GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.-
They didn’t cry but the cast got soaked as they performed “Evita” in the rain outside the locked-up Country Dinner Playhouse.
The state’s second-biggest theater in yearly tickets sold and a fixture in the arts world for 37 years shut down this week with less than a day’s notice. The closure came on the heels of the state’s only primarily gay theater company, the Theatre Group, being evicted from its longtime home in Denver a week ago after producing shows for 35 years.
“It’s alarming when any theater closes its door, but especially a theatre with a long-standing appeal to audiences and artists like Country Dinner Playhouse. It hurts all the theaters in town and in the state—providing less work for actors and artists but also fewer performance options for audiences,” said Kent Thompson, artistic director of the Denver Center Theatre Company.
“For theater in any community to succeed over the long term, you need many thriving and diverse organizations—large, small, ethnically specific, community-based, etc. That’s how any ‘creative’ industry works but it’s especially true in theater—we rely on each other for artists, audiences, and supporters,” said Thompson.
“This just hurts my heart,” Denver actor Amy Board told The Denver Post.
The Post reported a bankruptcy filing regarding the theater was expected to be filed by majority stakeholder David B. Lovinggood and co-owners Bob and Joan Buffington.
Artistic director Paul Dwyer said the news came out of the blue and came as he headed to New York to prepare for the next season. He got a call from Lovinggood, saying: “It’s over.”
Country Dinner Playhouse, which included an all-you-can-eat buffet, had put on more than 220 theater-in-the-round productions, drawing more than 5 million people.
Bill McHale, the playhouse’s original artistic director, told the Rocky Mountain News; “It’s very sad. It never should have happened, and the manner in which they did it was inhumane.” Performers and staff arrived Tuesday to find a lock on the “the barn,” as they called the building, so they put on the show outside.
The wait staff, the Barnstormers, sang selections from the upcoming show.
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Country Dinner Playhouse
