deb flomberg Interview

What are your theatres objectives?

Personally, my objectives are to find ways to continue to explore my own passion and artistic drives. Professionally, within Equinox Theatre Company - our objectives are to provide new and different works that challenge both mentally and artistically for the crew and for the audience alike.

How did your theatre group as a whole originate?

We were founded about a year ago by 5 active members of the theatre community. We saw a lot of the same material being done over and over again and wanted to create moe oppotunities for new work. We had all worked together in many capacities over the course of about 5 years prior to founding Equinox, so we knew we'd all work well together. Equinox was founded out of love for the art and love for eachother.

What kind of touring experiences does your theatre have?
As of today, we have not had any touring experience with Equinox. We are still young, so who knows what the future will bring.


How many performances do you average in a year?

Our first year we had 3 shows - two fully stages plays with 4 week runs and 1 fund raiser that ran for 2 nights.

How many staff members make up the back of the house staff for a performance?
Our house is usually run by 3 people - 1 box office person and 2 ushers. Technically, we usually have an additional 2 or 3 people during the run depending on the needs of the show. 1 stage manager and 1 or 2 board ops. This also doesn't include our designers that work during all the rehearsals and are not at performances. We usually have 4 designers per show as well.

What challenges as a theater have you had to overcome or still deal with today? How did you solve these problems? Well, of course the constant issue is funding. The economy has impacted the arts in a big way - we are all struggling with money and struggling to survive. We exist in a show to show basis right now. We do one show, and hope to earn enough from it to do the next one. The trouble with that is that we are unable to plan out a full year in advance or sell season tickets. It also makes it harder to gain a following. We've been very blessed to have made enough to keep on truckin though, and we will continue to do so.

How important do you feel the community is both towards involvement with your theater and its influence to your success?

This is huge. Theatre is about community. Part of our difficulty has been establishing that community since we do not have our own theatre. We've moved from Lowry, to the DU area to the Highlands area - so many different communities have been involved. The best way to succeed is to establish yourself firmly in the community - do outreach, offer classes, etc. Then the community will support you. Art brings community together, and vice verse. Hopefully, we'll establish ourselves in the Highlands and start to build this for ourselves too.

Who do you generally market your performances towards? How many seats do you fill on average with your performances?

This is a toughy. Previously, we did general mass marketing - to little success. We'd have on average 10 - 15 people a night at performances. However, with our current show House of Yes we've done a very good job with marketing to the "20- something hipsters" with our involvement with area bars like The Thin Man and our involvement with The Denver Roller Dolls, and other ideas like that. We've been working hard to get more word out - and its showing. We've averaged 30 - 50 per night with this one, so it is a large improvement.

What genres does your theatre prefer to perform, and what are the most successful with audiences?

We focus on the dark, the unusual, or the edgy - which, to be honest, isn't always the most successful with audiences. The most attended shows in Denver lately are farces, murder mysteries, and musicals. We are branching out to an edgy musical with our next one, so lets hope that one does well!

As a theatre group how do you market yourself to your targeted audiences and beyond?
Well, we are still learning this one. The House of Yes marekting we've done is the most we've seen so far. The creative marketing techniques were used to tie in the show to other pop-culture ideas, like our Jackie-O-Look-a-Like conest - which was judges by 3 major television news personalities. We were very lucky there :)

What direction do you see Denver’s theater scene evolving into over the next 10 years?

I hope that it continues to grow, that the economy revives, and that Denver will eventually be recognized as the creative center it really is. There are some 70 theatre companies in the state, and most people do not know of any other than the Denver Center. Thats just a shame. There should be a lot more focus on the amazing talent and creativity that survives here. There is no reason Denver shouldn't be up there with Seattle and Chicago as the big theatre scenes outside of New York.

How would you value your theatres ability to serve as a means of social awareness for social activism?

We have to be very careful with this one. As a 501c3 non-profit we are not allowed to participate in any social activism that may make a political statement. So that is a tricky one. But, we do feel that social awareness and messages can and have been presented in our shows. For example, our production of Below the Fold had, at its essence, a message about being true to your roots and loving your family. While another producion we did, Frozen, was about recovery from grief and pain. So we do make a lot of social statements, we just can't get near anything political.