’s home venue, and I have seen six or seven shows so far. But this allowed me to see a lot of the actors working in the region in the same evening.
“It was fun and enjoyable – there was great spirit in the room. It reminded me of why so many of us went into the theater – that particular esprit de corps that only theater people have.”
The gala drew a house of 216 to the Pinnacle Dinner Theatre, with companies performing from as far away as Dillon, Breckenridge and Fort Collins.
In all, 68 actors performed.
Briefly …
“Puppetry of the Penis” returns to the New Denver Civic Theatre on Oct. 4 in the studio theater, opposite “Menopause the Musical” on the mainstage. Insert your own joke here. …
Rick Hilsabeck, a member of Lake Dillon Theatre Company’s advisory board and a regularly featured performer at the Arvada Center, is making his Broadway debut as a swing in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Hilsabeck played the lead in the national tour of “The Phantom of the Opera” for six years but never before made it to Broadway. …
When I heard this I thought it might be a goof, but apparently the guest list for Saturday’s world premiere of Curious’ reality-TV satire “The Dead Guy” really includes Preston Mercer and PJ Spillman of “For Love or Money,” Ami Cusack of “Survivor” and Daniel Travis, the dude who got chomped in the all-too-real-looking shark film “Open Water.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
