Art by Kennkarte

Mack Hall

The Denver Center Theatre Company, founded in 1978 by visionaries seeing the possibilities in an abandoned downtown stage, has enjoyed a remarkable history in its few years, and has helped make Denver an arts capital.

Unhappily, under the direction of its new leader, Kent Thompson, the Denver Center Theatre Company is now regressing in the direction of art through genetic coding.

When Leader Thompson became artistic director three years ago he perused the list of the 264 plays performed by the DCTC and judged each play – and thus judged the directors, the board, and the audiences of the last thirty years -- by its genetic origins. The results: not enough women and Latinos. Leader Thompson will now commission plays by genetic standards, with three or four plays written by women and one play by a Latino per year.

What is not clear is whether or not women may write more than four plays and the solo Latino may write more than one play per year. There is no quota for black or Chinese writers, which suggests that they do not need to be approved by someone like Leader Thompson.

Will writers and actors and set designers and other artists now be required to submit proof of genetic identity before they can be employed? What is the correct procedure for classifying new playwright Heather-Misty-Shannon-Dawn Gonzales whose parents are surnamed Olafson but who is happily married to Carlos? How will Leader Thompson categorize set designer Muffin who was born Bob but has decided to transgender him- or herself?

A photograph of Leader Thompson suggests that he is a generic white boy, though without perusal of his kennkarte, or racial identity card, one can’t be sure. If he is white and male, then who is he to judge authentic female or Latino writing? And what is the genetic makeup of the past directors of the Denver Center Theatre Company? Is Leader Thompson just another privileged white male?

Humanity has done the blood-and-soil thing before; the twentieth century still stinks of the millions of corpses of people who were killed because they were not of the genetic coding approved by their governments.

And most governments have for political purposes attempted to control art at times, sometimes through bad laws, sometimes by violence, sometimes by the gentle control of funding. Happily, there have always been rebels: swing kids in the Nazi time, samizdat publications under the Communists, photographs smuggled out of Tibet, and artists working in secret in Cuba. Art ennobles humanity and celebrates truth, and so annoys tyrants.

The Denver Center Theatre Company is funded by profits and by contributions, and thus is free to follow Leader Thompson’s curious, if not creepy, ideology of art-by-genetics. But those who love art, freedom, and the dignity of the individual are equally free to avoid the submission of art to ideology and to follow their own hearts and intellects as they celebrate their own, non-regulation creativity.