Curious Theatre Company, one of Colorado’s most established, accomplished and respected arts organizations for more than a quarter of a century, is in an existential financial crisis that Artistic Director Jada Suzanne Dixon likens to a trapeze artist walking on a high wire placed between two high-rise buildings.

“And when you are out on that wire,” Dixon said, “you either have to move forward, or you have to move backward – because the alternative is falling.”

Dixon is moving forward, she said, because the alternative is death for the company that has challenged, provoked, entertained and changed audiences for 26 years.

“We are very much in survival mode,” Dixon said.

On March 1, Dixon and Managing Director Jeannene Bragg took the extraordinary step of launching a public emergency giving campaign that must raise $250,000 by July – or (possibly) else.

For anyone who has watched innumerable instances of transformative, often Broadway-quality storytelling at Curious, what “else” might mean is utterly unfathomable. And yet, here we are.

“I would really hate to say that if we can’t do it that we’re closing our doors,” Dixon said. “But we are at risk.”

Curious has not been at all immune to the aftereffects of the pandemic that most arts organizations are experiencing both locally and nationally, Dixon said. Starting with a drop in attendance that the New York-based Theatre Communications Group estimates at 59 percent nationwide when comparing 2022 to 2018. (Dixon puts Curious’ percentage at about 15.)

“But for Curious specifically,” she added, “that also includes rising costs, materials and labor, and significant drops in subscriptions, ticket sales and donations.”

On top of that is the 100-year-old yoke that threatens to break the company’s back: The beloved former church at 1080 Acoma St. that has become fully tied to Curious’ identity – and is now falling apart.

“We are in a unique position where our biggest asset is also our biggest liability,” said Dixon.

When the world shut down in March 2023, experts predicted that anywhere from 33% to 50% of all nonprofits might dry up and blow away by the end of the year – a doomsday scenario that did not manifest at the time because of a massive if temporary infusion of federal, state and individual support that is now long gone.

Most at risk were not the tiniest itinerant companies with the fewest resources – they could just go dormant for a time. Rather, it was established companies with expensive buildings to continue to pay for and maintain with no significant revenue coming in for 18 months. Companies like Curious.

Dixon said the five-year average cost to simply pay for and maintain the Acoma Center building comes to $9,500 a month. Just to turn the lights on.

After recent, hugely expensive efforts to replace the roof and boiler, “that building still has some really critical maintenance issues that need some attention,” Dixon said. “There are some structural issues with the building. There are some masonry repairs that need to be done. The basement has some water leaking in. And we’ve got some window repairs throughout the building that are critical and need to happen.”

All of which has put Curious in a position of asking some unprecedented questions. Like: Will it survive to produce the 27th season it just announced? Is it prepared to walk away from its anchor theater, shed the burden of building ownership and become, like most other Colorado theater troupes, a company that performs as a tenant on other peoples’ stages?

“Oh, those are such hard questions,” Dixon said. With a simple answer to both: Maybe.

“I can tell you that our company of artists is super passionate about keeping this building,” said Dixon, who declined to say how much the recovery campaign has raised in its first three weeks but to say that “it is going … and it is going slowly.”  She did say that her artistic company, which is made up of 25 directors, playwrights and designers, already has kicked in $6,000 of its own money to the cause.

“That’s the soul of our organization – and that they are willing as artists to do that says a lot,” she said. Dixon and Bragg took voluntary pay cuts, which is a little like taking shells off of peanuts. She drew the line at asking her part-time staff of eight to also take cuts from their already meager stipends.

“Nobody’s rolling in the dough in the world of theater,” Dixon said. “We’re here because we’re passionate, and we care about the power of art.”

But if this recovery effort does not succeed, she added with remarkable transparency, “Everything is a possibility.” Including “selling the building to get out from under it,” Dixon said of a move that, ironically, would give the company permanent financial stability going forward.

Curious bought the Acoma Center from real-estate magnate and company booster Mickey Zeppelin back in 2007 for just $800,000, which even at that time was 34 percent below market value. No telling how much the property would fetch in 2024, even if only to scrape it.

Does that mean we could actually see Curious open next season as a tenant of, say, the Wolf Theatre at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center?

“What you are really asking is this: ‘Is Curious Theater Company only this building and what exists within it?’” Dixon said. “That is a really hard question to dissect because, on one hand, you could absolutely argue that there is a vibe, an energy, an aesthetic that we have become known for that is directly linked to what happens in this building.

“And on the other hand, I wonder: ‘Can’t that same energy, aesthetic and vibe be created elsewhere if we are an organization that stays connected to our mission and values? And I don’t know the answer to that yet. But the question, ‘Are we willing to walk away from this building?’ is absolutely on the table. That question feels really scary to me, and I would hope the answer is no. But I am honestly not sure today because there are other possibilities.”

Dixon was named Curious’ second artistic director in May 2022 following the retirement of co-founder Chip Walton. It was a historic appointment that made Dixon the first woman of color to serve as artistic director of any Denver metro theater company she did not found. Dixon was later named the True West Awards’ 2022 Theatre Person of the Year in Colorado.

As a mid-sized professional theater company, Curious has few peers in the Colorado theater ecology. And for many years, it had few peers in fundraising.

Curious has grown steadily over the decades in large part because of big-time, high-profile donors such as Steamboat Springs’ Jim Steinberg, director of the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; and Jeremy Shamos, an attorney for Goodson Todman Productions who eventually became its CEO. Steinberg remains on Curious’ board of directors and Shamos is its “honorary lifetime president” – but the good old days of blank checks are past.

“If I had my dream, and money were not an issue,” Dixon said, “we would produce one more season, close our doors for a little bit of time, revamp this building, have it meet all the necessary city and state requirements – and then we would reopen with a huge gala. But I don’t know if that is going to be a possibility.”

Public life-or-death appeals are risky business for nonprofits. When the Shadow Theatre Company was in a financial freefall in the late 2000s, founder Jeffrey Nickelson refused to go public because he believed that admitting to financial instability would give the company a permanent identity of weakness. Instead, Nickelson abruptly resigned, died three months later, and, the following year, his company was evicted and folded.

In 2017, Regan Linton assumed the artistic directorship of Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company specifically to rescue it from financial disaster. It, too, faced an immediate $250,000 shortfall. Linton issued an uncommonly forthright public statement bluntly telling supporters that without an urgent cash infusion, Phamaly would be bankrupt within three months. That campaign met its goal within 17 days.

Dixon said she thoroughly debated the pros and cons of going public. “It feels scary to put ourselves out on the limb a little bit,” she said. “Are people going to see this as a sign of failure?” But she eventually came to the same conclusion as Linton.

“We owe it to tell the people who have supported us all these years honestly and transparently that this is where we’re at, and we need you, because our future is not on stable ground. Because if we were to close, and people say, ‘Oh my God, I had no idea,’ that’s not fair to them.”

Dixon’s message to anyone with an interest in helping to save Curious is simple: “We need you now more than ever. Every dollar matters.”

Another way to support the cause is to simply buy a ticket to a show. Curious is presently presenting a new play called “Cost of Living” in partnership with Phamaly – the company Linton brought back from the same brink. Martyna Majok’s play (running through April 20) made history last year as the first Broadway play to feature two leading characters with disabilities.

It’s a play like no one has ever seen before – which is what live theater does: It asks you to imagine an unfamiliar world.

Now, imagine a world without Curious Theatre in it. It’s not a pretty sight.