The Denver Center has long been a solid source of plentiful employment for Colorado actors, though most often in jobs that are just off center stage. Local performers often secure meaningful, long-term work in the DCPA’s educational productions, such as the upcoming “Goodnight Moon,” this year’s staging targeting pre-kindergartners. They also make meaningful, long-term income performing in the company’s touring “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot” productions, which move from school to school throughout the year.

Off-Center, the company’s adventurous division that’s on the cutting edge of the emerging field of immersive theater, is presently employing a majority cast of Colorado actors for its ongoing offering of “Sweet & Lucky: Echo.”

And the actors who truly win the local employment lottery are those who are cast to perform in the Broadway division’s cabaret-sized musicals that often take up long-term residence in the Galleria Theatre. A whole fleet of Coloradans are going to have the best financial run of their professional lives when they get going on “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” opening Nov. 8 and running through at least next May 10.

And that’s not even taking into account the more than 200 who work behind the Denver Center scenes in creative and admin staff positions, or work as crafts artisans on contracts that can range anywhere from one show to an entire season.

The Denver Center never gets enough credit for all of that.    

The glass ceiling, however, has always been the perception that local actors can’t crack the vaunted Denver Center Theatre Company’s mainstage season, which opens anew for Year 46 on Sept. 19 with “The Happiest Man on Earth” in the Singleton Theatre. That’s a one-man stage memoir of one older man telling how he came of age in Nazi Germany and his escapes from three different concentration camps along the way. That will star Broadway and screen veteran Kenneth Tigar. 

But the idea that local actors never quite make it into the Center’s equivalent of the major leagues isn’t entirely true. The Denver Center’s annual staging of “A Christmas Carol” is almost entirely performed by local actors. Last season, Denver actor Marco Alberto Robinson won the leading role in Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps.” Local actors Shannan Steele, Gareth Saxe, Rodney Lizcano, Mark Rubald and Brik Berkes all were cast in various mainstage offerings.  

But it’s also true that, in general, the Denver Center looks to New York to carry the casting load. There has always been a tension between a Denver Center that is intent on hiring the very best actor available anywhere in the country (or sometimes beyond) for any given role, and those who feel there should always be more Denver in the Denver Center. In the end, the Denver Center is going to hire whoever it believes is the best actor for the job, regardless of what city they rest their pillow. That means that, other than understudy assignments, meaningful opportunities for local actors, most often, are going to be the exception.

So when welcome casting news comes like it did Wednesday, it’s a good day for everyone involved.

The news: Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” the second opening of the upcoming season, will bring the long-awaited (official) Denver Center Theatre Company debut of 81-year-old local legend Jim Hunt, who was part of the original Arvada Center core acting company back in 1975.

Hunt, who most recently played a halfway house pedophile in Curious Theatre Company’s Henry Award-winning best play, “Downstate,” will play Reverend Tooker. And Lawrence Hecht, once DCPA Education’s Head of Acting, is coming back to Colorado to play none other than Big Daddy himself. Hecht last performed for the DCPA in “Twelfth Night” in 2019. Leslie Alexander, another former company regular, will be back to play Big Mama.

Also: Noelia Antweiler, who just crushed it playing a weary new mother in Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s “Cry It Out,” will play Margaret. Rubald, who was a fixture with the DCTC from 1992-2006, returned last year for two small roles in “Hamlet.” Here, he will play Doctor Baugh. Lenne Klingaman, who starred in the Denver Center’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Appoggiatura” before tackling a female Hamlet for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, will play Mae.

For those of us whose hearts swell when we see casting that truly connects the audience with the community and its past, it is indescribably heartening to see Hunt break through at age 81.

Back in 2009, Hunt understudied three roles in “The Voysey Inheritance,” “and mercifully never had to go on to do any of them,” said Hunt, who long ago worked closely with Hecht on an Denver Center educational program called “Living History.”

“I couldn’t be more excited about being cast in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” said Hunt. “I have been so close to the action there for so long that I just feel like I’ve been a part of this organization from way back.”

Hunt says he has no regrets “about what I didn’t do for 60 years,” but he did have his chance to play Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Boulder’s Nomad Playhouse back in 1970, when he was 27 years old. “The people doing the props were having trouble finding a cast for my leg, so I finally just went to a doctor and asked him to put a real cast on,” Hunt said. “I had that thing on for the whole length of the run – but it sure made me feel like Brick.

 “I’m just excited to be with all these people and to finally be on that Denver Center stage. Nothing but happy about all of it.”

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” opens Oct. 3 and runs through Nov. 2 in the Kilstrom Theatre. The director is Chris Coleman. Casting by Grady Soapes, CSA. Ticket information at denvercenter.org.