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Colorado Vignette - Denver Center Theatre Company

The Denver Center Theatre Company premiered on New Year’s Eve 1979, when founding Artistic Director, Edward Payson Call opened the newly completed Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex. In 1984, Donovan Marley succeeded Call. He has led the company ever since with a commitment to play a leading role in the cultural life of the Rocky Mountain West by developing new plays and new artists.

In its first 25 seasons, the Denver Center Theatre Company mounted 266 productions, from the world’s classics, revivals of landmark American plays, the rediscovery of plays that had dropped out of the American repertoire and 77 world premieres.

While extending the Company’s reach well beyond Colorado, the fundamentals of its mission remain unchanged - to create, nurture and develop a resident company in which artists, teachers, artisans, technicians and managers have time to learn each other’s gifts, ideas, language, processes and passions. The members of this resident ensemble have made long-term commitments to the members of the ensemble’s artistic development and to the development of new artists and new audiences.

For his final season (2004/2005) as Artistic Director, Donovan Marley will guide the Denver Center Company’s audience on a provocative journey. This season is all about passion. Men and women, steamy and proper, true love and twisted obsession.

The season opens with John Patrick Shanley’s Dirty Story, an allegorical gut-punch of a play, in the Space Theatre, October 7 - November 13. Nagle Jackson’s The Misanthrope a sophisticated comedy taking critical aim at social critics, opens the season at The Stage Theatre, October 14 - November 13. David Mamet’s Boston Marriage at the Jones Theatre October 28 - December 23 is a funny and sexually clever visit with two Victorian ladies of fashion who live together,

The 14th presentation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, always a joy, will be in The Stage Theatre November 28 - December 26.

A rarely produced Tennessee Williams play, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, a portrait of four women, will be at the Jones Theatre, January 13 - March 12. A World Premiere, in the Space Theatre, of A Selfish Sacrifice by OyamO setting Henrik Isben’s 1879 A Doll’s House in a contemporary setting, runs January 20 - February 26. Sophocles’ masterpiece Oedipus Rex takes place in a single day, when King Oedipus learns the appalling truth of his birth and destiny at the Stage Theatre, January 27 - February 26.

The Company’s 26th season closes with two diverse works. The Madwoman of Chaillot transports Jean Giraudoux’s classic from the streets of Paris to modern day New York City, in the Space Theatre, March 24 - April 30. Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman’s musical tribute to Appalachian coal miners, Fire on the Mountain, comes home to the Stage Theater where it was conceived as a section of the 1996 Denver Center World Premiere of Appalachian Strings, March 31 - April 30.

For ticket information call 303-893-4100 or 1-800-642-1222 or www.denvercenter.org.

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