Vol. 26 No. 8
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September 2016
Small-town Butte Theater packs a big entertainment punch By Jeanne Davant
T
he Butte Theater in Cripple Creek may be located in a small town, but it scores big for production values, great acting and people pleasing. “We’re not like any other theater in the area,” says Mel Moser, theater manager. “We’re small, and we like that. We like to get to know our patrons, and we want to be more than just a live entertainment venue.” This is a theater where the actors greet you in front with umbrellas if it’s raining, and who know patrons by their first names. At many theaters, “if you can’t make the show, you’re out of luck,” Moser says. “We allow our patrons to use their tickets at any time throughout the season if they can’t come.” Located above the Fire Department at 139 Bennett Ave., the venue is home to the Thin Air Theatre Company. The company is known for its professionalism and each year brings in high-quality talent from all over the country to produce and appear in a rotating roster of productions. Coming up this fall are a production of “The Foreigner,” a contemporary farce, and “Cripple Creepshow,” the theater’s Halloween show and olio. In “The Foreigner,” which runs from Sept. 2 through 24, a man on vacation at a hunting lodge in rural Georgia pretends he doesn’t understand English so he doesn’t have to interact with the other guests. When people start speaking freely around him, they don’t realize he’s overhearing their secrets and schemes. “It’s quick-paced, almost like a British farce,” Moser says. “If you love fast-paced comedy, you’ll love it.” “Cripple Creepshow” opens Sept. 30 and plays through Oct. 30. This Halloween melodrama, an anthology in the style of “Tales from the Darkside” and “The Twilight Zone,” is set in a big tent into which the audience walks. A ringmaster narrates some of the story and gets the audience involved.
Butte Theater manager Mel Moser performs during last year’s production of “A Christmas Donkey.”
The Butte, which has been around since 1896, originated as the Butte Concert and Beer Hall, a favorite hangout for prospectors who streamed into the Cripple Creek mining district after the discovery of gold in 1891. It began life as a saloon and performance venue. Later, the hall was renamed the Butte Opera House. It went on to become a dancing academy, furniture company, skating rink, secondhand store, weapons cache (it was known as The Armory), garage and storage facility for the Fire Department.
Courtesy photo
The city of Cripple Creek renovated the facility in 1999 and reopened the theater in 2000 under the direction of Steve and Bonnie Mackin, part of the second generation of a family with a long history of producing summer melodramas in Cripple Creek. The theater’s main room now has a 1,350-square-foot stage, seating for 185 guests, and state-of-the-art movie projectors and sound equipment. The Butte still presents classic melodramas in
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