For the past decade, I’ve had a clandestine friendship with a tart-tongued Scot named Isabelle Clark. It began just after I left The Denver Post following 12 years as theater critic. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts had just hired me to join the staff working as an in-house journalist covering the local theater community for the DCPA’s new online News Center. It was an unprecedented journalism mission – kind of like the Denver Broncos hiring away the Post’s beat writer to cover all local football.

Isabelle, who was a DCPA Trustee at the time, was intrigued by my addition to the team, so she arranged a lunch. Then another. She loved to gab about theater, journalism and life – and the heroes and fools who populated them all. She became my friend over years of three-hour lunches filled with snark, belly laughs and arguing over local theater productions.

Isabelle was a widow, a philanthropist and CFO of Kennith Clark Associates, her late husband’s architecture firm. And she loved the theater. Even more so “the making of theater.” She loved attending rehearsals as much as the performances themselves. She supported a swath of local companies including the DCPA Theatre Company, Curious Theatre, Arvada Center, Butterfly Effect, Local Theater Company, Miners Alley Playhouse and Central City Opera.

Yesterday, I learned that Isabelle died Sunday (Oct. 27) after a brief illness, which seems impossible given that I just saw her devilish grin at the Oct. 7 opening of the DCPA Theatre Company’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” It was in her British blood to love Shakespeare – unless you messed with the text. (And if you did, God help you.) For years, Isabelle financially sponsored all of the DCPA Theatre Company’s Shakespeare productions. “I was a little bit of a Shakespeare hound,” she told me.

We took our friendship to the next level in 2016 when Isabelle casually asked at lunch if I had any news – and I did. I told her a play I had written called “Waiting for Obama” had been chosen for a featured slot at the New York Fringe Festival. Then I ordered dessert. Later, as we were saying goodbye, she flatly said to me: “You really have no idea how to ask for money, do you?”

She then asked my blank face just how much money I was going to have to raise to actually produce this play in New York (with an all-Colorado cast and crew). I told her $30,000, which we were going to raise through crowdsourcing. So?

Without my even asking (because it truly had not occurred to me), Isabelle offered up a dollar figure. “Now, here’s what is going to happen,” she said. “I’m going to give a party and invite some friends over to my house. Your cast is going to perform a scene or two in my basement, and then you are going to have the rest of the money you need to take your play to New York.”

And it happened just as she said it would. Without even reading the script.

Isabelle was a huge proponent of emerging artists. When the Denver Center had a three-year master’s program called the National Theatre Conservatory, she was its champion, and the students’ best friend. She would host a big luncheon each year welcoming the newest class of eight. Faculty member Sabin Epstein says Clark joined the class most every Friday, when students could get feedback on short scenes they were working on.

“She served as a surrogate mother of sorts by hosting dinners, offering support and befriending each class over their three years in Denver,” said Suzanne Yoe, the DCPA’s Director of Communications.

Epstein remembers the sad day in 2010 when students learned that the Conservatory would be closing. Clark showed up to check in on the students – and she brought a case of beer. “We gave Isabelle an honorary master’s degree from the NTC for her support and devotion to the program,” Epstein said.

In October 2019, when Epstein launched a tiny new venture called Public Domain – a theater company that would stage obscure, royalty-free works – Isabelle did more than fund its humble debut performances in the back rehearsal room at Curious Theatre. She handed out cookies, delivered the opening curtain speech and helped stack chairs afterward.

When it came to theater, Isabelle knew her stuff. “I used to listen to her talk and then go home and look up the words,” said June Travis, her friend, traveling buddy and, for a time, fellow DCPA Trustee.

Isabelle knew what she liked. More important, she knew what she didn’t like. I heard her say, “That’s three hours of my life I’m never getting back!” as often as I heard her say, “Hello!”

“The trait I most admired about her is that she was very outspoken – and you always knew where you stood with her,” said Travis. Actor Jim Hunt said Isabelle was one of the few people who could walk up to him and look him in the face and say, “I saw you in that play and I really didn’t care for it.” And Hunt would just laugh “because she was a dear friend – and she was just so honest – and she was usually right,” he said.

Isabelle Hood was born on Aug. 24 – I never could get her to tell me the year. On her most recent birthday, she texted me: “I’ve decided that age is just a number – and mine is unlisted!”

She grew up in a family that saw as much theater as possible. She earned a master’s degree in French, English and History of Fine Arts from the University of Glasgow and then worked as Executive Assistant to the Principal of Edinburgh College of Arts.

She came to the U.S. with her husband around 1992 for his work, and she was surprised to discover that the Denver theater scene rivaled the West End.

“Being a Brit, one of the first things that caught my eye was the red double-decker bus on the 16th Street Mall where DCPA tickets were being sold,” she told me in 2018. “That very night, we saw ‘The Scarlet Letter’ there.”

Kennith Clark died in 2001 – his funeral was held on the very day of the Sept. 11 attacks. Isabelle channeled her grief into full-fledged support of all the DCPA’s programs, especially those on the education side. She joined the board of directors in 2007 and served until her retirement earlier this year. In 2018, she made a donation to the renovation of the DCPA Theatre Company’s four theaters, and now a section of the Kilstrom Theatre (formerly The Space) is named in memory of her husband.

“All these years later, I am so very proud to be a small part of this Tony-winning Theatre Company,” Clark said at the time. Outgoing Chairman Martin Semple observed today that Isabelle “helped the DCPA become a leader in new-play development, a place to foster aspiring theater artists, and a world-class venue in which to produce the best in live theater.”

I’ll miss the texts, the emails, the phone calls and those long lunches. When my job was eliminated by the pandemic, Isabelle was the first person to reach out. When she found out I was in the hospital last year, she found me. Her deep pockets were, to me, the least interesting thing about her.

To cite Shakespeare’s words being spoken each night right now in the theater with a section that bears her husband’s name: “Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.” – ”Much Ado About Nothing”

The life of Isabelle Clark will be celebrated at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24, in the Randy Weeks Conservatory Theatre in the Denver Center’s theater education building at 1101 13th St., Denver, 80203. An advance RSVP is required in order to enter the building.