With rising rents, theater companies are renting a Denver office space to rehearse (2024)

It was too expensive for the Three Leaches Theatre Company to practice Shakespeare in a proper rehearsal space, so they rented an office.

“Literally just a simple 400-square-foot room. We have some furniture in it, from our shows,” said Melissa Leach, co-founder of the Three Leaches.

The office cost Leach and her co-founder, Amber Irish, about $800 per month, and they rented it out to other small theater companies, like Flamboyán, a new Puerto Rican-focused theater group, for $15 an hour.

Finding rehearsal space in Denver has become increasingly challenging as rents go up and small theater companies are pushed out.

Meanwhile, remaining community strongholds, like the Buntport Theater near the Arts District on Santa Fe and The People’s Building in Aurora, are booked out a year in advance due to the high demand and low supply of affordable spaces.

In late May, the Benchmark Theater in Lakewood announced it would be leaving its home of six years. That meant an open theater space. The building is owned by the Colfax Business Improvement District, which leases it to creative community organizations. Leach interviewed for the spot and landed the new sublease.

Three for one

The Three Leaches will have its name on the theater space, but they’ll be joined by Flamboyán, founded last year by Jon Marcantoni, and Josh Berkowitz of The Laboratory on Santa Fe. Flamboyán will occupy the stage four months of the year — February, June, September and November — while Berkowitz will largely control the theater’s attached gallery space. But the terms are flexible, and Leach and Marcantoni emphasized collaboration among the three groups.

“We have a working relationship that’s just like, ‘communicate, overcommunicate,’” Marcantoni said. “Let’s work together, let’s make amazing art, let’s invite the community in and let’s be a space that isn’t just for us.”

The 40 West Arts District has been absorbing Metro Denver’s outpriced artists for the better part of a decade. In 2017, a handful of galleries, including Pirate Contemporary Art Gallery, Edge Gallery and Next Gallery, moved into the blossoming district. The theater building itself has housed 40 West Arts Gallery, Edge Theatre and the Benchmark Theater over the past 13 years.

The new Three Leaches Theater will be part performance space and part community hub, Leach said. They plan on hosting workshops, karaoke nights and participating in the art district’s vibrant First Friday Art Walks. Of course, they’ll also rent the theater out to small companies when they can. Leach said she hasn’t decided on rates yet, but it will probably be somewhere around the $15 per hour mark, just like in the office space.

“I want to talk to people in the community and see what is doable,” she said.

“We’re still doing this?”

Leach and Irish started their company 14 years ago, a couple of self-described “nerdy theater kids” with dreams of creating a “fun, exciting, kind of edgy theater that did what we wanted to do, and was affordable to everybody,” Leach said.

They planted a flag in “bare bones, scrappy” productions, grounded in a philosophy that good plays don’t require elaborate sets and costumes. They budgeted $1,000 per play, including all rentals, and kept ticket prices under $20.

“Every couple of years we’d be like, ‘We’re still doing this?’” she said. They kept doing it. They’ve produced 13 seasons worth of shows, including 10 minute plays, a Zoom play, “Macbeth” and lots of absurdist comedies.

In 2021, Leach told Shoutout Colorado that they started excluding rental space fees from their $1,000 budgets because spaces were getting too expensive in Denver. They also switched to a pay-what-you-can ticket system to eliminate hesitation by new theatergoers.

“People are more likely to try something new if it costs them $5, rather than $30,” she said.

Making it work

Coming out of the pandemic, The Buntport Theater — which Leach considers a “role model” of community theater spaces — decided to offer their rehearsal space for free, before switching to a rate that is “just enough to keep our heating and cooling systems running,” Buntport co-founder Erin Rollman said.

“It was not a business or financial decision,” Rollman said. “We’re not making money, in fact we’re losing money. We made the decision because we know it’s extremely difficult to produce work in this town, and there are very few spaces to rent at this point.” She said they’re able to make up for the financial burden of cheap rental fees through grant funding from foundations like the Science and Cultural Facilities District, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and the Olson Vander Heyden Foundation.

But word got out — way out — about Buntport’s offer. According to the theater’s website, they are “overwhelmed with requests” by artists trying to book time. Not to mention, the Buntport has its own shows to rehearse and perform, including a season-opening production of “Buntport’s 55th Original Show” that starts Nov. 1. Rollman is excited at the prospect of another space to point inquiring artists toward.

“Honestly, it is overwhelming,” Rollman said. “It will just be nice to finally say, ‘there’s this other space you should check out.’”