Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre’s trustees in Grand Lake have been in a flurry all spring — they are every spring, actually.
It’s the usual chores trustees of any board might take care of: raising money, setting priorities, raising more money, voting on budgets, raising yet more money and working with management. And then there are the cabins that need cleaning.
That’s not a task people usually associate with boards, but these trustees adopt the cabins where the company’s performers will live for the summer. “My cabin is number six,” says Bob Scott. “I never give up cabin number six.
Nothing says love like cleaning the toilets for them.” Scott and the other hands-on, down-to-earth trustees also fill refrigerators with food for the newly arrived young artists, invite them for dinner, and sign on for everything from ushering to sweeping backstage.
Here, that theory comes to life. “Grand Lake’s year-round population is 450; winters can be brutal,” says Susan Sidell Brandt, vice president of the board of trustees. “But when spring comes and these kids arrive, literally within days they put on the first show. It breathes life into the town, economically and artistically.” The trustees’ pride in their new $5.2 million, 11,000-square-foot facility, and the elite quality of the shows performed here, is hard to escape. “The caliber of what we’re doing is professional,” says Brandt. “Most of our actors have graduated with degrees in theater or are pursuing a master’s in theater, and our artistic director, Michael Querio, is a magnet for excellence.”
Actors in Residence
The 20 or so actors win their places in the company through brutal auditions in Chicago, Memphis and St. Louis. Querio selects each summer’s troupe from about 1,200 competing for the spots, all hoping to come to Grand Lake for a summer of hard work, both on stage and backstage. Usually there are a handful of returning players, and actors may come back for five to eight years. Theatergoers, too, come back year after year, sometimes for decades. And the performances are knockouts.
“It’s magical,” says Lisa Jenkins, executive director of the Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce. “I love the Repertory Theatre, and it is a strong economic driving force in the community. When they can come close to selling out every performance, that’s not bad for our community.” Some of the 46-year-old theater’s alumni have gone on to careers on Broadway.
A few have been lucky enough to stay in Grand Lake: Clare Arena and Scott Haden, for instance, met here as actors, fell in love and married. She’s now the company director and director of the Repertory Theatre’s youth workshops; he’s managing director. “At the end of each season, when we have the going-away party, there’s not a dry eye,” says Brandt. “We don’t know if we’ll ever see these kids again. We hope we’ve given to them a foundation for fulfilling their dreams.”
The actors are the stars of this mountain town. James remembers golden midsummer days when, after the players had rehearsed all the shows and knew their lines, there might be 15 of them pool side at Grand Lake Lodge or heading up to the Grand Lake golf course. The Repertory Theatre’s national reputation for excellence lures actors, but its spectacular setting at the western gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park is another bait. They don’t need a car for this summer home:
Their cabins are an easy stroll from the theater and the rest of the town including its wildlife, another star attraction in Grand Lake. The surrounding area is home to nearly half the state’s estimated population of 1,200 moose; it’s common the see moose grazing near town and even ambling down its streets.
They can also boat and fish on Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Lake; they can hike and ride mountain bikes or horses on the trails; and they can white-water raft on Clear Creek and the Arkansas and Colorado rivers. In town, there are restaurants, bowling, tennis, miniature golf and, of course, theater.
Behind all that there’s the encompassing love and support this little community gives its summer celebrities. “We let them know that we love them,” says Scott. “We tell them, ‘We loved you before you got here and we love you even more now that you’re here.’” Locals and visitors alike especially love seeing the actors in costume — pirates, princesses, gangsters and showgirls — on those days when they’re on the sidewalks or in the park handing out flyers for the next show or perhaps just taking a break from a dress rehearsal to grab a hamburger.
“People treat them like rock stars,” says Brandt. “We want them to feel like we can’t do enough for them, and they feel that back.”
Variety on Stage
The “repertory” in Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre means the company performs several
plays in rotation. Querio auditions actors who not only have perfect timing for the summer’s musical comedy but also can sing and dance in a different role in a different musical.
The same actors perform in all three productions, staged on various nights at the height of the summer. Repertory actors joke that they know which play they’re in on any given night by which costume has been set out for them. They come to town in late May and immediately set to work getting the first production
This year “Jekyll & Hyde” opens a week after “Anything Goes” opens, and “The Drowsy Chaperone” two weeks after that. The company juggles those three shows throughout the rest of the summer. That leaves the fourth play of this season, “The Marvelous Wonderettes,” running solo in September. The company always schedules a family-friendly hit. James, who spent his summers growing up in Grand Lake, remembers “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Gypsy” and “The Sound of Music.” Now his own children have seen “Shrek,” “Horton Hears a Who” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
There’s also always an edgier show in the lineup. This year’s musical, “Jekyll & Hyde,” delves into its hero’s dark side. Last year’s “Chess” was about a Cold War Soviet chess champion’s love affair with an American. “By the end of the summer it was maybe my all-time favorite,” Scott says of the quirky musical tragedy. This summer’s calendar shows 62 performances from June 15 through the end of August then 16 more in September.
There are also a handful of special offerings, including the popular youth workshop productions. The young actors don’t just sign up for being on stage. They teach in the theater’s youth workshops, which includes local kids and the children of summer residents, who boost the town’s population tenfold.
As idyllic as Grand Lake is (and that’s despite the beetle-killed pines that scar many slopes), no one disputes its isolation. Scott pointed out that it’s 90 miles in any direction before you come to another good-sized town.
The workshops have changed individual young people’s lives. “As a result of the workshops, we’ve had a number of kids go on to college and study theater,” says Brandt. “We think that’s noteworthy, partly because we live in the most rural county in Colorado.” The young teachers lead exercises in self-confidence.
Community Supported
They say love is its own reward, but the Repertory Theatre’s supporters say it’s more than that. “Anything I ever did for the theater I did for selfish reasons,” says Scott. “It’s because I wanted the theater in Grand Lake.”
James, still sounding like a lodge owner, explains that the Theatre brings visitors who don’t only spend money on their theater ticket. “People maybe drive up from Estes Park for dinner and a show. Sometimes they spend the night.”
In years past, fans in the know advised friends to buy tickets early for the Repertory Theatre’s shows, since they sold out fast. It got so bad that the theater, which performed in the old Grand Lake community house, was turning away about 80 disappointed would-be theatergoers every night.
That got the trustees thinking where they could build a bigger theater building. They knew it had to be in Grand Lake, home to the Repertory Theatre (except for a brief interlude in Colorado Springs) since its beginning in 1966. They began talking about what a new building might look like, how much it might it cost and how much money they might be able to raise.
The site the trustees set their hearts on was a prime piece of Grand Lake real estate, on the corner of Grand Avenue and Vine Street. Grand Lake’s historic Smith-Eslick Cottage Court motel, the oldest automobile motel in the country, had stood there since 1911.
Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre bought the property and then sold the moldering but historically significant motel to the Grand Lake Area Historical Society. The historical society moved the old motel to a nearby site. (A number of the theater’s trustees are also on the board of the historical society and are dedicated to saving the old motel building.)
Then the Repertory Theatre trustees got started. “We didn’t take out a loan,” says Scott. “We said we would not break ground until we had the money to pay for it.” The money began coming in right away, however, with an anonymous donor giving $720,000. “We had thousands of donations, running the gamut from kids with piggy banks to a million dollars,” says Brandt.
“We no sooner got started then the economy went south. We could have said this isn’t the time; if that thought was out there for a millisecond, I’d be surprised.” “The way all of this worked is like a miracle out of the Scriptures,” says Scott, never one to soft pedal a good thing.
Trustees especially praise Judy Jensen, who served as president of the board and chaired the Raise the Curtain Capital Campaign; Chad Scott, former managing director and also the campaign manager; and Carol Wolff, the theater’s executive director. James notes that they’re still fundraising, this time for a capital reserve fund that will cover the theater’s maintenance for its next four decades. They won’t need to move again, however. “We did what it takes to make this happen,” James says. “It’s unbelievable.”
Kristen Hannum is a Colorado native who remembers the glory days of Hidden Valley (Ski Estes Park) just over the pass from Grand Lake. She is now a freelance writer living in southeast Denver. This is her second article for Colorado Country Life.