If George Bailey had access to affordable mental-health care in 1945, good old Clarence Odbody might still be working for his wings.

That’s one of many reasons actor Chris Noth accepted an invitation to come to Denver and participate in a one-of-a-kind creative holiday exercise witnessed by a full house Wednesday in the Studio Loft Theatre above the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. The biggest being that the inviter was Jennifer McCray Rincón, Noth’s classmate back at the Yale School of Drama. It was only for a year, and it was more than 40 years ago. But it was enough to get him here.

“It’s an uncommon bond,” Noth said. “Yale Drama is a small world, so there is a kinship there.”

Rincón is the founder of Visionbox Studio, which she founded with Bill Pullman after the Denver Center for the Performing Arts shut down its highly regarded National Theatre Conservatory graduate school in 2012. Visionbox is now the only school offering graduate training in acting anywhere in Colorado.

“The idea was that you can’t have a thriving, growing, evolving theater scene without good training,” Rincón said.

She invited Noth to drop into Denver for a one-night-only staged reading of “It’s a Wonderful Life” – the radio-play version, with Noth playing the iconic George Bailey alongside 11 of Rincón’s Denver students.

“Students” is a bit of a misnomer, given that they range in age from the single digits well into their 70s, and that they include a few of the most experienced actors in the local theater community.

“When we started this, it really was about how anyone at any stage of their life could come and work with us,” Rincón said. “We’ve had such a range of young people just starting out, but also more experienced actors who just want to keep getting better.”

Her “It’s a Wonderful Life” ensemble included veterans like Dwayne Carrington, who has a list of TV and stage credits more than 40 years long, including “Jitney” at the Denver Center, “Ragtime” at BDT Stage and “King Hedley II” earlier this year at Colorado Springs’ Theatreworks. And Dell Domnik, who has been performing around town for even longer.

Rincón’s offer to work with serious, goal-oriented students took Noth back to their days at Yale, where, he said, “it was all about learning to work with professionals – and not just in an academic situation. At Yale, we did Wole Soyinka’s ‘A Play of Giants’” – a wild story about African dictators loosed upon the city of New York. ”We had professional actors coming in from New York, but we were being used as students in the rep company.”

Now, of course, Noth is the professional actor coming in from New York. He’s been a featured player in at least three huge cultural franchises over the years: “Law and Order,” “Sex and the City” and “The Good Wife.” But he is, at his core, a stage actor, with Broadway credits including ​​“That Championship Season” and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.” He studied with legendary acting teacher Sandy Meisner and played Hamlet for the intimidating Australian actor and director Zoe Caldwell. (“That was rough,” he said. “Jesus, she killed me.”)

For Rincón’s students, there’s nothing else quite like this kind of an all-in acting exercise. They worked on their characters for weeks, but with a twist. In Joe Landy’s version of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an ensemble of late 1940s actors are bringing the classic story to life on the radio, using only their words and clever sound effects.

Noth arrived in Denver on Tuesday morning. He worked with the cast for eight hours, came back for more on Wednesday morning, then performed the play that night before a full house. Something about that truncated time in the room together forces everyone to work together with an accelerated sense of purpose.

“That’s when actors – especially emerging younger actors who are just learning – have to turn thinking about technique and analysis into action,” Rincón said. “There is no more, ‘Let’s sit around and talk about it,’ There is no more time for intellectual technique or all the psychological stuff – they just have to do it. They have to make bold choices and put their training into immediate practice.

“And then, when you have Chris walk in and join them, the room just transforms. And everyone gets pulled up to the highest level.”

For Domnik, who plays the actor playing the bumbling Uncle Billy, “it was a bit intimidating at first knowing we would be working with Chris. But he became part of the ensemble right away,” he said. “You could tell how good he is by just how fast he picked it up. This was like a master class for us. And at the end of the day, I feel like all of us could stand on the same stage with him.”

For Noth, who was not paid for his participation, the joy was a return to form. “It’s always fun to meet new actors because actors know how to be around one another,” he said. “And here, I’m just another actor among actors.”

But Noth was also drawn to the role of George Bailey itself, with its complicated pathos and underlying social significance.

The story, of course, introduces George (immortalized on screen by Jimmy Stewart) as a deeply troubled and beleaguered hero. The story shows how fate and circumstance conspire to relentlessly toy with his plans and ambitions. Even as, every time, George sacrifices to help others – even canceling his honeymoon to stave off a run on the family bank.

In Noth’s unsentimental hands, it was easy to see the story in a new and even crueler light – like some sort of existential prank being played upon this unendingly decent man by callous, capricious and unseen gods. Easy to see how George could have been swallowed whole by bitterness and anger.

The man was in serious need of some Man Therapy. Which, come to think of it, is essentially what he receives from his novice angel, Clarence.

Noth donated his fee for appearing in a recent clothing campaign for a Montreal clothier called Samuelsohn, which has contributed $100,000 to Mental Health America and the Canadian Mental Health Association. Men are far more likely to die by suicide than women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, here in Denver, the first scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life” places a desperate George Bailey squarely on a snowy bridge, ready to end it all.

Taking the role, Noth said, had him thinking of his father and grandfather. “My dad came out of the Korean War very damaged, and there weren’t the resources then that are a lot more available today,” he said. “I think some of the stigma for men to seek help has been erased, but they sought solace in booze and smoking, which killed them.

“They didn’t have the tools that are out there today. Maybe that’s therapy,  but maybe it’s meditation – because mental health isn’t all just chemical depression. It’s about how to live healthily in a very stressful world – and there are many different ways to go at it.

“I got a letter from someone who saw that I was doing the Samuelsohn’s campaign, saying how hard it was just to get out of bed. And that’s part of therapy: Get out of bed and walk. Run. Get your body out in this world.  And don’t always believe your thoughts, which sometimes lead us into despair. Your mind can lead you astray. It’s a tricky thing, your mind, and how it can work against you. That’s where therapists can help, as well as friendships.”

Anyone who has followed the news about Noth knows what he’s been up against for the past two years. That’s not what he came to Denver for, and that’s not what he wanted to talk about with me. Noth did publicly address the situation – once – and his single, strong denial of any wrongdoing has been repurposed so many times and by so many news outlets, the story now makes up the first 40 pages of any Google search of his name.

I did wonder what it must be like to be 69 and to have had pretty much your entire life and career virtually erased and replaced by coverage of disputed allegations that did not lead to charges. It must have been a little like waking up in a Pottersville metaverse, with no way back to Bedford Falls.

Denver offered a two-day respite, a chance to simply immerse himself for a short time in a character and a script. Back to basics. I asked him what he might say if any of his Denver castmates ask for any career advice.

“Usually I tell people to just forget about the idea of wanting to be famous or successful,” he said. “Meisner used to say that success has nothing to do with your talent. You may get lucky, you may not, but if you follow your talent, Godspeed. As Robert Frost said, ‘Way leads onto way.’ And it snowballs.”

But make no mistake: It’s clearly not always a wonderful life.

“Acting in plays is really hard,” Noth said. “It’s suffering, I find. But you love it. It’s like climbing a mountain, every single time. And you don’t always get to the top of that mountain. But you come back to the bottom and you climb back up again. It’s work. It’s suffering.

“Life is suffering.”