Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are sad to announce that the fall production of the 2024 season, The Mountaintop, is indefinitely postponed, and all tickets will be refunded. We are taking a pause to regroup, fundraise, and plan programming for the 2025 season. If you would like to donate your ticket purchase, you can donate here at the theatre’s website.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you at the theatre in 2025!

With gratitude,
Cherry Creek Theatre Board of Directors

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The Heartbeat of the Sun invites us to share in these and so many more moments within the lasting friendship between Althea and Bea. As only theatre can, we are able to spend time with these two as their past selves and their present ones concurrently. This theatrical convention of concurrent time beams with inviting rays of discovery.

In the moments of origin, the rays lead the playwright from inspiration into language and plot’s beginning, middle and end. From there the beams lead to rehearsal and design necessitating stage management. Ultimately, the diversity of these rays beams brightest when their shine and glow allow you, the audience, to bask in the company and situations of the characters. This play further provides you with the opportunity to, perhaps (hopefully), see yourself and your friendships through the ever-changing rays of time, place, and circumstance.

This Sun beams all the brighter from the work and artistry of Jessica Robblee, Mark Collins, Troy Lakey, Ryan Omar Stack, and Christopher Robin Donaldson. This Sun sings, too, thanks to Susan Draus. Additional appreciation to Susie Snodgrass, David Petzinger, American Dog, Aspen Academy, and to the audiences who joined us for the staged readings of this (or any other new) play in development.

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Cherry Creek Theatre is trying something ambitious. The company has struggled financially, post-COVID, but this weekend it launches the world premiere of local playwright Melissa Lucero McCarl’s latest work, “Heartbeat of the Sun.” The play is a poignant and witty exploration of the enduring friendship between two women who have spent a lifetime in the theater.

The post Decades of friendship, on stage and off, dramatized in new work at Cherry Creek Theatre appeared first on Cherry Creek Theatre.

Cut to a few years later when I’m taking a week-long workshop with the celebrated playwright Sarah Ruhl. Through the first exercise she had us do, I discovered the characters of Bea and Althea and immediately realized that I had begun writing the play for Billie and Anne.

It is my love letter to the theatre and to the journeyman (or journeywoman) actors who beat the pavement year after year to earn roles that will make us feel something and enable us to leave the theatre in a vastly different state than when we entered it.

I think few civilians understand the sacrifices involved in such a life. It is not a life of celebrity or financial abundance—these folks are not household names. It is a life in service to an ancient craft. One which seeks to entertain, to enlighten, to enroll, to challenge, and ultimately invites us to emote together in the womb-like atmosphere of a darkened theater. And in the rare instance when all the puzzle pieces fit together just right, we enter a state of grace and rediscover our humanity.

I am incredibly fortunate that my parents supported my lifelong commitment to creativity. No person I know spent more time seeking avenues to our collective humanity than my father, Steve McCarl. For decades, he taught philosophy and political science to impressionable young minds at Denver University.

In his later years, he became legally blind while also navigating a pervasive form of cancer. Yet, he remained fully dedicated to appreciating the most sublime pleasures that life has to offer: an exquisite glass of merlot, a beautifully conducted symphony, an inspired piece of fiction.

I’m so grateful that he was able to hear the public reading of this play before he transitioned on Father’s Day of last year. I can still hear him guffawing at many of the lines (delivered with perfect comic timing by the ladies.)

For all of these reasons, I wish to dedicate this full production to him. He was a larger-than-life presence… consequently, I won’t be at all surprised if we hear him laughing and applauding from the great beyond.

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by Steven Dietz, American Theatre Magazine (Dec. 1, 2022)

The following is a version of a speech playwright Steven Dietz delivered to the board of Merrimack Repertory Theatre in May, and, more recently, to the board and long-time supporters of ACT in Seattle.

The post Why New Plays Now? appeared first on Cherry Creek Theatre.

We produced three magnificent productions, including our first-ever world premiere, and garnered critical acclaim, and dozens of award nominations, including one Henry Award win. We brought thousands of patrons together to tell stories about our past in our present for our future. Thanks for making 2023 our best season yet! 

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Sondheim’s work is elusive, ambivalent, internally conflicted, and deeply concerned with how stories are told. What could be more Jewish?

By Gabrielle Hoyt
American Theatre Magazine; January 28, 2022

Growing up, I insisted we call him “Songheim.” I thought that was his name, a moniker fit for his vocation. And I thought he was mine. Part of my family. Musical, like us. Language-obsessed, like us. Neurotic, like us. Jewish, like us.

I don’t remember learning about Stephen Sondheim’s Judaism, just as I don’t remember first hearing his songs. He was just always there—and he’s never left me since, even at times when I very nearly left Judaism. From age 18 to 28, in fact, I refused to enter a synagogue. When I finally returned this past year for the High Holidays, I couldn’t remember the words or the tunes. My emotional link to the ritual felt like a bad radio signal, staticky, unpredictable, fading in and out. Afterward I had to admit that the music of my people didn’t live on in me. Not like Sondheim’s does, anyway. Still, following his death, reading tweets and tributes that ended with, “May his memory be a blessing,” I felt a twinge of kinship. A feeling of connection. A sense that Sondheim’s Judaism, however ambivalently held, mattered.

Experience the wisdom and wit of Jewish composer Stephen Sondheim and his myriad contributions to the American musical. Sondheim on Sondheim is presented in partnership with the JCC Mizel Arts and Culture Center as part of the Neustadt JAAMM Series.

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Cherry Creek Theatre (CCT) has always had a spot in its heart and on its stage for the famed songwriter. Since its inaugural season, CCT, founded by Maxine & Mark Rossman, have treated audiences to the wisdom and wit of great American composer, who redefined the Broadway musical through his genius lyrics, catchy melodies, and complex characters.

“Sondheim pens song-stories that are in themselves works of art. They weren’t written to be sung by mere mortals,” The Denver Post wrote in its 2011 review of CCT’s “Side by Side by Sondheim.” “That this fledgling theater company would take on such a brazen challenge out of the gate says everything about its creative ambitions.”

CCT’s first fully-staged Sondheim musical, “A Little Night Music,” starring Susie Roelofsz and Brian Merz-Hutchinson, earned four Henry Award nominations. Famous for bringing the world “Send in the Clowns,” the 1973 musical is currently back on the local stage at the Denver Center, featuring the young actress Sophia Dotson who is reprising the role she played in CCT’s 2019 production.

Now, two years after the world lost the legendary composer, CCT is remounting “Sondheim on Sondheim,” October 27–November 19 at the Mizel Center. The company first produced the work in 2015 at Shaver Ramsey Rug Gallery.

More than a musical revue, “Sondheim on Sondheim” weaves his exceptional songbook with first-person video anecdotes, providing audiences with an intimate and insightful look into the life and process of a brilliant composer.

From the 2015 cast, Roelofsz, Merz-Hutchinson and David Kincannon will reprise their roles. They are joined by Isabella Duran, Traci Kern, Carolyn Lohr, Lars Preece, and Carter Edward Smith. The powerhouse ensemble will perform songs from “Into the Woods,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Sweeney Todd,” and numbers that were cut from the final scores of classic musicals like “Company” and “West Side Story.”

The 2023 version is produced in partnership with JCC Mizel Arts and Culture Center as part of the 2023–24 Neustadt JAAMM Presents season. Bernie Cardell directs, with music direction by Rob Lowe, who also returns from the original production.

Tickets are on sale now at CherryCreekTheatre.org or by calling the box office at 303-800-6578.

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens.

Recently, Cherry Creek Theatre was informed it received ten Henry Award nominations from the Colorado Theatre Guild, a thrilling accomplishment beyond our wildest dreams — the most we have ever received. Who could have ever imagined a small, professional, theatre company like ours, emerging from a global pandemic, worried about filling seats, would be able to produce shows like Peter and the Starcatcher, Moon for the Misbegotten, and The Headliners and garner such critical acclaim and award-worthy validation.

We say in every curtain speech, “Ticket sales alone cannot support live theatre.” The sheer economics of producing live theatre simply doesn’t add up. Despite attendance beyond our projected goals, Cherry Creek Theatre has found itself in a compromising financial situation, and the future of Cherry Creek Theatre is currently hanging in the balance.

Unlike other arts organizations that shuttered during and just after the pandemic, Cherry Creek Theatre managed to forge ahead thanks to the support of patrons like you with a passion for the cultural escape that Cherry Creek Theatre brings to our community. There is no other way to say this, Cherry Creek Theatre is at a financial crossroads. Oh, how we wish this were our polite and cordial annual “ask letter” asking for your generous support, but this time it’s different. We need your financial help… now. No donation is too small. And certainly, no donation is too big.

We are fundraising to produce our final show of the 13th season, Sondheim on Sondheim, and to begin planning for our February show. Our immediate challenge is simply getting to opening night in October. With ticket sales not kicking in until early fall, we need assistance to cover the salaries of our production staff charged with keeping this production on track up until opening night.

Trust us when we say we have been beyond responsible with every dollar you have generously donated. And our ticket sales and grant funding has increased. It simply has not been enough. To bring you these award-winning productions as soon as we began to emerge from Covid-19, we tapped heavily into our financial reserves. But full productions with empty seats was not a math equation that landed in our favor. And we never caught up.

To help save Cherry Creek Theatre, our goal is $50,000.

That may seem like a daunting number, but when you break it down, if everyone receiving this message donates $20, that would sprinkle Cherry Creek Theatre with all the “star stuff” (Peter and the Starcatcher reference) we would need to keep our small but mighty theatrical company alive and soaring forward. (A few checks with extra zeros would gladly be embraced as well.) And all donations are tax-deductible.

Please help Cherry Creek Theatre stay alive with a donation today. You can give safely online here, or call the theatre at 303-800-6578 and give your credit card information over the phone, or send a check to Cherry Creek Theatre, PO Box 200491, Denver, Colorado 80220.

We cannot thank you enough for your support. It is our lifeblood. If you have a matching donation program through your work or have a suggested corporate donor, we would appreciate that too. We have very exciting plans for our 14th season next year, and we can’t wait to see you here!

Sincerely,

Meghan Dougherty
Interim Board Chair

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