There are some tried and true ways to deepen a relationship to a theater. The simplest is to become a subscriber, the equivalent of being a season ticket holder in sports. Cherye Gilmore became an annual patron to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts thanks to a happy convergence. It began when she was studying guitar, and her North High School band teacher took the class see the movie “The Sound of Music.”
“For some reason, that triggered something in me,” she recounted during a phone call. “I would never have gone. Nobody was taking me to ‘The Sound of Music,’ you know? And he took us, and that triggered something.”
Around the same time, her grandmother, who also played music, started taking Gilmore to the theater. “When I graduated, she gave me a pair of season tickets for us could go together. Eventually, they were just mine. And that’s how it all started.”
That was in the 1980s. With only a couple of breaks, Gilmore has been a season ticket subscriber at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts ever since.
With its marketing muscle, the Denver Center — both its Broadway and its theater company arms — have made a fine art of building and sustaining its subscription base. That means guaranteed seats, exchange flexibility, and discounts for friends and family, and, for the Broadway division, access to the hot national tour that isn’t part of the season package. Think this fall’s “Hamilton” and next spring’s “Mean Girls.”
The bond between the DCPA and its faithful is among the reasons the premiere arts organization has seemingly rebuffed national trends and continues to rebound from the existential crisis of the pandemic. So touting the joys of the Denver Center season might be a little like preaching to the converted.
But the theater-sustaining power of the season subscription isn’t — and shouldn’t be — the sole purview of one of the region’s biggest arts institutions. The bond a subscription creates between theatergoers and the area’s smaller theaters comes with its own special qualities.
Some tangibles are obvious: time commitment, cost, a comfortable playhouse. Others, to return to the sports vernacular, are shaped by the intangibles: the camaraderie between the audience and the theater-makers.
“Our patrons are just so unique, Boulder’s a very academic place. And so, you have a lot of intellectuals that are just, they just crave this, you know, when we have new readings, new readings, it impacts the house,” said Mark Ragan, managing director of the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company. “I think we are so lucky,” he adds. “… we are so blessed at BETC because our patrons are the most loyal, wonderful, dedicated, trusting people that I’ve seen in my years of working in the theater.”
Ragan’s not alone in his affection for patrons.
“Subscribers are our super fans,” said Len Matheo, producing artistic director of Miners Alley Performing Arts Center. “They’re always there for us, through thick and thin, and we love taking care of them with our subscription packages.”
Because season subscription offers often kick-off as the current season is winding down, the revenue from those packages “brings in a big jolt of income at a time when we usually need it,” Matheo said in an email. Last week, the theater announced its 2025 season, which begins in January.
“It also helps us sell the first two weeks of a production, which can be a challenge, especially if the show is not as well-known. When you give customers a way to participate on a regular basis, you’re building community around your art!”
Looking to deepen your arts and entertainment experiences? Here are five theater companies whose artistic choices, craft and subscriptions may prove habit-forming.
The Curious Theatre Company
One expects the team at the daring company to import the goods from off-off Broadway to its digs in a former church in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood. The 2024-25 season is rife with regional premieres and a bonus world premiere. Among the playwrights whose reputations keep trending upward: Dominique Morriseau, whose “Confederates” opens in November, and
Samuel D. Hunter (author of “The Whale”), whose “A Case for the Existence of God” opens in early 2025. Actor-playwright Regina Taylor’s “Exhibit” will have its world premiere in late spring.
Tangibles: This year’s season offers a four-pack of shows, starting with Selina Fellinger’s all-female political comedy “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” one of the most produced shows currently in U.S. theaters. Patrons opting for the five-show package have first dibs on Taylor’s one-woman show, which was last year’s recipient of Theatre Aspen’s Solo Flights Project Advancement Fund.
Intangibles: The company’s stated motto? “No Guts, No Story.” Yes, producing deeply engaging theater takes intestinal fortitude. What that looks like onstage comes by way of a heady mix of searing dramas and deft and timely comedies that often pose questions about who we are: to our families, our nation, each other. It also takes ducats. Single ticket sales are a wonderful measure of programming, but not the only. It is subscriptions that enable the work and the risks year-in, year-out. What’s the return on that investment? The center-staging of some of the most incisive and insightful playwrights the nation has to offer.
The Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma St. 303-623-0524 and curioustheatre.org.
Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company
Season 19 will launch in late September in … wait for it … Denver when Henrik Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” — adapted by Ragan — opens at Denver Savoy Ballroom. The show will open at the Dairy Arts Center in November. Not unlike last month’s searing remount of “Grounded” — which plunged into the moral issues stirred by drone warfare — the Ibsen play engages contemporary concerns.
“It holds up a mirror to our society today,” said Ragan. “Even though it was written in 1882, it’s breathtakingly similar to what we’re going through as a country with polarization, misinformation, the rise of demagoguery. All of that’s in the play.”
Tangibles: A great value for the quality, BETC’s five-play package costs $180 and includes discounts for special productions. Recently, the company created a new tier of commitment: The Director’s Circle is an opportunity for a BETC lover to see the works, of course, but also get the perks of being a sustaining patron: special webinars with the creatives, drinks at the Dairy’s bar, a pre-season dinner with Ragan and artistic director Jessica Robblee and more.
Intangibles: The abiding affection between the company and its patrons is palpable once you walk into BETC’s home at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder or, on occasion, attend shows mounted at the Savoy in Denver. And not just because Ragan often stands in the corner of the theater personally greeting patrons as they head for their seats. Having taken the reins of the company in 2023, Ragan and Robblee have carried on a tradition of expertly produced, intellectually stimulating, engagingly performed work that invites and rewards a theatergoer’s fealty.
Betc.org.
The Catamounts
For years now, this Boulder-based company has been calling its most financially devoted fans Fat Cats. That moniker should give you an inkling that this company doesn’t mind winking. The Catamounts are playfully smart. Or smartly playful? Case in point, their current immersive show “After the End” about the search for a lost book runs, or rather ambles through, the Anythink Library in Thornton until Sept. 14.
Tangibles: The company is a week out from officially announcing its new season but expect a continuation of their civic collaborations with another Colorado history-infused work, this one unfolding in Westminster. They’ll produce a show at the Dairy Arts Center in the fall and in the new year, guests are invited to a FEED, their signature mix of a communal gathering of food, libations and performance.
Intangibles: No matter how one characterizes them, the plays, musicals and immersive experiences of this troupe based in Boulder but showing up in far-flung burgs like Westminster, Thornton or Greenwood Village will likely tickle, warm or charm you. And like the good experimenters they are, the Cats will also make you wonder about the elasticity and possibilities of the very term “theater.”
thecatamounts.org.
Local Theater Company
The Boulder-based outfit dedicated to developing new work has had a string of impressive, home-nurtured productions: GerRee Hinshaw’s solo show “Raised on Ronstadt”, the aching, Phish-inspired joyride “You Enjoy Myself,” and the blisteringly amusing and uncomfortably resonant housing parable “237 Virginia Avenue” come to mind. Earlier this month, the new season launched with a grand experiment: “We the People: The Democracy Cycle,” invited the denizens of three different cities, along with three playwrights, to craft a short play about the pressing concerns of their community.
Tangibles: Although the three, one-night engagements of “The Democracy Cycle” ended earlier this month, the rest of the season is vintage Local, starting with a production of “Stockade” in late September. Written by Andrew Rosendorf with Carlyn Aquiline, the post-WWII, early Cold-War drama focuses on the repercussions of the so-called Lavender Scare, a period of suspicion that presaged the dismissal of LBGTQ soldiers and persecution of those who went on to work in the government. Commissioned by the company, the play received a stage reading during spring’s Local Lab. So did Michelle Tyrene Johnson’s often hilarious comedy “Chasing Breadcrumbs,” set to open in February. The tiered packages are clearly defined on the Local website and, no matter which tier you opt for, they are a bargain.
Intangibles: Subscriptions help budget one’s entertainment dollars and nail down one’s calendar, but purchasing them can also reflect a deeper commitment to art, to artists, and to the culture more broadly. Co-artistic director Nick Chase described the company’s community of subscribers as “theatergoers who are interested not only in the content of a specific play, but the artistry and value system of a theater company as a whole.”
Localtheaterco.org.
Miners Alley
Goodbye Playhouse. Hello, gorgeous performing arts center. For years, Golden’s tenacious theater company peddled its enjoyable wares off the town’s main drag. With the winds of true municipal commitment at its back, it took over the town’s go-to hardware store space, rebuilt it as a theater-education complex and opened a new home with terrific sightlines, a welcoming lobby and Matheo’s local community-savvy programming.
Tangibles: The season doesn’t launch until January. So now is the perfect time to check out the subscriptions that come in a variety of packages.
Intangibles: Sitting in the raked auditorium, enjoying the story unfolding before you (the final mainstage show of the 2024 season, “School of Rock” plays through Sept. 24), it’s easy to forget how much goes into making all that happen, emotionally and fiscally. One of the great things about Miners Alley is that it’s an Actors Equity Union Theatre. This means it’s not only dedicated to putting on a show but is also committed to helping its theater-makers put food on their tables.
100 Miner’s Alley, Golden. 303-935-3044. Minersalley.com
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-area freelancer specializing in film and theater.
