Philip Sneed is shaking up the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, just in time for its 50th anniversary season. What’s changing in Boulder? Almost everything.
The new artistic director is expanding the slate from three to six self-produced titles, including a holiday offering and the first non-Bard titles since 1997: the classics “A Servant of Two Masters,” written by Italian Carlo Goldoni in 1753, and Jules Verne’s French Victorian “Around the World in Eighty Days,” published in 1872.
The three 2007 Bard offerings will be “Julius Caesar,” “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Sneed hopes that by expanding the canon to include non-Bard classics he will make the fest more accessible to novices and more interesting to loyalists. He also said the CSF will soon begin commissioning new plays that, like Shakespeare, are epic works about big ideas.
“This is really no different from what most festivals do,” said Sneed, who estimated that less than half of what is offered at most Shakespeare festivals around the country is written by the man from Stratford.
“I think it’s useful to say, ‘Here’s a dead white guy who was really good. But here are some other people – some of them also dead white guys, but also in the near future women – who were influenced by the first dead white guy that we’re named after.”‘
Surveys consistently show audiences want more comedies, but they are tired of the same six or eight Shakespeare comedies. “So this gives us a chance to address the desire for more comic material without recycling the same short list of Shakespeare’s comedies,” Sneed said.
The additional plays won’t result in a longer festival, just fewer performances of each play.
In other developments:
- In late 2007, another tradition begins with an annual family-friendly holiday offering. First up: A new adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ 1955 “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
- The fest budget is growing from $896,000 to just more than $1 million, its biggest since 1991. That’s possible in part because in retiring chief Dick Devin’s final season, attendance was up 13 percent, and he finished with a $100,000 surplus.
- The University of Colorado has allocated $200,000 to improve sound, seating, concessions and signage. “The whole audience-services experience is getting a big revamp,” Sneed said.
- The summer season’s opening nights will be staggered over five consecutive Saturday nights. And even though the season is expanding, the acting company will actually shrink from 48 to 30 actors. Last year most actors had one role; now most will have three.
“In a sense, there will be two different companies – an outdoor and an indoor company,” said Sneed,” though there will be some overlap.”
Staggered openings, he said, will allow actors to perform more and burn out less.
“When I acted (with the CSF) in late ’70s, we were rehearsing three plays a day 12 hours a day for six days a week, and it was grueling,” Sneed said. “So the only way you can have actors in three plays and not do that is to only be getting one opening ready at a time.”
The CSF is moving to a higher professional status, allowing Sneed to hire up to six union guest actors per season, up from one in ’06. Sneed also will actively recruit older actors for more age-appropriate casting.
Because auditions will begin in December, actors who previously were not assigned roles until they arrived in Boulder in late May will know their parts no later than March.
‘Lion King’ records
“The Lion King” again sold every seat for its second Denver tour stop, this one drawing 147,000 in seven weeks.
Combined with the 2002 tour launch here, Disney has now sold 362,000 seats in Denver, generating $22.3 million in ticket sales in 17 weeks of shows.
Equity forum Monday
Join me at 7 p.m. Monday at the Acoma Center as I moderate a forum on the pros and cons of a Colorado actor joining the professional actors union known as Actors Equity.
The panel will include local Equity rep Marcus Waterman, Curious artistic director Chip Walton, Town Hall Arts Center executive director Rich Harris, actor Mary McGroary (“Cabaret”) and director John Thornberry (“Wait Until Dark”).
New Play Summit
The list of playwrights artistic director Kent Thompson has under commission to write new plays for possible production by his Denver Center Theatre Company is growing.
We’ve previously reported Lee Blessing, who is writing about water rights in the West, Steven Dietz and Theresa Rebeck. We now know the list includes Michele Lowe, Eric Schmiedl (who will adapt Kent Haruf’s Colorado-based novel “Plainsong”) and Octavio Solis (“Santos & Santos”). And Thompson has selected José Cruz González (“September Shoes”) to write his previously announced commission in Spanish that will address the Latino experience in Colorado. That play will tour throughout the state.
Rattlebrain lives
After a two-year dormancy, the Rattlebrain Theater is back with “BFE: The Town That Christmas Forgot,” opening Friday at the Avenue Theater.
Writer Dave Shirley says it features everything you’d expect from a Rattlebrain holiday show” – “singing, dancing, stealing and dying – and 12 original songs that’ll stick with you like a virus.” Call 303-321-5925.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
This week’s theater openings
WED-JAN. 27 | Cabaret Dinner Theatre’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” | GRAND JUNCTION
FRI-DEC. 23 | Rattlebrain’s “B.F.E.: The Town that Christmas Forgot” (at the Avenue Theater)
FRI-DEC. 10 | Fine Arts Center’s “1940s Radio Hour” | COLORADO SPRINGS
FRI-DEC. 23 | Victorian Playhouse’s “Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge”
This week’s theater closings
TODAY | Denver Center Attractions’ “The Lion King” (at the Buell)
TODAY | Arvada Center’s “Over the Tavern”
TODAY | Backstage’s “Sylvia” | BRECKENRIDGE
SAT | El Centro Su Teatro’s “The Day Ricardo Falcon Died”
SAT | Carousel Dinner Theatre’s “The Full Monty” | FORT COLLINS
SAT | OpenStage’s “Saint Joan” | FORT COLLINS
SAT | Colorado Stage Company’s “Cheatin” | LONE TREE
NOV. 19 | Vintage’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (at the Phoenix)
