Bruce Sevy was the perfect human being to direct “A Christmas Carol.” And he did. A lot. He staged it every year for the Denver Center Theatre Company from 2005-14.

What made him so perfect for the job?

“It was his joy. His kindness. His understanding of the human condition. His belief in redemption. His ability to find light in the darkest situations,” said actor Leslie O’Carroll, who played Mrs. Fezziwig in those Denver Center productions.

That was Bruce Sevy the human being. Collegial, warm, friendly, funny.

“When I think of Bruce Sevy, the  first thing I think of is his heart,” the legendary actor Kathleen Brady said. “The second thing I think of his soul.”

Bruce Sevy, the theatre practitioner, however, was the perfect human being to direct new plays. That was his forte. That was his professional calling.

Sevy, to many who knew him perpetually young, died this week of cancer. He was 71.

Brady will always remember Sevy laughing at death in the back of a Jeep when they were babies.

“It was an open Jeep with no sides on it,” said Brady. “Bruce and I are riding in the back with our friend Melinda Dean driving. She goes over a big bump and we both nearly get tossed out entirely. Without missing a beat, Bruce says: ‘Nice try, Mel … but we’re still here!’”

Sevy first came to work for the Denver Center Theatre Company in 1982 when new Artistic Director Donovan Marley led a migration of more than 50 artists to Denver from the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, Calif. That group included Sevy, who was Marley’s music director at the time.

Sevy was working as the artistic director of the Tacoma Actor’s Guild in 1996 when Marley hired him to be the Denver Center’s associate artistic director for new-play development. Sevy led the new-play program from 1996-2002, when it was eliminated by budget cuts.

Sevy was quickly hired by Kent Thompson to become his associate artistic director at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival – with an emphasis on running the new-play program in Montgomery. In 2005, when Thompson was named as Marley’s replacement in Denver, Thompson quickly named Sevy his associate artistic director.

Thompson said at the time Sevy’s hiring was intended to return the DCTC’s new-play development program to national prominence Marley had achieved before the money dried up. They came to Denver as a team. It was a full-circle moment for Sevy, who was returning to a theater community that already loved him. For all the years he worked in Alabama, Sevy kept his home in Denver.

“Bruce knows the city, the culture, the artists, the company and the audience,” Thompson said at the time. “And we work so well together. I have developed such a level of trust in the work he does with new plays. I think we share the same aesthetic tastes.”

Sevy’s primary responsibility was to build back better what is now known as the nationally regarded Colorado New Play Summit, which draws playwrights, artists and media from around the country to Denver each winter to introduce developing new works.

Sevy directed many other plays during his time at the Denver Center, which ended in 2016, perhaps most notably a gutting, award-winning production of Arthur Miller’s family tragedy “All My Sons.” O’Carroll was cast as a mean neighbor in that play. She didn’t want to play the woman as mean, but Sevy helped her to understand the necessity of it.

“He made me see how flawed human beings are universal,” O’Carroll said, “and we had to show that to people.” So, mean she was.

Sevy’s other notable Denver Center productions included “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “Doubt,” “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Little Foxes,” “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “Dinner with Friends.” Most stage plays are staged once, for one company in one city. But Sevy’s popular production of “2 Pianos 4 Hands” has been seen at more than 20 theaters nationally, including at the Denver Center in 2003.

One of Sevy’s final shows as a Denver Center director was the zany 2014 musical stage adaptation of the Marx Brothers film “Animal Crackers.”

“Bruce taught me how to rehearse a song like a Shakespearean monologue,” said Geoff Kent, who was Sevy’s assistant director on that production. Connecting a skill he had with a skill he did not yet think he had is something that helped Kent to develop as a director himself.

 “That’s a skill I used for the entirety of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,’” Kent said of a musical that just recently closed at the Arvada Center. “Bruce was the first artist to tell me I could direct musicals – and I felt him over my shoulder in every rehearsal of my first one.” 

What many admirers might not know about Sevy is that he was also an actor himself. The Tony Award-winning Broadway play “Master Class,” Terrence McNally’s intense comedy-drama about opera legend Maria Callas, started out as a workshop piece in a small theater in Big Fork, Mont. The year was 1994. Sevy played Manny, the accompanist.

“It was a labor of love. Nobody got paid,” Sevy later told The Denver Post. He also helped actress Zoe Caldwell, the actor who created the Maria Callas role, learn the show’s music. Sevy later staged a workshop of the still-developing play at the Denver Center. It is now one of the most highly regarded plays in history.

“Bruce Sevy is a vital part of the history of both the PCPA and the Denver Center Theater Company,” Marley told the Denver Gazette.

The two met when Sevy auditioned for PCPA at age 18.

“His multiple gifts were immediately obvious — passion disciplined by intellect, thoughtful and honest commitment to his prose text, a flawless rendition of his Shakespeare piece, and an extraordinary musical gift revealed in his song,” Marley said.

“Bruce moved easily from student to staff. As an actor, musician and director, he distinguished himself at PCPA, and when appointed as Artistic Director of the DCTC, I persuaded Bruce to join the company. As a director, musical director and head of our new-play development program, Bruce became a vital part of the company.”

Sevy has also directed for prominent companies around the country including the Arizona Theatre Company, Cleveland Play House, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespearean Festival and many more.

After leaving the Denver Center in 2017, Sevy directed “Love Letters” at the Lone Tree Arts Center and for the first and only time for the Curious Theatre Company. Robert Schenkkan, whose “All the Way” and “The Twelve” had been staged at the Denver Center, hastily composed the play “Building the Wall” as a response to Donald Trump during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Six months later, Sevy was directing the play for its “rolling world premiere” in five U.S. cities.

But for Sevy, it always came back each November to “A Christmas Carol,” an assignment he dearly loved.

“There’s something really special about this adaptation,” Sevy said of his 2014 production. “It manages not to be just sentimental or corny. There are dark elements in the play: poverty, loneliness, death, greed, disappointment — yet the story holds out the promise that it’s never too late to make a new start.”

Sevy is survived by his husband, the playwright Chad Henry.