Start of something new

By Kristin Skye Hoffman

Theatre, by nature, is a collaborative art form. Each play creates a new, small family. This small family is made up of the cast, designers, crew and director for just one production. That family extends to the group producing the show, meaning the company made up of producers, board members, the folks who run the box office and sell concessions, and ushers. This intricate family grows larger within the local communities of theatre groups within a given city or town.

Sometimes, though, families forget how much they need everyone to make a family strong. It is for this reason that I reached out to The Pueblo Star Journal to build a team of fellow community members involved in local theatre in Pueblo, the town where my love for the performing arts took root.

I’m Kristin. I spent most of my formative years in Pueblo and, while I have always loved it here, there was always something in me telling me I’d have to go elsewhere to have the sort of professional artistic experience I was after.

My next step as a young adult was to leave my hometown as a proud graduate of Pueblo Central

High School to pursue my love of the arts. It was at Central that I performed in many melodramas and homemade musicals, participated in the interpretation events on the Speech & Debate team, which had more to do with dramatic performance and acting than debate or arguing a point, and became the drama club president.

From my elementary school days through high school, I had taken countless classes at the Sangre De Cristo Arts Center, where I was also happy to perform in multiple District 60 summer musicals, like “Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Oklahoma!”

When I decided I was bound for New York City, I told my mother my plan and she said, “I know you’re going to New York; You’ve been ‘going to New York’ since you were 5-yearsold.”

It was there that I started my immersive education in the arts. I co-founded a not-forprofit theatre company with colleagues from college in Greeley who also made the trek to New York.

I eventually earned a Masters in Fine Arts in theatre direction at The New School, a private university based in Manhattan. My true education came from providing feedback to my peers in the field as part of a New York online theatre review team.

Martin Denton founded the NYTheatre.com publication, a company which hosted a team of independent theatre artists who would see and critique plays being produced around the city. This group was called “the reviewer squad.” Denton created this group to boost the independent theatre makers in the city.

Up-and-comers were often overshadowed by the bright lights, enormous