Boo! Hiss!

Sad news. The Diamond Circle Melodrama will come to an end soon, and the future of the Diamond Circle Theatre inside the Strater Hotel is uncertain.
The who? The what? The where?
Yeah, this isn't Denver news. This is a story from the little town of Durango, former stomping grounds of a certain much-adored Big Bad Wolf.
I was never involved in the Diamond Circle Melodrama after I got started in acting, because I typically spent my summers in Summit County during high school. (Ain't divorce nifty, kids?) However, I do remember seeing one of the melodramas when I was a bit younger and thinking, "It's like a living cartoon!" Pretty cool when you're a kid, and a lot of fun when you're an adult as well, this melodrama.
I had my community theatre debut as Benjamin in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Diamond Circle Theatre when I was sixteen. That was with The Durango Lively Arts. I don't know if they're still putting on shows or not, but that was a fun group. I got my first singing lesson from our Joseph, a nice guy named Aaron Diem. I also got my first taste of being backstage at a real, live theatre. (My high school didn't count. We had a carpeted stage, and they stored wrestling mats in the wings.) When the twenty-something-blonde diva who played Potiphar's wife walked past me backstage in nothing but underwear, heels, and a smile, that was the moment I knew that I wanted to be an actor.
As one might expect, there's a bit of melodrama surrounding the closing of the melodrama, so here and here are two links to more of the story.
Support local theatre, wherever you are. No fooling around here, piglets, these places don't close because their houses are full.