BAR: LIMELIGHT
Limelight is one of Kevin Taylor’s six restaurants — built to serve people on their way in or out of the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The entrance is just across the atrium from the Buell Theatre, making it the perfect stop for playgoers (and a great spot for intermission cocktails and uncrowded pit stops). The room is 7,000 square feet, seats 200 in a sleek and modern setting — glowing in green hues. It’s open every night there are performances. Same goes for Saturday and Sunday brunch. No performances, no Limelight. Taylor knows the challenge is getting everybody in and out in 90 minutes. Everyone comes at the same time and leaves at the same time.
GRILLED: KENT THOMPSON
Kent Thompson, 54, has been the artistic director of the Denver Center Theatre Company since 2005, where he’s championed new plays and challenged Denver audiences to participate in what he calls “the journey.” Born the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, he came to Denver from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. His wife, Kathleen McCall, is a member of the DCTC acting company and comes from Colorado football royalty — her dad is Don McCall, the coach for 34 years of the Douglas County High School Huskies. Thompson’s son, 16-year-old Alex, plays football for Cherry Creek — and Thompson never misses a game. He orders a chardonnay.
BH: We’re in a green-colored restaurant and you’re wearing a green sweater and a green shirt. Did you plan that?
Thompson: No. I don’t care about my clothes very much. I spend my life dressing up other people. I don’t think I have a really strong relationship with the physical world. I am the person who would arrive at work wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe.
BH: What was it like being a preacher’s son? How does that inform who you are today?
Thompson: I think it informed me a lot and it took me a long time to realize that. My dad was a really good preacher. He was a guy who told stories, very dynamic. In some ways it was like being the child of an actor.
BH: I just watched a YouTube video of you singing the titles of the new season as a costumed character out of “H.M.S. Pinafore.” It was so silly. Are you silly?
Thompson: I have a silly side. I mean, I’m a Southern Baptist preacher’s son. You have to have some silliness in you to survive. I tend to think life itself is kind of a Restoration comedy anyway.
BH: Is it a myth that women drag men to the theater?
Thompson: I don’t think it’s a myth. There are a lots of stats, about 80 percent of the time a woman decides what to see, and 60 percent of the audience is female. I think it may be something about the American culture. It’s why women read more, are more open to talking, relationships.
BH: Having your wife in the acting company, is that a good thing?
Thompson: It is. Of course it’s challenging sometimes when you’re working with your spouse. You have to define what your roles are. But she had a career on Broadway and in regional theater, so it would be odd for me to come here and not use her in the company.
BH: I hear you love football.
Thompson: My love of football is really based on my son and his passion for it. And that’s because of my wife and her family. I was a nerd. I was the kid with the heart murmur, I didn’t get into sports.
BH: Your first wife died of breast cancer.
Thompson: Both my first wife and my parents died within 16 months. People ask me all the time how I survived that, and I have two answers. I don’t think I did survive that. I think a different person survived that. It changes you on some cellular level. The other way I survived is through my current wife, Kathleen. She helped me move on to the next level in life.
BH: You believe in the flip side of life.
Thompson: That’s the nature of life’s journey. It’s very difficult, but around the corner there will be something else, and it’ll often be extraordinary, and it’ll often be extremely terrible. I believe that out of these things comes something really special and that’s what really draws me to the theater. What I find so gratifying about the theater is that it shows us both the sorrow and the way out of sorrow.
BH: How is Denver different from Alabama?
Thompson: The South is humid, religiously conservative, politically conservative, very family oriented, deeply rooted in an oral tradition. Denver is dry, you see the mountains all the time, the spirit is different, there’s a greater mix of liberal and conservative. The audiences seem to be better educated and more tolerant of different viewpoints here.
BH: Is this a satisfying time for you?
Thompson: Very. This city is remarkable, it keeps trying to redefine itself, reinvent itself.
BH: How do you sit through really bad plays?
Thompson: I think for the theater professional or a critic it’s particularly hard because you see so much. But there is something going on in that room. I always feel the communal experience, the collaboration that is the true spirit of the theater, trying to create a play that’s going to give some vivid memorable moments that people will carry with them the rest of their lives. That is the hope that carries us through the bad plays.
BH: Have you ever been in a train wreck of a play?
Thompson: In a high school play, I was backstage drinking my Fanta orange when the set fell over. And the audience saw me there. And the only thing you can do is to acknowledge the tragedy of the moment and move on.
BH: What about the DNC?
Thompson: It was a spectacle, amazing theater.
BH: Favorite plays?
Thompson: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It’s the perfect play about being in love in the summer in the forest with magical people. And “The Rover,” about a Shakespearean actor who goes on the road and has many adventures. It made me realize I wanted to be a director.
BH: TV?
Thompson: I like it, I watch anything that’s theatrical. I tend to watch character-driven shows.
BH: Books?
Thompson: I have books everywhere. And I have a Kindle. I am obsessed with this book, “The Mind on Fire,” about (Ralph Waldo) Emerson.
BH: Rock and roll?
Thompson: I listen to it, but more to Damien Rice and Duncan Sheik.
BH: What about Obama giving the queen an iPod?
Thompson: Perfect.
BH: Restaurants?
Thompson: We’re usually with our football player son, so it’s about where we can get the most food. We go to Del Frisco’s, where we can get the 26-ounce steak.
BH: Name an overrated virtue.
Thompson: Moral rectitude.
BH: Will you still be here in 10 years?
Thompson: I don’t know. I hope so. It depends if I feel like I’m effective and still growing.
BH: Are they nice to you here?
Thompson: Yes. But I don’t want to become an institution. The theater is the institution.
