Listen: Donald Seawell, DCPA Founder, Talks About His Life And Vision

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Posted 2004 | Updated Oct. 1, 2015: Donald Seawell, founder of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, spoke with Colorado Public Radio in 2004 about his career and hopes for the future of the DCPA.

Seawell died Sept. 30 in Denver at the age of 103. Read a transcript below of his conversation with former Colorado Matters host Dan Drayer. It's been lightly edited for clariry.

Drayer: You were an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission when you went to New York where your wife, Eugenia Rawls was an actress. How did you go from Securities Law to producing Broadway plays?

Seawell: Well I went to New York as head of the – both the international and the corporate division of our law firm. But the first week or two that I was in the office, into my office came Alfred Lott, Lynn Fontanne, Tallulah Bankhead, Ruth Draper, Noel Coward, oh lots of others, some playwrights like Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse. All of them asked me to be their lawyer. And before the year was out, Noel and Alfred, and Lynn came into my office and said, “You are our producer.” ... I know nothing about producing. And Noel Coward said, “Don, after this show you’ll know all there is to know about producing.” But it’s been fun.

These are folks that you just don’t say no to. You don’t say no to Noel Coward.

No. Nor to Alfred Laden, Lynn Fontanne, and especially not to Tallulah Bankhead.

I’d love to know more about her.

Well I met her when my wife was with her in ‘The Little Foxes.’ And she became a close friend of the family, the Godmother of my children, Matron of Honor at our wedding. And it was an experience. She loved to call about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning and try to right all wrongs through her lawyer. And I could go on and on about that, but it was a lot of fun. And she was of course at the time, considered the most glamorous actress in the world and also perhaps the most risqué. That was all true. But underneath she was tender, loving, and the way she felt about my children because she never had any, it appealed to her, mother’s instinct. But it was quite an experience for them to grow up in.

And have her as a Godmother.

To have her as a Godmother.

You come from a long line of lawyers and judges from the South, but how did your upbringing in the law prepare you for involvement in the theater?

Well it was from a long line of jurists. Actually the first member of the family to be a judge was old Judge Samuel Seawell who was Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Colony way back in the 1600’s. As I say, I was dragged into – into the – this because I was lawyer for so many of the theatrical greats. And it’s been a wonderful experience. Did law help? Of course, because I had to draft so many contracts. But also law is supposed to be a matter of logic. If you carry that into the theater, well you don’t carry it too far.

Tell me about your interaction, your first interaction with Winston Churchill.

Well, I had been picked to represent the American universities in a series of debates in Europe, primarily in England. And it carried with it a scholarship to Oxford, and when I got to Oxford the first person I debated against was Winston Churchill. This was during his wilderness days, it was Mr. Churchill not Sir Winston. But, I proposed a topic, let’s say, "Resolve that England’s Dominion over India is indefensible." So we had a rather nice dinner before the debate. And just as I got to the podium to propose a motion, the president of union stopped me and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell Mr. Seawell that out of deference to his opponent, Mr. Winston Churchill, we have changed this topic. The subject will be "Resolve that Utopia will be a Republic."

Is that standard operating procedure for the hall?

Well that’s the reason that most of the great statesmen in England come out of the Oxford Union, or the Cambridge Union. They have to be prepared to think on their feet. For a guy from the University of North Carolina, this is quite a surprise, I’ll tell you. It’s the last time I ever carried a note on stage. Today when I have to speak or do anything, I never, ever have a note with me. Because during that year when I debated all over England and all throughout the unions there and in Ireland, you just didn’t know what was coming or where it was coming from, but it was fun.

Now tell us about sharing a bath Marlene Dietrich.

Well after we had liberated Paris, I was sent in as – briefly as Acting Ambassador to France. I was on the security end. I was supposed to secure the Embassy and do a few other things. And later on when Roosevelt appointed Caffery as real Ambassador, Caffery asked me to stay on as assistant Ambassador. But during that time I was really ungeneralized and I was staff. But to get back to the Marlene part of it. Instead of opening the Embassy residence, I had a suite at the Ritz. And that was a very, very cold winter ... we had hot water at the Ritz we didn’t have anywhere else in Paris.

So people who like Marlene and others, would come to my apartment to get a hot bath after they returned from the front. And so that’s the story, Marlene used to come in to get her hot bath, but unfortunately we didn’t take it together.

That would have been a real story, wouldn’t it?

That would have been a story.

You met Helen Bonfils, the daughter of the Denver Post co-owner Fredrick Bonfils, when – when did you meet Helen?

In the mid 50’s. I was at the Chamber of the ANTA, which is of course American National Theatre and Academy. And Helen was on the board of one of the chapters, the New York Chapter, and I first met her then. And later on she asked me to partner with her and Haila Stoddard in a number of Broadway shows.

When did she get you to come to Denver, convince you to leave New York and come?

Well I had law offices in both New York and London, and I was in London in my office when I got a call from her, telling me that S.I. Newhouse was trying to take over the Denver Post and please come back as fast as I could and try to prevent it. So I did. I thought at the time that it was going to very easy because I had known Helen, as everyone had known her as the owner of the Denver Post, but it turned out in fact that she only owned 18 percent of the stock of the Denver Post. By that time, Newhouse had bought her 18 percent plus another batch of stock, so he actually owned more stock that Helen. So I had to move fast to – it was a battle that took place over 15 years. We finally prevailed. It was Newhouse’s only defeat. And by that time, unfortunately Helen had died and I found that I had, had practically all of the stock of the Denver Post and the foundation that I had created under her name, The Helen G. Bonfils Foundation.

Was it hard to leave New York and come to Denver?

Well at that time if I had known, if I had been asked to come to Denver, I couldn’t have and wouldn’t have because I was at that time senior partner of a very prominent New York law firm, and I had a lot of shows running on Broadway. But thank God it happened, because as I said, when Helen died I found I was chairman, president, publisher and through the foundation that I had created, controlling stockholder. And Denver is a wonderful, wonderful place to live. I’m so glad it happened. I stayed on for many years as both the publisher of the Post and the head of the New York law firm.

What was theater in Denver like at the time when you arrived?

At that time, it was only the old Bonfils Theatre, now the Lowenstein Theatre. And that was community theater, amateur actors and everybody, had lots of fun but there was no real professional theater in Denver. In fact, there – in the performing arts, the symphony I think was the only real professional organization. But, the ballet, Cleo Parker Robinson's Dance Group, and all of that grew out of the old Bonfils Theater.

Describe the moment that you envisioned a Performing Arts Center.

Well I was coming back from lunch, going to the Denver Post and I looked across the street and saw the auditorium theatre, and there was the arena, which was about to be torn down because they had built the McNichols Arena. There was a police building, which was about to be torn down because they had built a new police building. And the rest of it was just a dump for old, used cars and so forth. And I thought, a wonderful place to create a Performing Arts Center. So I sat down on the curb, I got out an envelope and sketched out what is now the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. And went back to the office and called the governor and the mayor, and we had a meeting, and before the afternoon was concerned, I had created the Denver Center of the Performing Arts as an entity. And had called the architect and got him signed up, and the rest is history.

Was it a pretty good drawing?

No, it wasn’t. I wish I had it.

But you obviously didn’t have any trouble convincing the governor at that point.

No, John Love was governor, Bill McNichols was mayor at the time. John thought it ought to be the Colorado Center for the Performing Arts. Bill thought it ought to be the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Have you always been able to convince people so easily of the things that you see that should be done?

Well, let’s take the Denver Center for the Performing Arts as an example, it didn’t rise out of a demand from the general public. Here you had a New Yorker coming in and saying, we’re going to have a – the greatest performing arts center, well right here in Denver. Obviously, people rose up opposition and I shouldn’t have been surprised. Particularly, I wasn’t surprised by the attacks that came from all of the other newspapers. Because I was then head of the Denver Post, and naturally it drew attacks from all of the press. But all that disappeared very quickly.

I’ve repeated this so many times, but Bill McNichols told me that the city just had a survey made by reputable poll takers, and that only 3,000 people in the entire Rocky Mountain community had ever seen a live production of any and all of the performing arts combined. And I was very happy to tell him very few years later that over a million of those 3,000 people had already seen just the theater here alone. But, the people soon rallied about it, or it – it wouldn’t have been a success without the complete support of the community. And I know of nowhere in the world where we have such community support, so I’m very, very proud of it.

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There's a decisiveness about you, I think, and maybe a good way to describe that for our listeners is to tell us all the story of how you met your wife.

Oh, lord. Well, I was walking across the campus of the University of North Carolina one fall day, and as you may know, that is Chapel Hill and the university's generally described as “the southern part of heaven.” And I saw, walking toward me, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. I walked up to her and said, “I'm going to marry you.” And she looked me up and down and said, “You'll have to wait. I have a career.” I took her hand, we walked away, leaving her date standing there with his mouth wide open.

Did you ever see him again?

As a matter fact, I felt sorry for him. I knew him, and I introduced him to the girl he married.

That's magnanimous, wasn't it? And, you stayed married to Eugenia Rawls for nearly sixty years after that.

That's right. She was right about the career. Within one year, she was on Broadway, having the leading role in The Children's Hour. Took us eight years to get married. We both thought we ought to be established beforehand, so once we were really established, the time had come, and we got married.

So, take us from the scribbling out the sketch of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts on that envelope to how the funding mechanism was established to pay for it.

One of the reasons that I could think so broadly at the time was that was to be voted that year, to establish and create a symphony hall for the symphony. Under the bill, the city was to put up $6 million. The symphony was to raise $5 million. But polls from the -- conducted by the Denver Post showed that less than 18 percent of the people were for it.

It was certain to go down in defeat. I thought if we coupled that with the idea of a performing arts center it would fly. And, of course, it did. It passed by a very big majority. But, I got a call from the mayor saying the symphony didn't have a cent and couldn't raise a cent and they were going to have to give up on the idea, and as I came through with the $5 million. So, I had to guarantee that and very shortly, that had risen to $8 million, from $5 million, but the foundation, Helen G. Bonfils Foundation underwrote it, came up with the cash.

Then in the building process, of course, the city ran out of money and we had to take over and build about half of the galleria and so forth. So, in fact, the -- our foundation and the Denver Center for Performing Arts has put $87 million into this project. Every penny the city's put into it has been repaid by the seat tax, and that seat tax has been, oh, 90 percent of it paid by the DCPA.

There was the sale of the Denver Post in the midst of that, too.

Yes. I had already created the Denver Center for the Performing Arts before I sold the Post, but I did sell the Post. All of the proceeds, except for that which went into the employees' stock trust, came into the Helen G. Bonfils Foundation. And that is the foundation on which the DCPA is constructed.

What sort of criticism did you receive at the time for selling the Post to help pay for the foundation of the arts center?

I don't know that there was any criticism for the sale of the Post. And certainly not to selling it to Times Mirror. I called a meeting of all of the employees of the Denver Post, and all of the holders of the employees' stock trust and said I have this offer. We're not allowed to accept it, unless you're in favor of it. And they voted, I think with just one exception, to sell it. But, see, one of the great things about that is that I made a condition to the sale that the Denver Post would be taken from an afternoon paper to a morning paper. I had planned to do it, but it was going to cost a lot of money. It actually cost Times Mirror $65 million to take it from afternoon to morning. So that was one of the considerations to me, and I think it's one of the considerations to the employees.

Was it-- did you have any struggle letting go of the independent newspaper and selling to a large corporation of newspapers?

I would loved to have kept it independent, but in selling it to Times Mirror, there were conditions that would keep it local. In fact, I stayed on as publisher for a full year, at their request. And, it's unfortunate that there are so few private newspapers left in the world, but that's a part of the economics, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And the Denver Post was an afternoon newspaper, because years and years before, there'd been a battle between the News and the Post and the Post had the choice of going morning or afternoon, but at that time, the afternoon papers were more profitable. So, old F.G. Bonfils picked the afternoon. But things changed. And people no longer went home and picked up the paper and read it, or read the paper on the way home. They started listening to television and so forth, and so I had to take it morning, because at that time, we were the only afternoon paper in all the world that was making money.

Why was the Denver Post, at that time, making money?

Well, with apologies to my friends at the News, we were the best the newspaper in town. See, we had-- we were dominant as far as advertising was concerned, and as far as circulation was concerned. As a part of taking it morning, the News did surpass the Post in circulation, but it wasn't until after it sold that that happened.

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Why were you so convinced that a professional theater company could make it in Denver? Why were you so convinced it could work in Denver?

Well, first of all, I was convinced of the fact that Denver needed it. There were, as I said earlier, no professional art, performing arts organizations, except the symphony, and the symphony was actually fading at that time. It needed help. And, I believed in the arts and I simply felt that there was a great, great need. I don't know that I ever really considered failure. You know, the old adage about building a better mouse trap. If you create a better performing arts center, people are coming.

But, such a risky venture at the time and you could argue that Denver needs water, and people-- it would have been just as hard at that time to imagine a theater building here as the creation of water out of nowhere, don't you think?

No. I knew that I could create theater, but the man up there creates water.

But, at that time, imagining a real, active, vibrant theater community, in this cow town, was unheard of.

Yes. It was unheard of, at that time, but it didn't mean that there wasn't a great need for the arts. And there's another thing, too. Denver, at that time, was expanding. We're so isolated, of course, that we had to create our own arts, but we were expanding. And, downtown Denver was decaying. If you see the pictures when we built this, there's practically nothing around it, none of the tall buildings, none of the apartment houses, nothing. I think it helped to restore downtown Denver.

But I do know this: that that was a time, the Tech Center hadn't been built. It was being talked about. But all of the new corporations that came into town would call, ask to know about the arts or about the culture here, and they were trying to get people to come. You would have to-- they would call and say, can you give us a brochure, can you do this, we want to convince so and so to come here to take over as whatever the job might be. So, it was an important factor, I think, in the growth of Denver.

Didn't you run into folks that said, what's this carpetbagger from New York doing, coming in here and telling us to have a theater?

You should read the newspapers at that time. They all did. And I remember, during the five days that the Prime Minister of Egypt went to Israel to-- which was a fantastic event. It was the first time that any Arab leader had ever gone to Israel, so important, but the Rocky Mountain News carried that on page five. On the front page, “Seawell Must Go.” It went on and on, for five, the five straight days.

[Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin-[Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat just didn't have the same weight, in the editors' minds at that time.

Not at that time. So, yes, later on, I will admit that my friend Michael Howard wrote a front page editorial on the Rocky Mountain News, which said the Denver Center for the Performing Arts is the greatest thing that has happened to Denver since we got water.

Why was it important for you that the acting company be a resident acting company?

Because we were so far, far away from any other center for performing arts, and actually, in order to get professional actors, you'd either have to get them from New York or from Los Angeles. And, to do that for every play, was expensive, difficult, actually, it wasn't as expensive as keeping resident actors, but it was a difficult job. And also, I think that you can get the best theater from a group of actors who have worked together.

Donovan Marley has talked about the theater world as being a somewhat brutal place, and that he wanted to create a nurturing, a healing place for actors and stage directors and the like. Do you share that sentiment?

Well, of course, it has, simply because actors have to be among the most sensitive people in the world, and there aren't enough jobs to go around, particularly if you're in New York. I've sat in auditions, and I've-- it's painful, because every person who came to audition for a part was sure that he was exactly right and was the only person in the world that could get that part. But, you can wait for years to get the part that you want and the play might run for just one night. And you have to wait again and again. So, being a part of a company, knowing that you're going to work all year long, is a healing thing for an actor. But it's cruel in that there are so few jobs and that very, very few make it to the top.

You've said this before in press clippings that I've read, where you talk about the theater company here as being a place where you have the right to fail. Can you talk more about why that's important for the Denver Center Theater Company?

It's important for the actors, for the playwright, and perhaps with the playwright more than the actors. And a theater company, you know that you're going to-- play's going to run for a certain length of time. Then you're going to have another play. And you may have a 12-play season, and you're set for the season. In New York, I've had plays that have run for one consecutive night, and plays that the author had worked on, some cases, all of his creative life, and just didn't make it. And critics can be very cruel, both to the play and to the actors, the directors, everyone connected with it. So, when you're in a company, you can relax as far as making a living is concerned, as far as-- but, you can't relax as far as a part is concerned, of course.

So, because they were being paid, whether they were walking on, in one scene, and that's all they did in a play, whether they played Hamlet, they knew that they had a place and the playwrights knew in Denver that if it didn't go well, that was part of the learning process, I guess.

Exactly. But, let's go one step further. When the regional theater started, at that time, as I said, I was, and still am, chairman of ANTA, the American National Theater, so we had a certain responsibility toward all of the regional companies. But, in the beginning, 85-95 percent of all of the plays performed in regional theater came from Broadway shows, or from the classics, like Shakespeare.

Today, the reverse is true. Broadway, as far as plays are concerned, living on the regional theater. They originate in the regions, and they have a better chance of success, because you can try out, you can experiment, you can change. That's difficult to do when you're launching a Broadway show. Of course, you have the previews that you can do it in, and we used to take shows on the pre-Broadway circuit, but that no longer exists. But, again, things are changing so on Broadway, too, that now only musicals can make it on Broadway. Legitimate plays have to start off off-Broadway, for the most part, but still the regional theaters are the best chance to launch a play today.

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Let's talk about Tantalus, that epic, massive work. Was that your riskiest move?

Risky as far as money is concerned?

Just risky, trying to launch it, from the money point of view, from the actors, from the theatrical standpoint. All around, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at.

I wouldn't use the word “risky” for this reason: we knew what we were doing, we knew how much it would cost, we knew it was bound to lose money. Why? Because it was the longest play in the entire 2,500 year history of the theater. It started out as a twenty-two hour play. It was cut down to fifteen and then in some instances, down to twelve, but that still was the longest. And we knew we'd have to rehearse for seven months. And we knew we could only run it twice a week. It's impossible to charge enough to get the money back, but it's something I felt that had to be done. I'd worked with John Barton, who conceived it. Since he first came to the theater back in the early '60s, as a member of Peter Hall's Royal Shakespeare Theater, and I brought his first production to America, The Hollow Crown, which I directed, my one and only effort at directing a Broadway show. And, fortunately, because of the wonderful cast and, of course, with John's material, it was one of three shows at the time that ever received unanimous raves. But, I knew all about it from the time John Barton started creating it, and, originally, it was to be done by six groups, a consortium of theaters. And one by one, the others starting falling off.

Why?

Money. And it ended up that either we did it, or it wasn't going to be done. So, we did it, in cooperation with the Royal Shakespeare Company. They didn't put up any money, but they did supply some of the actors, and we went to England, through them, after we'd played here. But, what it cost us, oh, not quite the equivalent of one season of theater here. I think it's, did more for this theater than any season we've ever had, or any new seasons we've ever had.

Why? Why did it do more?

Well, at one performance here, we passed out questionnaires, see where people were coming from. We found that they came from thirty-seven states, from nineteen foreign countries, and from every continent on the globe. Came to Denver just to see this. Every critic in London came here to see it. Every critic in Broadway and Los Angeles came here to see it. And all of them gave it rave notices. We took it to England. We played in five major cities outside of London and then into London, we played standing room only the entire time. It launched the Denver Center and the Denver Center Theater Company on the national and international stage.

How did you deal, at the time, with some of the unexpected crises that arose? Namely, the director leaving without warning, the writer John Barton having a conflict with the director, Sir Peter Hall, people were concerned about the cost, obviously. Did you ever doubt the wisdom of taking this on?

Never. And how did I deal with it? It was understood, at first, if there was ever any argument that it was to come into this office and the decision was gonna be made right here, and everyone would stick with it.

Did Barton and Sir Peter kiss and make up? Or are they still upset with each other?

I'm glad you asked that. They were friends from the time that they went to-- well, Peter went to Cambridge. John was already there. And they met, and they became close friends and collaborators from that time on. And this was, this split, because Peter cut it down from 22 hours to 15 or so hours and we tried to get them together. And, last year, when I was in London, John Barton came to see me and said, “This has gone on far enough. Please get Peter talking to me.” And he said, “Tell him that, if he wants to, he can shove a custard pie in my face.” And I told Peter this, and Peter said, “Whose side are you on now?” And I said, “On neither one.” I said, “I'll buy him the custard pie to shove in your face.” But, together with Peter's wonderful wife, Nikki, we finally got them talking together. And so I think it's-- it resolved itself, at least on a talking basis, and that'll soon lead to the same congeniality that they'd once had.

Let's talk about what you're looking for in a new artistic director. We've mentioned that the Denver Center Theater Company's artistic director, Donovan Marley, has been here for 21 years. The Company won a regional Tony award under his tenure, and developed this unusually stable cast that we've already talked about. What are you looking for in the next artistic director?

The artistic director has to be more than just a director. Matter of fact, doesn't have to be a director at all. The music center, the Los Angeles Music Center has just hired, as an artistic director, to succeed Gordon Davidson, a man who's never directed a show in his life. He's more the producer type. He's run a theater company. But, what I want is someone who does have artistic-- well, first of all, has directorial experience. Second, someone who's had managerial experience. Third, someone who has a top flight producer's knowledge and talent and the will to, not to maintain the status quo, but to imagine things that are new and different and put them into action.

What do you mean by the status quo?

Just to feed the public the same old pap, shows that have been successful here, there and everywhere. I want someone who's willing to take chances.

How will you know if the person is the right fit?

I'm going to take a long enough time to find that out. At the moment, I have on my desk the applications from a few dozen people. I also have the resumes of at least fifty others that have not applied, but might be candidates who have run companies on their own. And I have estimates of people that are respected in the theater, artistic directors themselves, and other people whose opinions I expect, and I'm rating them. And, at the moment, I'm not talking to anyone unless they want to be interviewed, and then I'll be happy to do it. And so I'm taking the time. And when I finally arrive to the person I think ought to be here, I will talk to the board about it. I have the authority to make it on my own, but I'd rather have the board meet and approve the person. And, in Donovan's case, I had an interim director from the company here for a year, because I didn't want to make a precipitous choice, and I may do the same thing here. I'm not going to rush into it.

Typically, a new artistic director wants to bring in his or her own players, people.

Donovan Marley brought an almost entirely new crew with him. Should the actors, some of who've been with the company for many years, be concerned as a new artistic director is brought in?

I'm glad you brought that up, because it's a real consideration. Yes, in Donovan's case, he simply wiped out the entire company and brought in his own. But, Donovan, you see, had had his own company in California. The new artistic director may not have his own company. But that is a consideration that I'm very much concerned about, and obviously the company is. And they've all come to me, either in person or with an appointed delegate. Naturally, they're concerned about, but that's going to be a big consideration in choosing someone. I don't want to pick anybody that's going to wipe out the company. We have a lot of wonderful actors here and they've earned their right to be a part of the company.

What would you say is the impact of the Denver Center?

On what? You see, it has an impact in so many ways. I mentioned earlier what an impact it's had on the economy of Denver. And, there have been studies made by the National Endowment, made by the Rockefeller brothers Foundation showing that for every penny spent on the arts, it generates four times as much for the economy of the city in which the arts entity is established.

Importantly, our outreach programs, those to the public schools and bring the public schools here, will reach now, oh, 95-100,000 families in Denver alone. We're going out into cyber space. Unfortunately, here and everywhere, when times get rough, the first subjects to be cut in the public schools are the arts. And that's true, despite the fact that the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the Getty Foundation, have shown that study of the arts by the young improve their understanding and their comprehension in completely unrelated subjects, like mathematics, physics, you name it. It opens the mind. I think, culture for culture's sake alone is enough, but it goes so far beyond that and our future goal is to go out into cyber space, and we're already there, as a matter of fact, through the help of one of our trustees, Glenn Jones, who has Jones University, as you know. Some of our things that we've created, like e-Shakespeare have now become a part of the curriculum, from schools from Los Angeles to Washington DC and many in between.

Most of our conversation has been about the theater company, but you must realize that we are the most complete performing arts center in the world. Let me expand on that. We opened what was going to be a voice laboratory. It is now the National Center for Speech, and this is not just a title. It's been conferred on us by the government, and is supported entirely by the National Institutes of Health. We discovered in the laboratory here, and we're the first to do so, that the first evidence of Parkinson's is in the voice graph. This brought doctors from all over the world here. University of Colorado has been experimenting in the cures for Parkinson's. And, the only cure known is the fetal implant. We're testing the efficacy of that. I could go on about that. But let's go to another thing.

We are the only performing arts center that I know that has its own television and movie studies. But each of these divisions are integrated, interrelated and interdependent. Each helps the other. So the voice laboratory, the National Center for Voice Research, helps its students in learning to use their voice. It helps the actors. We have outreach programs for the doctors, for the lawyers, for anyone that wants to learn how to use their voice better. And, I could go on and on with this, but we're not just a theater company.

Are you satisfied with the DCPA?

You know, there is something the masthead of the Denver Post, "There's no hope for the satisfied mind", and I feel that particularly as far as the theater and our work is concerned. Never will I be satisfied. If I'm satisfied, I ought to be kicked out of here immediately.

But you're pleased?

Oh, I'm pleased. I'm delighted, and I want to be more pleased.