Many artists are drawn to the theater because it fosters a sense of community. So when a playhouse announces its closure, the creatives involved frequently feel like they are losing a home.
“A year ago, when we found out that [Longmont’s] Jesters Dinner Theatre was closing, a few of us tried to do a fundraiser concert at the Arts HUB to save Jester,” says local performer Alex Colin. “It didn’t work out, but Kenzie [Rosen-Stone, the Arts HUB Director of Programming] snatched us all up.”
Now Colin has a new home at the nonprofit’s multi-disciplinary, multi-million dollar arts facility in Lafayette, where she works as a teaching artist and handles a number of duties on both sides of the curtain.
“Between directing, acting and helping backstage at the Arts HUB, I haven’t stopped,” she says. “I now know where all the best nap spots are in the building.”
Helen Campbell was looking for that same sense of belonging when she auditioned for The Addams Family at the Arts HUB in the summer of 2022. After being cast as Wednesday Addams, she found the organization to be a great way to make friends and has since appeared onstage in several other shows.
Campbell and Colin became close while portraying Heather Duke and Heather Chandler in Heathers: the Musical, produced earlier this year as part of the Arts HUB Emerging Artists mentorship program, offering aspiring theatermakers the chance to gain practical production experience. Now the pair are working together as co-directors for the ongoing production of Bare: A Pop Opera, whose upcoming final weekend wraps at the Arts HUB on Sunday, April 23.
“A couple of shows were being thrown around for our next project,” Rosen-Stone says. “But Bare won out because we all love this musical and we have many artists who work with us who resonate with stories that center on the expression of identity. … Bare is the type of story we want to share with our community.”
For the kids
Set in a co-ed Catholic boarding school, Bare is a 2000 coming-of-age rock musical by Damon Intrabartolo and Jon Hartmere following a group of seniors — Peter, Jason, Matt, Ivy and Nadia — as they walk the tightrope of their emerging sexual identities and religious anxieties while rehearsing for a production of Romeo and Juliet.
“As directors, we took time to dive into every song to pull out the message behind it,” says Campbell. “One of the central elements of Bare is this queer relationship between Jason and Peter that occurs within the Catholic church. There are some productions of this where you think they are just friends, but it was important to us that it was about their sexualities and religious response.”
That’s not the only way the Arts HUB is bucking the tradition of some other Bare productions. When it came to casting the show, the co-directing team set out with a wider net than previous stagings of the 23-year-old musical.
“We didn’t want to be limited to specific genders or body types,” Campbell says. “The only roles that we felt needed to be cast a certain way were the priest as a cis-male, and the leads had to [be] a queer couple. Aside from that, we prioritized finding a cast with greater diversity than the theater industry’s traditional vision for Bare.”
In addition to more inclusive casting, the Arts HUB double-cast the production to give as many people as possible the opportunity to work on the show. Instead of a traditional single slate of actors, this production of Bare features alternating performance crews known as the Capulet Cast and the Montague Cast.
“I come from [Jesters Dinner Theatre], which has always double-cast, and I love it,” says Colin. “It is authentic to the human experience for people to be able to interpret these characters and their relationships in vastly different ways. Actors might walk to the same spot, but they are walking with such different motivations and intentions.”
To better serve those different acting choices, the co-directors worked with the design team to create an all-black stationery set to keep distraction at a minimum. Aside from occasional red and blue accent pieces, the environment is a blank canvas for the performances to shine.
“This is going to sound silly, but the general vision was a very bare version of Bare,” Colin says. “We want to strip it down and create a playing space for the actors, but not much else. When a show is written so well and has so many important themes, it doesn’t need all those flashy technical elements to be really powerful.”
The team knows those themes, which include drug abuse and self-harm, might be challenging for some audience members. That’s why the Arts HUB has partnered with local LGBTQ organizations, like the Denver-based Center on Colfax and Boulder County’s OASOS (Open and Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Support), to provide resources and support to patrons at the show.
“On top of feeling like you saw a great piece of theater — and maybe having a new favorite musical — we hope people walk away having learned,” Campbell says. “We hope that after watching the show and listening to the nonprofits, people’s eyes will be opened — because everything you see in the show is happening in real life.”
ON STAGE: Bare: A Pop Opera by Damon Intrabartolo and Jon Hartmere. Various times through April 23, The Arts HUB, 420 Courtney Way, Lafayette. Tickets here.
