Feature Articles

A variety of articles from Denver area newspapers and magazines.


Icon:

January, 1994

Jeremy Cole: Taking Theater in a New Direction

by Leslie Petrovski

He's the quintessential starving artist. He is local director Jeremy Cole, who seems happily bohemian; as he and I both write checks for four-dollar sandwiches. "If I'm starving," Cole shrugs, "it's in a pretty bourgeois way."

In the last year, Cole, who holds down a full-time job at the Museum Store Association, has directed five shows and costumed two. Industrial Arts Theatre's Beirut, a dystopian drama about life in the post-AIDS age, received a nomination for Best Direction of a Play and Best Production of a Play in the 1993 Denver Drama Critics' Circle Awards. The Lady and the Clarinet, at the Avenue Theatre, garnered the Best Theatrical Production honor from Westword's 1993 "Best of Denver" Awards.

"Jeremy is one of a handful of directors (in Denver) capable of going completely beyond the text," says Alan Dumas of The Rocky Mountain News. "He can take a script like Beirut or The Lady and the Clarinet and turn them into these big hits, these interesting complex shows filled with his own world-view and interpretation. Unlike a lot of directors who treat the script as sacrosanct, the script for Jeremy is just one small element. There's nobody in Denver who can touch him."

At 31, Cole still has the boyish look of a well-meaning high school thespian, a little gangly, pale and sweet-faced. He is refreshingly unmaterialistic -- he doesn't own a car, and has no interest in learning to drive -- and he gives much of what extra money he earns to charity. He is also proudly and unabashedly gay, and he outs himself almost immediately as his concession to gay politics.

Theatre is, in part, always about politics for Cole; he rarely picks a show that doesn't have what he calls "some redeeming social quality," something to say about race, AIDS, families. But it is also about imagination, about pushing the bounds of a script beyond realism. One of Cole's biggest challenges as a director, he says, is "deflecting what TV and film have done in creating the horrible trend toward realism and naturalism. So many plays look like they take place in living rooms. They have doors that work, walls with wallpaper. That doesn't take a lot of imagination.

"Theatre is where you want the audience to use their imaginations. That's what makes it theatrical. It's not just an art of the eye, but an art of the imagination.""

Cole came to Denver from Austin in 1986 after graduating from St. Edward's University with a major in directing. "I came for love. Big mistake." After his relationship ended - on the day he arrived in town, he notes ironically - he took a job in the insurance industry and, after a short hiatus, began directing. He has since taken a Master's of Education degree through an outreach program from Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass.

Cole worked at many of Denver's small theatres, including the Denver Victorian Playhouse, Hunger Artists, The Changing Scene, Industrial Arts Theatre, The Avenue Theatre and Theater on Broadway. The latter relationship ended badly when a dispute with TOB artistic director Steve Tangedal led to the board asking for Cole's resignation. "At the time I was furious," he says. "But it turned out to be a better move for me. Otherwise I never would have directed Beirut, The Lady and the Clarinet or Children of a Lesser God.

Cole's upcoming projects include performing in Largo Desolato for Hunger Artists and Playing With Fire, an adaptation of Frankenstein that is slated for Hunger Artists, as well, at the end of May.

Playing With Fire, about the monster's need for acceptance from his human father, holds personal meaning for Cole. His own paternal relationship is dead, victimized by a horrifying case of abuse.

In Austin, he dropped his given name (Lance Smith) and changed his identity to Jeremy Laurence Cole, as a way to re-create himself. "I would advise anyone who is having trouble with their past to change their name," he says. "Changing one's identity...it was the single best move I've made in my whole life. I have more self-esteem, more control over my life than ever before.

"I have to embrace that part of myself. You can't deny it. Yes, it happened. And I'm getting over it. Every day it gets better."

Between work and theatre, Cole keeps himself thoroughly and unremittingly busy -- "to keep myself from thinking about my lack of social life," he jokes.

"I keep thinking I should treat myself, take a ski weekend," he says. "But right now while I have strength, relative youth, and health...when I'm 50 and working 40 hours a week, I may not have the reserves to direct five shows a year. I may be tired and catch a few more colds, but I work a lot."

Like many in Denver's theatre community, he is chasing the dream of full-time work in the theatre. Cole, who dislikes New York, says his best shot in the theatre world is working as an itinerant director on the regional theatre circuit. "It used to be that a show would premiere in New York. Now, more often than not, shows grow in regional theatres then go to New York," he says. "And when you look at what's on Broadway - light comedies and blockbuster musicals - rarely is there a dramatic show. But there is a lot of that in regional theatre.

"If I have to give up the dream of working in the theatre full time, then I know I will have explored all these things and given it my best."



Out Front:

August, 1997

Denver's Theatrical Chameleon: Jeremy Cole

by David Marlowe


At the conclusion of a recent interview on the patio of The Grand, I put down my pen and noticed a woman hesitantly approaching our table. She paused for just a moment and then said somewhat haltingly, "I noticed that you were taking down every word this man said, and I couldn't help wondering who he is?"

"Madame," I said, "this is Jeremy Cole, one of our best and brightest men of the Denver theatre scene. Jeremy can act, direct, make costumes, create lighting and sound designs and has been nominated for and won numerous awards for his work. Jeremy is about to star in Burn This at the Acoma City Center while directing Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love at the Theatre at Jack's."

"But how can you do all these things? And all at once?" she asked him. "Sleep is a thing that is highly overrated," he said with an impish grin. As I left I reflected how the interview had been filled with laughter and insight. Jeremy is friendly, open, flip and knowledgeable. It was a bit like walking a tightrope between his serious side and his bratty side, which he seems quite comfortable doing.

I appreciate the professional aspect of Jeremy and this was a good opportunity to get to know the Jeremy Cole behind the scenes. I have appreciated almost all of his work. He is very sure of himself, and willing to stand by it and to polish it. It will be interesting to see the work which will be unveiled by Jeremy in the next twenty years, and how his confidence in his own discernment and his own opinions about the theatre will play out. At present, Jeremy has a penchant for the controversial, and as far as we have seen, the apex of his career has been primarily about that.

Not into experimentation for the sake of experimentation, Jeremy finds 'challenge' to be the driving force of his plays. "I like doing plays that don't get done all the time, aren't well-known and that I haven't seen before. I like to constantly shift gears, moving from an Arthur Miller to a musical to a Nicky Silver to a multi-media version of The Adding Machine, for example."

Looking into the future, Jeremy would like to do some work on the regional circuit. I don't want to live in New York. I'd like to do a show in Seattle...Minneapolis...branch out into other markets."


The Rocky Mountain News:

May, 1994

Theater's hooked him and won't let go

by Alan Dumas

In 1986, Jeremy Cole decided he was finished with theater. He took a job as an insurance clerk with Security Life, and for four solid years sat at a desk processing claims.

It was a good try, and it might have worked except there was this one script that he'd always wanted to direct, and he couldn't get it out of his mind. It was the black feminist poetic drama for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

"I figured no one in their right mind would pick a little white boy to direct that," he said. "So I worked out an arrangement with Theatre on Broadway and produced it myself."

And, despite some misgivings about a white male directing a black female ensemble, the show was a huge critical and popular hit. Cole felt vindicated. He also was hooked on theater again.

After growing up in a poor family in San Diego ("the youngest of about 8,000 kids"), Cole put himself through school in Texas and Massachusetts, earning degrees in theatre and education, and did a lot of acting and directing. He came to Denver for love ("Big mistake; it lasted a day") and, figuring it was time to join real life, got that job with Security Life.

Now, at age 30, Cole is one of the city's most popular directors, with a string of successes including Eastern Standard, Beirut, The Lady and the Clarinet, Talking With..., and Children of a Lesser God. And, although he did quit his job as an insurance clerk ("I decided I wanted a soul"), he still supports himself as an office clerk, albeit now for a non-profit group involved int the arts that he found through a temporary employment agency. He also realizes it's impossible for him to stay away from the stage.

"There's something so humanizing about it," he says. "Once you're pulled into the arts you can never quite give it up. It's like Catholicism."

Cole's work as a director is marked with an inventiveness and energy that keeps an audience involved and a little off balance. He describes his process as "organic," which means he pretty much makes it up as he goes along.

"You've got this specific group of actors and this set and these particular costumes, and you start there," he says. "You don't take a cookie cutter and try to make them fit some predetermined mold. I can't sit down and plot it all out first, about how we'll get from here to here. That would be very uninteresting. A play is a journey, and things start happening when people start taking risks...you can't plan that out in advance."

Part of Cole's strategy as an artist is to pick scripts and projects as different from one another as possible, including things like colored girls that people might think are beyond his reach.

"Don't tell me I can only do plays by white, gay, male, recovering Catholics, because that's me," he says. "Theater is fundamentally a type of communication. If you're not always trying to open up new avenues, to discover new lines of communication, then why bother?"

Cole is in the early stages of putting together his own theater company. He would like to see smaller theater groups mount a serious challenge to the Denver Center Theater Company.

"The Denver Center needs some competition big time," he says. "They already have it; I mean, if someone sees a good show by Hunger Artists, they've already seen something better than they generally see at the Center, but people have this idea that if it isn't a $30 ticket, then it isn't good."

In the short term, Cole has more work than he can handle, with upcoming shows stretching into next winter with the Victorian Theatre, Hunger Artists, and Theatre on Broadway. He also tries to keep up a life as a political activist with groups such as Amnesty International and for gay rights.

"But I'm discovering it's tough to do everything you want," he says. "I mean, you want to be a humanitarian artist tap dancing tuba player, but some days it's really hard."


The Denver Post

January, 1991

Race issue embroils director of ethnic play

by Sandra Dillard-Rosen


When white director Jeremy Cole decided to do the all-black play, "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf," he was unprepared for the firestorm of controversy that followed.

Some actresses refused to work for him and other blacks implied that a white man was incapable of directing Ntozake Shange's ethnically intimate play.

The Theatre on Broadway production nevertheless is a critical and box office hit, but it's only one example of an issue that won't go away -- race: Spike Lee just replaced Norman Jewison as director of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"; the Broadway production of "Miss Saigon" was nearly lost when Asian actors protested the casting of white star Jonathan Pryce; and playwright August Wilson is refusing to let a white director make a film of his play "Fences."

Both Eddie Murphy, producer of "Fences" and Paramount Pictures said they wanted only the best director, black or white. But Wilson complained that "whites have set themselves up as custodians of our experience. Until the industry is ready to hire a black to direct De Niro or Redford, blacks should at least be able to direct their own experience."

"Colored girls" is selling out nightly in an extended run through March 2, playing to blacks and whites, but Cole says he still feels hurt and bewildered by the hostility he met for tackling Shange's choreopoem.

"I've wanted to do this show forever," said Cole, 29, who added three of Shange's later poems, a dance and two songs to give the 1975 work and up-front in-your-face immediacy. "If I like a show, I don't even think about whether it's black, or white, or whatever.

"When I said I was going to do it, people asked me, 'Are you going to be able to cast it?' But I was sure there are a lot of good black actresses out there who often don't get cast unless the script specifically calls for it.

"When I did 'Dreams That Money Can Buy' last year, I had a role for one black actress, and seven wonderful black actresses showed up."

It was then that Cole decided to go ahead with "colored girls," grabbing it for an open time slot on TTOB's calendar.

The first day of auditions, more than a dozen black actresses appeared, "but several of them were very rude, not only to me, but to each other during the audition monologues," Cole said. "It really hurt."

There were sotto voce complaints about Cole being white. "If I had a prejudice against black women, why in the hell would I put my own money into this show?" said the Denver director, who heads Renascence Productions in additions to a full-time job at an insurance agency.

"If I had the actresses dress in Jemima outfits and doing pickaninny dances, I could understand it, but this show is a beautiful example of the black woman's spirit, her strength and and a testimony to her ability to recover from whatever life deals her -- whether it comes from society, or her men, or whatever.

"If I had any intention of showing black women in a bad light, I wouldn't have picked this show, I would have picked something by Tennessee Williams where they are all servants."

Cole cast the show, "going for every different skin shade, every different age, every different voice," but the day of the first read-through, one woman dropped out. "She said she loved the show, had always wanted to do it and still did, but couldn't do it under the circumstances; she just couldn't do it with a white man directing," Cole said.

"I went home and could barely sleep. I wondered, 'Does the whole cast feel like this? Are they going to drop out one by one?'"

At the next rehearsal he met with the cast and asked their feelings. One woman said she had done "colored girls" twice before in other cities and had yet to have a black director. The others said if they had qualms, they were willing to work through them.

"So we went ahead," said Cole, referring to himself and choreographer Wilhelmina Evans, who is black, "and the few problems we had were the typical problems of casts -- ego and people showing up late -- nothing racial."

Then on Christmas Eve, Cole received a call from a local black actor/director who said he wanted to monitor a rehearsal because of "concerns in the community" about the production.

"I suspect it was just he, himself," said Cole, who allowed the man to come, although under theater protocol, rehearsals aren't open to the public. The man was critical, according to Cole. "To insult me was one thing, but to come and insult black women, saying they didn't know how to be black women..." His words trailed off.

"I took the same honest and personal approach I would take directing anything, and I was reassured by the support of the cast. They've been just lovely through everything.

"Talent isn't seen through color," emphasized Ernestine Mathis, who plays the Lady in Purple in the show. "If we could go beyond issues of color, there could be more art and more creativity, because we wouldn't be bound by the bonds of color."

Leola Easterwood-Sanders, cast as the Lady in Red, agreed. "I feel privileged to have been one of the ladies in this play. As people recognize the colors of the rainbow, they'll know it doesn't mean our clothes, but the fact that although it's about black women and has a black cast, the message is universal."

"Our best revenge is having the show go so well, " concluded Marla Walker, the Lady in Green.


The Boulder Daily Camera:

July, 1995

An emotional 'Investigation'

by Dianne Zuckerman

Like many people involved in stage work, Jeremy Cole's first brush with theater came in high school, when he got into acting.

"But I got rid of that pretty quick. I was too busy bossing everybody else around," Cole quips. "So when I went to college, I took the directing track."

It was a fortuitous choice. While Cole, a San Diego native who moved to Denver in 1986, still occasionally acts and does design work for various theater groups, it's directing that has earned him the most recognition from area critics and audiences.

His many well-staged Denver productions include "The Mound Builders," "The Baltimore Waltz," and "Eastern Standard," which won the 1991 Denver Drama Critics Circle Award for best ensemble performance.

Now Boulder audiences will have the opportunity to see Cole's work closer to home. His production of "The Investigation," opens Friday at the Guild Theater. Peter Weiss' powerful Holocaust drama marks the revival of Director's Theatre, a Boulder company that presented several shows in the late '80s, then went on hiatus.

Jumped at chance

When Director's Theatre producer James Maxwell offered Cole the opportunity to stage a play of his choice to mark the company's return to the local theater scene, Cole jumped at the chance to do "The Investigation," which he first read in 1985.

"I'm absolutely thrilled at the chance to do the play, because it's one of those shows that I've given to other theaters, and they've gone 'Are you out of your mind?' It always surprises me when theater people are unable to see a script's possibilities."

"The Investigation" premiered in Germany in 1965, shortly after the conclusion of the trial on which it is based. The play uses actual testimony form the trial, held to investigate the deaths of 4 million people in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

Drawn to play

Cole was drawn to the play, which playwright and scholar Eric Bentley called one of the "outstanding theatrical events of the 1960's," for several reasons.

"A play has to have some sort of relevance for me, an emotional, historical or social relevance I want to explore," Cole says. He also looks for works produced infrequently in the area and material with a heightened sense of language and room for theatricality.

Because of television, Cole feels, "People are so grounded in realism and naturalism, everything tends to be spelled out for us. To me, that's not what theater is about. What theater can do so well is engage the imagination."

Although the script is taken from edited trial manuscripts, Cole feels its structure allows for a theatrical staging. In keeping with Weiss' directions, he is keeping the set very simple, with no attempt to construct a formal courtroom.

"While Weiss didn't give us a plot per se, he did tie together testimony that thematically or structurally goes together. So the very first piece is about arriving at the camp. Then we enter and go through different places, ending at the crematorium, the final destination."

The 10 chapters of the play are titled "The Song of the Platform" (about the arrival of trains carrying people sent to the camps), "The Song of the Possibility of Survival," and so on. Cole likens these individual songs to a series of elegies about the experience.

The script contains 30 characters, only two of whom are women. Cole has cast 10 actors, an even mix of men and women. "I've totally split it up. A different actor is the judge in each song, and different actors play the accused and the witnesses. It's fascinating to watch them at one moment be a witness, and then have to step into the role of the accused."

To add theatricality and help handle the intensity of the material, Cole is incorporating some use of Bertolt Brecht's alienation technique. The highly presentational style allows spectators to distance themselves emotionally while provoking them intellectually to prompt correlations between stage events and relevant social conditions.

'Never say'

Cole, who has been researching the trial and the Holocaust in preparation for this production, also added a Yiddish song used in the resistance movement. "In English it translates as 'Never Say.' Basically, never say you've come to the end, don't admit defeat.

The cast learned the song from Fred Englard, a 79-year-old Auschwitz survivor whom Cole met through the Jewish Community Center in Denver.

Cole also has added some dance-movement sequences and one mimed sequence where we're given a break from the testimony, but are still getting the story told.

"I don't want it to be Holocaust 101," Cole emphasizes. "I don't want it to be a watered-down version, although I have cut the script considerably just because it's so long. My big fear is having an audience coming in and leaving numb. I don't want people to feel they're survivors of the production!"

In deciding what to keep in and what to cut, Cole has tried to find "a happy medium between accosting the audience with information and only giving highlights that don't disturb them. It doesn't do me, spiritually, any good, to have the audience leave the same as they came in."

Showing the hope

While "The Investigation" contains a lot of heavy material, "You can still show the hope through it, which is what I'm trying to do with this piece. To show what Fred Englard showed us the evening we spent with him -- the glow of the possibilities of survival to keep the word alive, to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Although "The Investigation" focuses on events that occurred 50 years ago, Cole, who is not Jewish, believes the material still has relevance because of what it says about the effect of hatred and bigotry against any group of people.

"This kind of prejudice is still very much with us today," he says, mentioning the inflammatory anti-gay stance taken by groups such as Colorado for Family Values, the force behind Amendment 2.

"As much as we'd like to day the Holocaust could never happen again, oh sure it could. Absolutely. Especially the less people are educated about it."

The importance of keeping the story of the Holocaust alive and a lesson for future generations is very much a part of what Cole hopes audiences will take away from "The Investigation."

"By using actors of various genders and ethnicities, I'm hoping people will realize it's not simply a history lesson, that it could still happen to day. That, depending on who's the judge, depending on what the situation is, anyone could be the oppressor, anyone could be the oppressed. It could happen again."

And given 50 years of technology, he says, " the new execution will be a lot more efficient than the old one was. We might never know about it."