Setting the stage: Does Salt Lake Valley need a new 'Broadway' theater?
People sit at tables along a walkway enjoying their dinners. Some folks mill around, looking into windows and gazing at sculptures. Others enjoy drinks and snacks at many of the restaurants and bistros near the Denver Performing Arts Complex, the largest arts complex in the world.
Connected by an 80-foot glass ceiling, the DPAC has 10 different performance spaces and is a gathering place for arts lovers of all kinds.
DPAC is home to the Colorado Symphony, Opera Colorado and the Colorado Ballet. The complex has four other theaters, a grand ballroom and two different cabaret spaces for more intimate theater as well as showcasing new works. And the DPAC boasts the 2,800-seat Broadway-style Buell Theatre, host to the Broadway touring shows.
When asked about the Buell, Jack Finlaw, Denver's director of theaters and arenas, said, "For the last 17 to 18 years, most years it has been very successful. We fill the hall anywhere from 30 to 40 weeks a year with product and, in addition to the Broadway shows, we've done a lot of comedy shows there, a speakers bureau with famous speakers, rock shows and other musical entertainment. It's been a great investment for Denver."
"I was in Denver on a tour 10 years ago and we said, 'This is fantastic!' That was 10 years ago. Now I hope I see this theater built while I'm still alive. It really is important to the community."
Theater size
Ballard argues that Utah is long overdue for a state-of-the-art performing space. Denver was in the same boat with the old Auditorium Theatre.
"Dated from the 1950s," Finlaw explained, "it needed to be updated. We couldn't have done the big Broadway shows in the old facility. The stage wasn't big enough, the technology wasn't there."
Touring shows have the same struggle with Capitol Theatre's limited backstage space and lack of loading docks. And every female theatergoer has tales of lengthy restroom wait times. Besides, as a theater built for vaudeville and later movies and not Broadway-style stage, many seats in the house have poor visibility — a disappointment to theatergoers after paying top ticket prices.
"We run a Broadway series in eight cities. Every one of them has a theater with more seats than Capitol at 1,800," Ballard pointed out. "Even Akron, Ohio, has two theaters with 3,000 seats each."
But the size of a 2,500-seat theater is what has Chris Lino, managing director of Pioneer Theatre Company at the University of Utah, raising an eyebrow.
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