At Kent Thompson’s first meet-and-greet for Denver Center Theatre Company subscribers three weeks ago, some may have mistaken “open house” for “open season.” One long-term subscriber marched straight up to the company’s first new artistic director in 21 years – and thanked him for retaining so many longtime, core company members. Then he exhaled.
“Then someone else came right up to me and said, ‘Thank you for bringing in so many new faces,”‘ Thompson said. Then he chuckled. “That happened over and over.”
Thompson is opening doors for new voices – without slamming doors on old faces.
Former artistic director Donovan Marley cleaned house when he took over in 1984, bringing 66 new company members with him from his theater in California. So from Marley’s resignation in January 2004 to the casting of Thompson’s first three plays last month, longtime DCTC actors, designers, staff and audiences had 20 months to fret over whether Thompson might do the same.
Some kind of change not only was coming, but necessary. But how sweeping that change should be to one of the nation’s few remaining resident regional theater companies would be only Thompson’s second major test. The first had been how he would craft an 11-play season that would invigorate the company with more urgent and underrepresented voices.
Thompson not only has passed both tests thus far, he has created something new here that is in no way an admonishment of the past. And that is something of a miracle.
“I think the body of work Donovan achieved here over the years was extraordinary,” Thompson said. “I feel my job is to articulate the next stage of this theater’s history. And it’s much easier to build a new company from the best of an existing company than it is to start from scratch.”
Thompson’s first season opens Thursday with Arthur Miller’s suddenly re-relevant 1947 American tragedy “All My Sons,” followed by Georges Feydeau’s 1907 French farce “A Flea in Her Ear” and José Cruz González’s “September Shoes,” the 26-year-old DCTC’s first foray into a style of theater known as magical realism in 10 years.
Thompson also challenged new associate director Bruce K. Sevy to rebuild the company’s new-play program into one of the most vital in the country, and instigated a big-bucks initiative billed “New Vision, New Voices” that will give new emphasis to female, Latino and black playwrights. That program already has had a $175,000 infusion from American Express. And Thompson’s Women’s Voices Fund, with a goal of identifying 100 people to pledge $5,000 each to support productions by women, has raised $325,000 in just six months. By season’s end, Thompson will have staged works by three female and two black writers, and employed three female directors – all DCTC records.
Yet longtime audiences will not feel as if they have wandered into a new or unfamiliar theater, because of the 29 actors cast in Thompson’s first three plays, 12 are new and 17 are returning. In fact, out of the approximately 150 working on the first three plays on- or offstage, only about 25 are newcomers.
“One of the great things about this company is that it has been able to maintain artists who live in and are part of the community,” Thompson said. “That’s pretty rare in the American theater today. It’s getting much more so that people are treated as seasonal employees, so they just can’t afford to stay in the same city. So what we have here is pretty special.”
But the coming impact by the newcomers will be unmistakable. “September Shoes,” opening Oct. 27, will feature an all-Latino cast that is entirely new to the DCTC, as is director Amy González.
What that means for people who have been previously underrepresented is that “Kent is affecting the reality of the world we live in,” she said. “The world out there is made up of all sorts of people, and it’s really exciting that he’s respecting that in his choices of plays. I am just so thrilled to be part of this company at this stage of its life, and I am very happy to represent the Latino community. This is a big event for all of us.
“It feels like the company is so inclusive. I feel so at home.”
Thompson has been working at least six days a week since assuming his artistic-director duties June 27, but that did not stop him from naming himself to direct one of his three opening plays. “A Flea in Her Ear,” bowing Oct. 13, is a difficult test that hinges on flawless, breakneck physical comedy, and
Thompson purposefully cast his work with a who’s-who of the company’s most respected actors, including Jamie Horton, John Hutton and Kathleen M. Brady. But the play constitutes not a tryout, he insists – rather an introduction.
“I chose ‘Flea’ because it plays into the strength of the company,” Thompson said in deference to a long body of French comedies written or directed by former DCTC veteran Nagle Jackson. He could have chosen something he has previously directed for his former employer, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, but that would have been the easy way out. At a time of fresh starts,
Thompson thought his company and his new audience deserved something original.
“There are two reasons I wanted to direct right away,” he said. “One is so I can get to know and really engage with the entire company and staff – and you can’t do that until you actually direct. That’s the only way you really get to know how your organization works. The other thing is that I have to be willing to put myself out there as a director right off the bat, for the sake of the actors, the audience, the subscribers and the donors. So as I get to know everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, they get to know mine.”
But first to open is “All My Sons,” Miller’s first successful play. It is the post-World war II story of self-made, uneducated businessman Joe Keller (Mike Hartman) who pulled himself out of Great Depression poverty to become a wealthy airplane-parts manufacturer. But his defective parts caused the deaths of 21 young American pilots – one of whom may have been his son. Joe believes that because he was acting on behalf of his family’s welfare, his actions were justified.
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“All My Sons”
DRAMA|Denver Center Theatre Company|Directed by Bruce J. Sevy|Starring Mike Hartman, Jeanne Paulsen and David Ivers|Space Theatre, 14th and Curtis streets|THROUGH NOV. 5|Previews through Wednesday, then 6:30 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1:30 p.m. Saturday matinee|$29-$45|303-893-4100, denvercenter.org, King Soopers stores or TicketsWest, 866-464-2626. |
The play is a scathing condemnation of the rampant American ideal of prosperity gained through dangerous moral compromises. And it won’t take audiences long to see startling connections to modern-day war profiteers, corporate malfeasance and the daily death count in Iraq.
“I really wanted to do an American play that had a riveting message for today, and I think ‘All My Sons’ is so timely,” Thompson said. “It’s not a play that bashes veterans or the war experience at all. It’s about accountability; that if you do something wrong, it’s not OK to just get away with it. I think it’s really interesting that right now, especially after Hurricane Katrina, here we are talking again about accountability.”
Sevy, the “All My Sons” director, thinks the play has been overshadowed by Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible” for too long.
“He succeeded in investigating how our values as Americans intersect and sometimes conflict,” Sevy said. “Our ethical, political and social values can conflict with our values of earning a living, becoming prosperous and making a future for our kids. Miller uses the family as the core element for how we think of our society. And though he takes us to dark places, I think there’s something energizing about speaking the truth.”
Though two of Thompson’s first three plays are a collective 150 years old, his strategy all along was to ease DCTC audiences into his new era.
“We get more adventuresome as we go along, and that was a conscious decision,” he said, “because I really needed to have the ability to talk to the audience and to listen to them as the season goes on.”
As that season opens, Sevy, who was a DCTC company member for the better part of 1982-2000 before being rehired in January, says he feels a buzz unlike anything since the company’s very first days.
“The atmosphere around here is really energized,” he said. “A lot of the longtime company members are coming up to me and telling me they are having a really great time.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
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Then and now
The last time at the DCTC…
HISPANIC DIRECTOR
1999: Susana Tubert, “Barrio Babies”
Now: Amy González,
“September Shoes”
HISPANIC PLAYWRIGHT
1999: Luis Santeiro, “Barrio Babies”
Now: José Cruz González, “September Shoes”
MAGICAL REALISM PLAY
1995: “Marisol”
Now: “September Shoes”
ARTHUR MILLER PLAY
1995: “The Last Yankee”
Now: “All My Sons”
…
DCTC season openers
ALL MY SONS|By Arthur Miller, Thursday-Nov. 5 (Space Theatre)
A FLEA IN HER EAR|By Georges Feydeau, Oct. 13-Nov. 5 (Stage)
SEPTEMBER SHOES|By José Cruz González, Oct. 27-Dec. 17 (Ricketson
