Charlotte Booker wasn’t so sure the bejeweled, high-society women of Denver were the right audience for the world premiere of the pioneer musical “Quilters” back in 1982. Not when she saw those in the front row of the Space Theatre repeatedly drape their minks over the hitching posts that were part of the set.
A patchwork of narrative tales about frontier women struggling to survive through the brutal harshness of the 1870s American West? . . . And sewing? Set to music?
“You wouldn’t think those ladies had much in common with the women in our show,” said Booker, a member of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s original ensemble and most recently star of “Dusty and the Big Bad World.” “But they dissolved into tears by the end of it, every time.”
Writer Molly Newman quickly learned “Quilters” would also resonate with men the night she saw a husband sobbing so hard he was dabbing his eyes with his tie.
“I think we snuck up on people,” Newman said of the most honored and enduring original work in the Denver Center’s 30-year history.
“We opened in Denver, broke the house record at the Kennedy Center (in Washington), rolled on to New York and got six Tony nominations,” said producer Brockman Seawell, son of Denver Center founder Donald R. Seawell.
He understandably skips the part where “Quilters,” despite its nomination for best musical, rolled over and died on Broadway after just 24 performances. It was decimated by powerful critics Frank Rich of The New York Times and John Simon of The New Yorker. One critic called it “a play that originated somewhere west of the Allegheny Mountains.”
“The thing that bugged me was that they were so dismissive of where we came from,” said Newman, a University of Denver grad now writing for ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters.” “I mean, hate the play if you want, but you don’t have to hate where we came from.”
But after tours of the U.S. and Europe, “Quilters” soon became the most produced musical in America, and is still performed by schools and small professional theaters like the Aurora Fox and Creede Repertory Theatre.
It’s now being revived by the Denver Center Theatre Company to salute its local origins. The new staging should be especially meaningful for returning audiences, said Caitlin O’Connell, a 1982 cast member now understudying Jane Fonda in Broadway’s “33 Variations.”
“There’s a thrill about going into an event back in the same place where it actually was birthed,” said O’Connell, who last starred here in “Third.” She thinks New York critics of the day were just too unfamiliar with the unusual dramatic style Newman and composer Barbara Damashek adopted.
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“It’s always been a tough sell,” Newman admitted.
“Quilters,” largely drawn from archival interviews with real pioneer women, is structured in 20 story “blocks,” much like the mosaic of an actual quilt. It’s a series of short scenes, monologues and tableaux matched with musical numbers, each presenting a different aspect of frontier life for four generations of women.
It’s filled with sweetness but also is harrowing as it shows, for example, a desperate mother who takes drastic action to avoid her 16th childbirth; a young girl who watches helplessly as her loved ones freeze to death all around her.
This episodic approach is pretty much how “33 Variations” is now being presented on Broadway, O’Connell said — and it’s nominated for best play. “So I guess they’re more used to it now,” she said.
From bartender to playwright
Newman was an actor when she sat down to pen her first play — “and by ‘actor,’ I mean I was a bartender,” she said of her job at the downtown Broker.
She wanted to break into the 3-year-old Denver Center’s acting company, and she had heard about an actress getting in by “performing” an article from “Sports Illustrated” at her audition. So Newman called her mom, a quilter in Indiana, for advice. Right over the phone, her mom started reading from her favorite book, “The Quilters: Women and Domestic Arts.”
“She started to cry, and so I thought, ‘There is something here,’ ” Newman said.
She auditioned for the Denver Center’s Walter Schoen, who, Newman said, was more taken with the material than with her acting. “He said, ‘What’s that from?’ and I said — lying — ‘Oh, it’s from a play that I’m adapting,’ ” Newman said with a laugh.
Schoen said he’d love to see a finished script, which meant Newman would first have to start one.
The Denver Center green-lit “Quilters” and offered it to a director from the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. He passed, but his girlfriend was Damashek, who called Newman and said, “This begs for music.’ ”
That hadn’t even occurred to me,” said Newman, “so we decided to collaborate.”
Damashek was a devotee of Paul Sills, whose “Story Theatre” had popularized an improvisational performing style in the late 1960s using minimal sets and props. So they drew from that.
“Its simplicity in staging was what made it so powerful and evocative,” O’Connell said of “Quilters.” “We did it with fabric and ropes and quilting hoops — the audience had to use their imaginations for the rest. We were asking them to go on a journey with us. We were telling a pioneer story of women making do with what they had — and that’s what we were doing on the stage.”
Newman wanted to explore what she calls the secret language that women speak, so while there are men’s roles, there have never been men in the cast. Until now. Director Penny Metropulos has added one, played by Jeff Skowron.
“I feel that a male presence sets the women’s voices off in a powerful way,” Metropulos said. “There are speeches that have always been written for male characters, and to me, it’s less distracting and more effective for a man to play those roles.”
That’s part of the director’s larger effort to make her staging of “Quilters” more literal and less, well, “Story Theatre.” After all, one of the women in the story is pregnant, and while frontier women were incredibly self-reliant, they couldn’t do everything themselves.
“Well, not completely,” O’Connell agreed. “At least not back then.”
The only returning cast member is Kathleen M. Brady, who was part of the first “Quilters” touring company in ’83. O’Connell said everyone from those days, cast and audiences alike, should feel a sense of pride and ownership in the first new work to put the Denver Center on the national map.
Newman owes “Quilters” more than her career. She met her husband on one tour, and they recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. But with “Brothers & Sisters” in full production for the fall season, she’s not sure she’ll get to see the Denver revival of “Quilters.”
May be for the best.
She’s seen only one production in nearly 25 years. “And when the music started, I commenced to bawling through the whole thing,” she said.
“There’s a part of me that thinks if I go back to Denver, I’ll turn into a blubbering idiot.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Quilters”
Musical. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Stage Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex. Written by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek. Directed by Penny Metropulos. Starring Kathleen M. Brady, Christine Rowan, Victoria Adams-Zischke, Susannah Flood, Kara Lindsay, Linda Mugleston and Jeff Skowron. Through July 12. 6:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. Also: 1 p.m. May 29, June 4 and June 11. $36-$51. 303-893-4100 (800-641-1222 outside Denver), all King Soopers or
This week’s theater openings
Opening Thursday, May 28, through July 12: Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Quilters,” Stage Theatre
Thursday, May 28, through May 31: Manitou Art Theater’s “52 Pick Up” Colorado Springs
Friday, May 29, through Sept. 5: Boulder’s Dinner Theatre’s “Annie”
Friday, May 29, through June 13: Longmont Theatre Company’s “Twelve Angry Men”
Friday, May 29, through Sept. 6: Heritage Square Music Hall’s “That Was Loud, This Is Now” Golden
This week’s closings
Today, May 24: Arvada Center’s “Evita”
Today, May 24: New Denver Civic’s “When We Were Fab”
Today, May 24: Heritage Square Music Hall’s “The Desperado” Golden
Today, May 24: openstage etc.’s “The Maiden’s Prayer” Fort Collins
Today, May 24: Crested Butte Mountain Theatre’s “Around the Campfire” (10-minute plays)
Saturday, May 30: Upstart Crow’s “The Seagull” Boulder
Saturday, May 30: Carousel Dinner Theatre’s “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” Fort Collins
Saturday, May 30: Adams Mystery Playhouse’s “Murder on Pirate Island”
Sunday, May 31: Backstage’s “The Syringa Tree” Breckenridge
Sunday, May 31: Fine Arts Center’s “The Music Man” Colorado Springs
Sunday, May 31: Miners Alley Playhouse’s “Move Over, Mrs. Markham” Golden
Sunday, May 31: Candlelight Dinner Playhouse’s “A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” Johnstown
Sunday, May 31: Westcliffe Players’ “The Odd Couple” (female version)
This week’s bet bet: “Joseph K”
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The LIDA Project’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.” The LIDA Project’s newest original play is dominated by a 14-foot human hamster wheel, the perfect theatrical treadmill for exploring the works of famed expressionistic sourpuss Franz Kafka.
Denver playwright Martin McGovern’s “Joseph K” is for the most part an adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial,” about a man who wakes up one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime.
But at least he’s not a bug.
Director Brian Freeland calls “Joseph K” an exploration of power, politics and paranoia. “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy,” Kafka wrote.
How do you explore paranoia on the stage? “We use a lot of shadowplay,” Freeland said. “There is constant sense of watching and lurking. Characters change before his eyes. It’s a constantly shifting world throughout the piece, both for Joseph and the audience.”
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through June 20 at The Bindery Space, 22nd and Stout streets, 720-221-3821 or
Most recent theater openings
“Altar Boyz” The new Evolution Theatre bows with the pop-music comedy about a religious boy band playing the final concert of a tour dedicated to saving the world, one screaming fan at a time. Through June 27. Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret, 16th and Arapahoe streets, 303-293-0075 or
“Around the Campfire”Crested Butte Mountain Theatre’s evening of 10-minute local plays. Through Sunday. 403 Second St., 970-349-0366 or
“The Baltimore Waltz”A woman, exhausted from caring for her terminally ill brother, dreams she is the one with the disease. She’s dragging her healthy sibling along for one last grand tour of Europe. By Paula Vogel. Through June 14. Lake Dillon Theatre, 176 Lake Dillon Drive, 970-513-9386 or
“Don’t Drink the Water” Woody Allen’s comedy about a 1960s American family accused of spying in a foreign country behind the Iron Curtain. Through June 20. Presented by the Spotlight Theatre at the John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place, 720-880-8727 or
“The Middle Ages” A.R. Gurney (“Sylvia”) asks what’s better in a midlife romance: Passion or security? Through June 20. California Actors Theatre, Twin Peaks Mall, Longmont, 303-774-1842 or
“The Odd Couple” Neil Simon’s classic comedy about two divorced men sharing an apartment, with a twist: They’re played by women. Through May 31. Westcliffe Players, 119 Main St., 719-783-3004 or
“Oklahoma!” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical about beautiful mornings, love . . . and a creepy crawler named Jud. Through June 28. Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 W. Main St., Littleton, 303-794-2787 or
“Pride and Prejudice”A fast-paced adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved classic by Jon Jory, founder of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Through June 20. Presented by Openstage & Company at the Lincoln Center, 417 W. Magnolia St., Fort Collins, 970-221-6730 or
“The Syringa Tree” Karen Slack revisits 24 characters in Pamela Giem’s powerful look at the impact of apartheid on two South African families in the 1960s. Through May 31. Backstage Theatre, 121 S. Ridge St., Breckenridge, 970-453-0199 or
Complete theater listings
Go to our complete list of in Colorado, including summaries, run dates, addresses, phones and links to every company’s home page. Or check out our listings or
And introducing … The Running Lines blog
You can now find John Moore’s roundup of daily theater news and dialogue. blogs.denverpost.com/runninglines
Re-cap: This week’s theater coverage in The Denver Post
JOHN MOORE’S COLUMNS:
A critic’s purpose: These days, it’s helping readers make hard economic choices.
“Growing Up Nuggets” Being the child of The Denver Post’s pro-basketball beat writer gave John Moore and his siblings a “knee-eye” view to every significant milestone in Denver basketball history.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
“Quilters” comes home: The most honored and enduring original work in the Denver Center’ Theatre Company’s 30-year history is now being revived to salute its local origins.
“Denver Stories.” Curious fundraiser reaps more than $50,000.
REVIEWS:
“”The Squabble” ***1/2 Original play in the mud by Buntport Theater
“Every Little Step” (film) ***1/2 Making of “A Chorus Line” documentary
“The Seagull” ** Chekhov classic at the Upstart Crow
“When We Were Fab” ** Beatles tribute at the New Denver Civic Theatre
“Oscar & Felix” *1/2 Black take on “The Odd Couple” at Shadow Theatre
AUDITIONS: Complete list, updated up to three times a week.
