There’s a reason veteran actor and director Debra Gallegos did not graduate from Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she was a student in the early 1970s.

Gallegos, who is about to begin her 50th year as a bedrock member of Denver’s Su Teatro (“Your Theatre”), was taking theater classes at Metro in 1974 while also helping Tony Garcia’s fledgling troupe, born out of the protest movement, get off the ground. Su Teatro is now the third oldest Chicano theater company in the country.

“When we were first starting, nobody thought we were going to do anything,” Gallegos said. “My theater teacher at Metro said we had to see three plays – but if we were performing in a play at Metro, we would only have to see two. So I told him that I was in a play with Su Teatro, and he said that wasn’t good enough to count. So I quit theater at Metro and I said, ‘OK, I am only going to do theater at Su Teatro.’”

Gallegos has been performing and directing at Su Teatro ever since, but she’s spread her wings far beyond, including appearances with the Denver Center’s Off-Center, Wheat Ridge Theatre Company and Firehouse Theater Company, which operates out of the John Hand Theater at Colorado Free University.

This year, Gallegos joined the Firehouse board of directors to help the company “introduce more voices and perspectives,” said Executive Producer Helen Hand. Gallegos also directed one of the most powerful plays of the year: “Charity,” the final entry in Evelina Fernandez’s “A Mexican Trilogy.” It’s about a multigenerational family grappling with the death of a son during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It also deals with sexuality, assimilation, immigration and aging grandparents. Like so many families.

“My family’s history was very similar,” said Gallegos, a Chicana who was born in the ’50s, raised in the ’60s and came of age in the ’70s. She grew up in the neighborhood that was eventually razed to make room for the Auraria campus. Gallegos’ family got out years before the wrecking ball arrived.

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“I lost a little part of me when we moved, and Su Teatro gave it back,” Gallegos said. “I know my children would not be who they are today if they did not grow up with Su Teatro in their lives.”

With “Charity,” said Hand, Firehouse audiences were introduced to a family they have never seen before – but could easily recognize.

“I think ‘Charity’ gave people the opportunity to step into the shoes of others and feel some empathy,” said Hand. “At the end of the day, the story is about universal family challenges and experiences, like the common ways families can support each other in difficult times.” 

For Gallegos, 2023 was a milestone year in a lifetime that has been full of them. In February, Su Teatro celebrated Gallegos’ career and contributions with a special reception held between two “rehearsed readings” of Garcia’s play “Ludlow: El Grito de Las Minas.” That’s a recounting of the 1914 massacre of 21 striking miners, wives and children that focuses on a New Mexican family who, having lost their ranchito during the early 1900s, were forced to migrate to Southern Colorado and work in the mines to support themselves. Gallegos played the lead role of Sara Martinez when the play premiered in 1991.

In March, Gallegos played Tia Sophia in “Espiritu Natural” (“The Natural Spirit”), a magical tale of two sisters who battle “an overpowering memory-reducing force that threatens their history, traditions and very existence.” The play moved to the Northglenn Arts Center in May.

When Gallegos brought “Charity” to Firehouse in June, she brought along many longtime Su Teatro favorites including Magally Luna, Phil Luna, David Carrasco, Cipriano Ortega and the “Super Veterana,” company anchor Yolanda Ortega. It was surely the first time hundreds of audience members were exposed to the talent that has been performing in the heart of Denver for decades at Su Teatro.

“No one exemplifies what Su Teatro is or stands for more than Debra Gallegos and Yolanda Ortega,” said Garcia. All three of those lives were forever changed when Garcia heard Gallegos and Ortega singing at a party in 1974.

“I remember being in awe of Yolanda – and fighting with Debra – from the first moment I was introduced to them,” Garcia said. “They have nurtured, cajoled, confronted and demanded members of Su Teatro to reach beyond all limitations.”

Gallegos thought of Garcia as “a big brother to all of us growing up,” she said. “We were like his muses, and in return he wrote all of these parts for us that were freaking amazing. From the beginning, Tony built this thing as a family. And through it all, we have supported each other and taken care of each other.”

Around all that storytelling, Gallegos also managed to fit in a 30-year career in public service as director of the Center for Equal Opportunity at the Colorado Department of Transit until her retirement in 2012. She was inducted into the Su Teatro Chicano Music Hall of Fame in 2014, and she remains a co-host of KUVO’s “Cancion Mexican” radio program from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays.     

“Debra is a phenomenal actor who can go to so many places,” said Hand. “As a director, we were also touched by her kindness, her humility and her interest in connecting and collaborating. We all kind of fell in love with her – which is easy to do.”

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.