With apologies to the classic film “Airplane!,” the Lone Tree Arts Center picked a perfect four years to quit sniffing glue. Oops, I mean, “producing live local theater.”

In 2019, Douglas County’s jewel of an arts center, managed by the City of Lone Tree, decided that making its own musicals from the ground up had become too expensive to justify. So instead, it focused on being what is called a “presenting” house: One that simply acts as a landlord and schedules visiting acts – mostly one-off concerts like the upcoming tribute to the music of Stephen Schwartz on Nov. 4. Very low-risk, low-cost stuff.

And with no theater shows in the works in 2020, Lone Tree missed almost all of the COVID-19 shutdown carnage that buried the Denver Center, Arvada Center and others.

“When we stopped doing live theater, it was actually pretty fortuitous for us, because if we had continued to do it during the pandemic, it would’ve decimated us, just like it did for so many others,” said Lone Tree Arts Center Executive Director Leigh Chandler.

Still, the decision ended a popular tradition that had included audience favorites like “Muscle Shoals,” the 2017 Henry Award-winning Outstanding Musical “Evita” and its final show, “Beehive,” staged in 2019.

But a funny thing happened when Lone Tree stopped producing its own shows. People stopped coming.

“We have heard very loudly and very clearly from people in the south metro area that they miss having professional performances offered here at the Lone Tree Arts Center,” said Chandler. “They don’t necessarily want to drive to Denver and have to deal with the traffic and parking that goes with that. And, quite honestly, when we stopped producing theater, there were people who stopped coming to the Lone Tree Arts Center altogether because they only came for the theatrical performances that we produced. Our patrons have told us very clearly that they wanted us to do it again.”

And so, they shall. On Thursday, Lone Tree opens “Dreamgirls,” one of the most popular musicals of all time, but one that is almost never staged in Denver because it requires a huge array of diverse artists on and off-stage. And all but four of director Kenny Moten’s 23-person cast come from the Denver area. The other four are visiting from Atlanta.

“We’re happy to showcase our local talent, and I hope that it’s a springboard for some of them to work more at other theaters in town,” Chandler said.

“Dreamgirls,” which is now (shockingly) 42 years old, follows the evolution of 1960s-70s R&B through the eyes of a Detroit girl group known as “The Dreams.” As Moten puts it: “‘Dreamgirls’ is about the pursuit of the American Dream – and the cost of that pursuit.”

It’s all the more remarkable that Lone Tree is jumping back into the theater game at a time when most every other local theater company is struggling to get back to anything close to pre-pandemic attendance numbers. Even in the best of times, live theater almost never pays for itself. It only breaks even through a combination of ticket sales, sponsors, foundations, individual donors, merchandise and, for a lucky few, support from a capital reserve. And Lone Tree has been building one of those over these past few years that it hasn’t been staging live theater.

“We’ve had a really great past few years with touring artists, and that’s why we’ve been able to build up a reserve to go back into producing,” Chandler said. “We’ll hopefully only have to use the reserve for a few years, and then we’ll be back to a more sustainable model.”

“Dreamgirls” runs only through Oct. 29, so Chandler’s model depends on getting as many people as possible into the 11 scheduled performances in its 500-seat theater.

“The design team is incredible. The set is incredible. The choreography is incredible,” Chandler said. “Everything is Broadway level.”