Salt Lake City wants to create a downtown theater district, and one of the models it is studying is the Denver Performing Arts Complex – at 12 acres, the largest of its kind in the world. The DPAC offers 10 venues and 11,300 seats within a four-square-block area, generating about $30 million in annual ticket sales.
Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon led a recent contingent to tour the facilities here and examine the unique operating partnership between the city and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
“Frankly, I was amazed at what has happened in Denver in terms of your cultural arts facilities,” said Corroon. “It’s amazing you have so many theaters and venues on one place. There is such a vibrancy there.”
Salt Lake does not have the land to replicate a comparable, self-contained facility, but Corroon left hoping to copy at least two unique aspects of the Denver model: The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District and the Denver Center Theatre Academy.
The SCFD is a voter-sanctioned special taxing district that generates $38 million annually for 300 metro-area arts organizations. The Academy conducts public classes that attract more than 1,200 residents per year, while its outreach programs serve 40,000 schoolkids.
“A taxing collaboration between (seven) separate counties is an impressive accomplishment,” Corroon said. “And the Academy says to people that the mission is not just entertainment – it’s also about educating future performing artists in your own community.”
A Chicago consulting firm produced a 115-page report examining arts districts in Denver, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. It compares everything from income to population trends to education to airport activity. Its recommendations for Salt Lake include new 800- and 2,400-seat theaters, the latter to host Broadway touring shows.
How important is a Broadway house? Touring shows generated about $16 million in ticket revenue at the Buell Theatre in 2004-05 – and that was a calamitous fiscal year.
But Denver and Salt Lake are in some ways difficult to compare. Salt Lake City is twice as populated as Denver, but Denver’s metro population dwarfs Salt Lake’s by 2.3 million to 1.1 million. And the per capita income here is $39,881, compared to $26,907 in Salt Lake.
“We couldn’t possibly replicate what Denver has,” Corroon said, “but we can try to replicate the feel Denver has.”
One door closes…
It’s bad news and great news for Jennifer McCray Rincon, acting chair at the Denver Center’s National Theatre Conservatory. Lizard Head, the Equity, off-Broadway caliber summer theater she helped create in Telluride six years ago, is dead.
The company was a popular summer destination for Denver Center actors such as Douglas Harmsen, Stephanie Cozart, Jamie Horton and Kathleen M. Brady.
“But it’s never really been a financially feasible idea,” said Rincon, adding that funders Marty Silver and Dennis Fecteau have pulled out. Rincon would like to reinvent the company under another name, and with another mission, in 2007 – possibly as a new-play festival.
But Rincon is ecstatic because Bill Pullman’s “Expedition 6,” the live trapeze play he has developed in Denver the past three years with the NTC’s class of 2006, has landed a three-week workshop this June at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
“Expedition 6” is an experimental, educational play that centers on the International Space Station’s astronauts during the Columbia explosion.
Pullman (“While You Were Sleeping”) took his idea to his old pal Rincon, who made it a class project for the then-incoming NTC class, all of whom are now heading to Washington.
Pullman once described “Expedition 6” as “an esoteric, spiritual and nonlinear look at the relationship of world cultures.”
“But the first thing we have to do is finish it,” Rincon said.
The play will be performed as part of an American College Theatre Festival July 5-11, with invited guests including playwrights Steven Dietz, Marsha Norman and Craig Lucas. Then it moves to the Baltimore Theatre Project for a July 11-29 run.
Rincon plans an extended tour, but on an unlikely circuit. “I’d love to take it to museums,” she said.
Briefly …
The 22nd Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival runs from 10:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Friday at the DPAC. Last year, 4,000 students from 80 schools participated (720-423-8278)… After five years and 65 episodes, Buntport’s “Magnets on the Fridge” biweekly live sit-com ends with performances at 8 and 10 p.m. Tuesday and 8 p.m. Wednesday (720-946-1388) …
Regis High School graduate John Carroll Lynch (CBS’ “Close to Home”) has been reunited with his HBO “Carnivale” castmate Tim DeKay (himself a DCTC alum) on the play “Ridiculous Fraud,” playing at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. …
Jeremy Palmer, star of the Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League’s 2005 “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” finishes his run today in “Comedic Sluggers,” eight short comedies at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Fight Club Theatre …
And Rachel deBenedet of Eldorado Springs has been promoted from ensemble to Muriel in Broadway’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” starring John Lithgow. Playing Christine is Rachel York, who grew up in Boulder.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
This week’s theater openings
THU-MAY 14 | Backstage’s “The Vagina Monologues” | BRECKENRIDGE
FRI-JUNE 18 | Miners Alley Playhouse’s “The Rainmaker” | GOLDEN
FRI-MAY 27 | Upstart Crow’s “The Lady’s Not for Burning” | BOULDER
FRI-JUNE 4 | Fine Arts Center’s “Pirates of Penzance” | COLORADO SPRINGS
FRI-JUNE 3 | California Actors Theatre’s “Rumors” | LONGMONT
FRI-MAY 21 | Festival Playhouse’s “Everybody Loves Opal” | ARVADA
FRI-MAY 20 | Debut Theatre Company’s “The Phantom Tollbooth” | FORT COLLINS
SAT-JUNE 24 | Curious’ “Fiction”
This week’s theater closings
TODAY | Denver Center Attractions’ “Les Miserables”
TODAY | Town Hall Arts Center’s “Bye, Bye Birdie” | LITTLETON
TODAY | Germinal Stage Denver’s “Quartermaine’s Terms”
TODAY | Main Street Players’ “Hello Dolly” | ENGLEWOOD
TODAY | Denver Children’s Theatre’s “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse”
TUE-WED | Buntport’s “Magnets on the Fridge”
SAT | Next Stage’s “Chess” (at the Phoenix Theatre)
SAT | Theater Company of Lafayette’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” | LAFAYETTE
MAY 14 | Country Dinner Playhouse’ “The Man of La Mancha | GREENWOOD VILLAGE
MAY 14 | Arvada Center’s “Pippin”
MAY 14 | Aurora Fox’s “Death of a Salesman”
MAY 14 | Star Bar Players’ “Dancing at Lughnasa” | COLORADO SPRINGS
MAY 14 | Metro Playhouse’s “Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” | GRAND JUNCTION
