“A Christmas Carol” won’t be included on the Denver Center Theatre Company’s 2007-08 season, ending a string of 17 straight holiday stagings.
Instead, producing partner Denver Center Attractions will bring a new production of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” to the Buell Theatre, and it will be included on the theater company’s season as well.
“A Christmas Carol,” which opens Tuesday and runs through Dec. 24, will return for the 2008-09 season.
“Sometimes with shows that are perennial favorites, it’s good to run them for a few years, and then it’s good to not do them for a few years,” said DCTC artistic director Kent Thompson, “because it keeps them fresh for both audiences and performers.”
It’s a gutsy move, not only for breaking the long tradition but also because “A Christmas Carol” is always the DCTC’s most attended show in any season.
“There might be a financial implication, but in reviewing the figures over the past several years, whenever Center Attractions offers a holiday-themed show, it tends to have an adverse effect on our attendance because audiences are being pulled in two ways,”
Thompson said. “I am sure ‘White Christmas’ will be very popular with all of our audiences, and so we don’t want to be in competition with ourselves.”
Denver Center for the Performing Arts president Randy Weeks is teaming with companies in Seattle and Chicago in creating “White Christmas,” a new revue of Berlin tunes. The show bows in Seattle this month, comes to Denver from Nov. 20 to Dec. 25, 2007, then plays Chicago in 2008.
The cross-promotion is part of a larger strategy to introduce DCA subscribers to DCTC programming, and vice versa. Next May, DCA subscribers will take in the theater company’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” “White Christmas” is the reverse.
“We want our (Broadway series) audiences to start attending and appreciating what we have in our own backyard, and that’s the Denver Center Theatre Company,” said marketing director Jeff Hovorka.
Thompson said the ultimate goal for the theater company is “to (grow) our capacity to build our own new musicals,” a plan that will culminate in a new musical at the end of his 2008 season that the DCA will include on its season, as well.
