Storied Elitch Theatre stage no longer a ghost town
2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 14
Long-neglected stage filled its dance card with 75 days of theater, films concerts and more in 2025. That’s the most in more than 30 years.
The state of Colorado was just 15 years old when the (now Historic) Elitch Theatre opened in northwest Denver in 1891. Which means next year, when the state turns 150, Denver’s oldest and most significant cultural venue will be celebrating its 135th anniversary.
Which also means it’s now been 34 agonizing years since the theater itself, modeled after Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, has been put to any meaningful use.
Talk about a long intermission.
But 2025 might one day be remembered as the long-awaited turning point in ongoing efforts to restore the theater Mary Elitch opened after the death of a husband who set out to create a Broadway of the West. And did she ever. The Elitch Theater, built at West 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street was America’s first great summer-stock company, hosting dozens of legends like Grace Kelly, Douglas Fairbanks and Robert Redford for full summer programs.
Those really were the days, Archie. Sarah Bernhardt liked to feed the bears; the future Princess Grace rode her bike to rehearsal from her rental home at 4020 Raleigh St. Edward G. Robinson was nearly fired for looking “too swarthy” on the day he arrived in Denver.
It’s getting harder to find living witnesses to the halcyon days of the theater, which went into hibernation after its centennial celebration in 1991. That was three lonely years before the surrounding park up and moved to downtown Denver. And yet, it still stands.
Grand plans for its second act have come and gone in a regular wave of loudly unfulfilled promises – most teasingly in 2006, when ground was broken on the fancy new $14.2 million Center for American Theatre at the Historic Elitch Gardens. Obviously, that never happened.
Don’t get me wrong: A lot of people have gotten a lot done over the past 34 years just to save the shaky frame from falling into 38th Avenue. But the theater, which was never built for year-round operation, is still years (of work) and millions (of dollars) removed from ever being fully functioning.
And yet, 2025 was a quietly huge year for the Elitch Theatre supporters. Mostly because it brought people back inside in large numbers and for meaningful uses. This year, board president Greg Rowley says, the theater was open on 75 days from spring to fall for live performances, films, concerts, special events and summer camps for kids. That’s the most since 1991.
The grounds outside, which remain a natural gathering place for the neighborhood that has sprung up around it, hosted “Concerts in the Carousel,” a series of three free Sunday jam sessions under the bandshell of what used to be the ornate, yes, carousel – Hazel Miller, Sentimental Sounds and the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. “We were calling it ‘City Park Jazz’ for the west side of town,” Rowley said.
And yet, the board saved its biggest success of the year for last, announcing Dec. 5 that the primarily donation-based nonprofit is financially fit enough to sustain a part-time executive director. And, as names go, this one goes in bold: It’s Rex Fuller, until recently CEO of The Center on Colfax. His charge: To accelerate the theater’s restoration, programming expansion and community-engagement initiatives. I asked him whether his job will be to be the primary fundraiser, or to be the public face of the ongoing effort to save the theater.
“Well, probably the cheeky answer is: ‘Yes, definitely,’” he said with a laugh.
Fuller, who grew up in Northern Colorado and moved to Denver just in time to see the-second-to-last legitimate summer rep season at the Elitch Theatre in 1986, remembers seeing Cloris Leachman star in “Grandma Moses,” a play about the beloved American primitivist folk artist, and Conrad Bain, of “Diff’rent Strokes” fame, starring in a national touring production of a comedy called “Country Cops.”
“So, yeah, I saw a few things there,” he said, “but mostly I want to do this job because I have a real sentimentality for that neighborhood and an excitement for everything that’s going on. All those businesses are really thriving on Tennyson Street, and I am hoping that we can really contribute to that.”
But what made 2025 truly a standout year for the Elitch Theatre is that there were so many honest-to-God stories playing out on that storied, expansive stage again. The place is still not ready to host full runs of live theater productions. It has some fancy new bathrooms in the lobby for patrons, but the actors have to use them, too, because there aren’t any backstage. There is no permanent sound equipment or overhanging lighting grid. There is no working fly system, not to mention heating or air conditioning. The balcony is closed off for public use, so the capacity is limited to the main floor (about 650).
And yet, that stage just got its most significant workout since 1991. And that is music to Elitch-lovers’ ears. All told, about 6,000 people came into the theater in 2025, and that, Fuller said, speaks to his No. 1 goal, “and that is really just trying to re-establish regular use of the theater.” He calls that “the benchmark of stability.”
The board’s second annual “Elitch Encore Series” invited outside companies to bring in their existing plays for modified, two-night runs using skeletal production values. Last summer’s visiting shows were the Wesley Players’ “The Dining Room” (by A.R. Gurney); Vintage Theatre’s “Murderers” (by Jeffrey Hatcher), and Carole Levin and Tammy Meneghini’s developing collaboration “Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words.”
That had to be a bit meta, given the plays inclusion of passages from Shakespeare’s plays as a means of exploring her complex inner life as a powerful female ruler. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was built after Elizabeth’s reign, but her strong support for theater helped make Shakespeare’s company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, successful.
Additionally, three companies rented the Elitch Theatre for longer runs, most massively Bright Heart Stages’ intentionally lower-cased coming-of-age musical called “bare: a pop opera.” Director Bryan Bell filled the massive stage by putting 17 actors and five musicians on a gorgeous, church-themed set designed by self-starting producer Amy Warner. Lighting Designer Connor Baker turned a challenge into a strength with angled floor lighting that added a stark contrast of light and dark around the stage in a way that perfectly complemented the story’s absolutist religious themes.
Warner founded Bright Heart a year ago with a mission to produce under-appreciated musicals “and to give underserved youth – and youth in general – free access to the arts,” she said. “How can we expect an arts audience if we don’t plant that seed?”
How cool might it be if, in 40 years, some theaterlover says they saw their first musical ever when a grown woman dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl gave them a free ticket to see “bare” at the Elitch Theatre back in 2025?
Additionally, Denver playwright Mike Broemmel staged the latest in his series of one-actor historical shows, this one called “When Strawberries Bloom: The Creation of Golda Meir.”
Red Rocks Community College, whose theater department essentially acts as a community theater, staged a trippy little play called “Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play.” The story, by Anne Washburn, has survivors in a post-apocalyptic world piecing together an old episode of “The Simpsons” from memory (the one called “Cape Fear”).
That was extra fun for Elitch theatergoers because of how director Matt Zambrano staged it. For the first and third acts, the audience sat as usual in the audience. “But for the second act, they brought everyone up on stage and re-seated them there,” Rowley said. “They wanted to kind of create this interactive experience.”
Zambrano, the first recipient of a 2025 Denver Gazette True West Award back on Dec. 1, is a graduate of nearby Wheat Ridge High School. But, again, you now have to be pretty old (if not dead) to remember the Elitch Theatre first-hand. And he’s not.
“Growing up in Denver, I spent many a birthday and warm summer’s day at Elitch’s, but I don’t ever remember a time when the theater was open,” Zambrano said. “But getting to go back and work in that space that has so much history was a true gift. And having the opportunity to work on the same stage as so many incredible actors, including my personal hero, Cesar Romero, is an experience I won’t soon forget.”
Rowley said the theater also welcomed the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus along with the Denver Feminist Chorus as part of their “Leather and Lace” community concert series. And 2025 was the second year since the board moved its long-running free summer film series inside. The ‘25 lineup was “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” as well as singalong screenings of “Wicked” and “Moulin Rouge.”
The theater also offers tours that always sell out, Rowley said. “People are so excited about our history, so we are actually now creating a museum space at the theater. That’s our next priority.” Of many.
“Our biggest goals are to get water running backstage so that we can have restrooms for the actors,” he added. “We want to install rigging so it’s possible to hang lighting. And we need actual dressing rooms.”
And then there is the balcony issue. “We’re going to have to do millions of dollars of work to get that up and running,” Rowley said.
All of which will require a continuing infusion of donated support, especially without a significant revenue stream from programming or rentals yet.
“Right now, we are just really excited to finally have butts in the seats – people inside enjoying the theater,” Rowley said. “We still have a ways to go, but we’re finally at a place where, at least with some of these smaller productions, it seems to be working well.”
For more information on efforts to restore the Elitch Theatre, or to donate, go to historicelitchtheatre.org.
Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations. Email him at [email protected].
Historic Elitch Theatre Board of Directors:
• Greg Rowley, President
• Christine Bauer
• Ben Bryant
• Brian Dowling
• Roberta Hamilton-Griggs
• Rachelle Kalkofen
• Chris Miller
• Chuck Perry
• Beki Pineda
• Andy Scahill
• Jeremy Stefek
• Marna Steuart
• Phil Svoboda
More True West Awards coverage:
• This Used to Be: Where Grace Kelly lived in Denver
• 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano
• Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’
• Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact
• Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side
• Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77
• Day 6: Mirror images: Leslie O’Carroll and Olivia Wilson
• Day 7: Philip Sneed will exit Arvada Center on a high
• Day 8: Ed Reinhardt’s magic stage run ends after 27 years
• Day 9: Costume Designer Nikki Harrison
• Day 10: DU’s tech interns getting the job done
• Day 11: Husbands, wives keep home fire burning