The fall theater season opens in earnest tonight with an emphasis on new works not seen here since 9/11 ushered in four years of mostly safe programming designed to simply keep companies’ doors open.
But by next weekend, there will be 15 regional or world premieres playing simultaneously around Colorado, including Curious’ “The Dead Guy,” Miners Alley Playhouse’s “Dead White Males,” Creede Repertory Theatre’s “Slabtown” and Lake Dillon’s “The Oldest Profession.”
“What that tells me is that Colorado is becoming an even more sophisticated and theater-savvy market than it ever has been, and it’s nice to see that it’s much more broad-based now than just the Denver Center,” said Jim Steinberg, a Denver Center for the Performing Arts board member. His own foundation invests $3 million annually in the development and production of new theater nationally.
The Arvada Center has been one of the area’s most consistent purveyors of new works but has probably garnered the least credit for doing so. Its staging of the award-winning “Intimate Apparel,” opening Tuesday, will be the company’s 13th regional premiere since 2001, and its subsequent “A Place at Forest Lawn” will be a world premiere.
“Everyone was playing it safe there for a while because there was a greater chance of a backlash, but now it’s starting to go back the other way,” said Arvada Center performing-arts manager Rod Lansberry. “What you are finding are more companies that are looking for something new, and more audiences that are asking for something new.”
While many people associate new works with the provocative or controversial, the Arvada Center has been savvy about finding plays that simply touch hearts and minds. Its list of recent premieres includes everything from gentle comedies (“Rounding Third” and “Over the River and Through the Woods”) to family musicals (“Children of Eden”) to major Broadway musicals (“The Full Monty”) to small personal dramas (“The Drawer Boy” and “The Crimson Thread”).
“Intimate Apparel” marks a departure only in that this is a hot new property fresh from its New York debut, and it explores a minority culture. Lynn Nottage’s play won the 2004 Drama Desk and American Theatre Critics Association awards for best play and was hailed in its New York debut production directed by Wray native Dan Sullivan.
It is the 1905 story of an uneducated African-American seamstress who creates fine lingerie for New York socialites and prostitutes alike. The heroine is determined to open her own beauty parlor, a place where black patrons will be treated as royally as white ones – an unheard-of dream for a black woman in her day. And when her love life becomes romantically intertwined with her clientele, she challenges the sexual taboos of the time. This is hardly controversial material, but it certainly qualifies as important.
“What it tells me that the Arvada Center is the first company to stage this play here is that they recognize good theater, they are willing to take risks, and they recognize that good stories don’t only come in one culture,” said lead actor Debbie Lewis Johnson, a George Washington High School graduate and former Denver Center Theatre Company member (“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and “Miss Julie”). “The Arvada Center recognizes that people want to see good stories, no matter what color they come in.”
Steinberg’s foundation is the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, which funds the $15,000 critics award Nottage landed in 2004. When the play debuted in New York, it christened the Steinberg Center for Theatre there.
“‘Intimate Apparel’ is a lovely play simply because it has a very nice story that is well told,” said Steinberg, who lives in Steamboat Springs and also supports the Curious Theatre Company, which presents only regional or world premieres. “Lynn Nottage has become a premier storyteller at the level of Regina Taylor in that she tells stories about what the African-American community has been through, and how they have gotten where they are.
“She writes stories that are so beautifully written we walk away feeling that we have engaged our minds and been overflown with poetry.”
“Intimate Apparel” is the kind of play that in the past one might have expected as part of the Denver Center’s Black History Month or at Shadow, the area’s only full-time black theater company.
“The fact that there are now so many companies willing to take artistic risks, and that there are people out there who are willing to support these new works with their hard-
earned dollars and with their butts in the seats is very encouraging,” Steinberg said.
“Presenting all these new voices is a critical thing that will only raise the level of theater throughout Colorado. It’s great to see the Arvada Center taking a lead role in telling this important story.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Intimate Apparel”
DRAMA|Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.|Written by Lynn Nottage|Directed by Jane Page|Starring Debbie Lewis Johnson, Neil Necastro Jr. and Kennedy Reilly-Pugh|THROUGH OCT. 2|Opens Tuesday, then 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 1 p.m. Wednesdays, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|$32-$42|720-898-7200 or arvadacenter.org
