The Summit County theatre’s new name reflects a move away from the past
In 1993 when the Lake Dillon Theatre Company was formed, the name made perfect sense: The theatre was in Dillon maybe a couple hundred yards away from Lake Dillon itself. But after the theatre relocated to Silverthorne in 2017, it soon became clear the old name was going to be a bit of a problem.
Producing Artistic Director Chris Alleman says many people were still confusing it with the Lake Dillon Amphitheatre, where the Town of Dillon presents concerts in summer. With the move down the hill to Silverthorne, he says they considered changing the name then but held off in light of all the other things going on.
“We were waiting for the right time,” he says.
Since then, he adds, soaring housing prices caused some of the theatre’s base of locals to cash out while the pandemic shutdown had made it increasingly challenging to stay in touch with patrons and donors. It was time to commission a new strategic plan, which led to the name change.
It’s simple enough: The theatre is in Silverthorne, Colorado so Theatre SilCo seemed like a good choice. But as Alleman explains, it took some doing, and the theatre sought the help of global branding agency LPK.
“We gave them maybe 150 names of donors, subscribers, lapsed subscribers, single-ticket buyers, people who came to the theatre once and never came back,” he says. “They reached out to those individuals and did some surveys, and then they reached out to non-theatre people in our community and on the Front Range.”
What they found, he says, is that those who knew of the theatre loved it, but there was still plenty of confusion with the Dillon Amphitheatre.
“So we decided that, OK, it’s time. It’s time now to take this data and go through this renaming process.”
That led to a variety of possibilities that eventually got narrowed down to three: Theatre SilCo, Avista and Zenyth. And while Alleman says they wanted to lean away from a name with a geographical element, they settled on Theatre SilCo.
“We have a really strong relationship with the Town of Silverthorne,” he says, noting the $10 million facility the town paid for two-thirds of. “It’s just a symbiotic relationship unlike we’d seen before, and so that solidified (the name). Also, it felt bold, it felt fresh, it felt new … and so we decided to go with Theatre SilCo.”
Read our 2017 story about the theatre’s new facility in Silverthorne.
Renewed focus
With the pandemic mostly in the rear-view mirror, Alleman says the strategic plan also aims to help refocus the theatre for a somewhat changed world.
“We kind of feel like we’re starting over,” he says. “Maybe not as much as 20 years ago when I started, but we have to rebuild that consistent audience base that we kind of lost during Covid.
Rather than Boomers, he says Gen-X is the new audience demographic they’re targeting. And hitting the balance between crowd-pleasers that fill seats and more challenging material has become more complex. Stalwarts like Neil Simon comedies that used to reliably fill seats are no longer a given.
“It’s been more of a challenge in the past four or five years, Covid aside,” he says. “We did a really fantastic version of Barefoot in the Park, and it wasn’t even our top-three best seller that year. So the idea of doing some of these older shows that some of our more mature patrons remember is just changing because our audiences are changing, right? The target now really is Gen X, because my generation are the ones that are empty nesters or starting to be empty nesters — they start to have that expendable income.”
Another challenging factor he mentions is the increasingly polarized politics that can influence theatre in other ways.
“There are contrary opinions about the work that you do, and we’re not surprised anymore when a large donor comes to us and says, ‘If you continue to do these type of shows, we’re not going to give to you anymore,’ or ‘We would like to see more shows like this.’”
Alleman says the theatre’s ’22-‘23 lineup reflects one of the safest seasons they’ve ever programmed.
“Part of that is just because we feel like we’re starting at a deficit and we’ve got to build our audiences back a little bit,” he says. “It’s gotten harder and harder every year because you want to do those things that challenges your patrons and satisfies you and your team artistically and creatively. But you also know it’s a business. It’s show business, and ‘show’ is the adjective. So you’ve got to find that balance to build that audience.”
He’s quick to point out that doesn’t mean it’s all “fluff.” Theatre SilCo has some interesting shows coming up including The Half Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson and An Iliad by Lisa Peterson & Denis O’Hare as well as Baskerville — a newer play by farce-master Ken Ludwig.
And as Theatre SilCo works to tailor its programming to its audiences, it also has some potentially game-changing things going on around it: a massive infusion of cash and construction in Silverthorne that’s transforming the tiny town that sprang into existence to house workers building the Dillon Dam in the 1960s into a legit resort destination.
The theatre, Alleman says, has played no small role in that transformation.
“Kudos to the town staff and the town council in taking a big risk in investing so much in our organization to come down here, because none of this construction was happening then,” he says. “You can ask the town manager and he will tell you 100 percent … the theatre was the impetus for all of this development happening.”
Today, Alleman says he can look out the window of his office and see some $400 million worth of development going on around him.
“I think we can take some credit for that; I think the town would give us credit for some of that because we are here and the arts are here. These developers thought it was a win-win situation.”
All of that coinciding with the theatre’s rebrand points to a promising future for the theatre and the town, he says.
“I think the next three years is really going to show us the fruits of our labor.”
Listen to the full interview on the OnStage Colorado podcast.
Alex Miller is editor and publisher of OnStage Colorado. He has a long background in journalism, including stints as the top editor at the Vail Daily, Summit Daily News, Summit Country Journal, Vail Trail and others. He’s also been an actor, director, playwright, artistic director and theatre board member and has been covering theatre in Colorado since 1995.
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