The Wheeler Opera House unveiled its slate of events for the coming months last week. Film, music and comedy are all on the agenda, but also making appearances are more local arts groups than usual.
When Gena Buhler took over as the executive director of the Wheeler earlier this year, she brought tons of experience running arts organizations. She had worked in high-level positions in other groups through the mountains. And when she announced who was coming to the venue this winter, people were very happy.
That’s because she’s bringing in acts like Kevin Smith and Los Lonely Boys.
But one other thing sticks out about the line up. All of the different groups working with the venue to showcase their various arts.
“One of my goals was to figure out how to collaborate more with the community itself,” says Buhler. “The Wheeler is such an amazing asset to the community, but sometimes it had become more in the past couple of years about what the Wheeler was doing itself, and not the cohesion and collaboration we were having with everyone else in town.”
She thought, “how can we all be working together a little bit more?” The solution? Meet with all of the groups. Go to their performances. Figure out how they operate and get involved. The result is a slate of entertainment ranging from film and comedy, to classical music and Broadway.
Paige Price, executive director of Theatre Aspen, says the process of getting the famous Broadway singer Susan Egan was smooth and seamless
“We got together recently and she was wanting to have a theatrical night, and something that featured a Broadway flavor,” says Price. “She reached out to me and in about fifteen minutes, we had decided who to get, and about two hours later we’d been in touch and it worked out very, very quickly.”
Long story short, Gena met with Paige. Paige reached out to Susan. Susan comes to Aspen. Pretty simple, right? And lots of groups are finding it to be that way. The Aspen Music Festival and School has been using the Wheeler Opera House for years to perform its operas.
Alan Fletcher, president of the music school, says the more that arts groups can collaborate, the better the arts scene will be.
“The Wheeler is one of the great cultural assets of the city of Aspen,” says Fletcher. “The more all of us in the nonprofit sector, the better.
Price agrees with Fletcher. The more groups work together, the better things are going forward. She thinks it is probably the best way to make sure that everybody in the arts world is able to be strong moving forward.
“It’s not a huge metro area so being mindful of all of the organizations in town and their programming or programming challenges or strengths. It would behoove any executive director of the city theater to do.
There doesn’t seem to be much risk in sharing work and sharing space with other groups. It was one of Gena’s priorities to involve the local community more, rather than just focus on getting people in the door all by herself.
Her one concern is if she jumped the gun. Did she show her hand too quickly, or pick the schedule too hastily?
“I know what I think will work, and I know what people are telling me,” says Buhler. “But will it work? I have no idea. We have four family shows this year, because everyone said we need more stuff for families. It could completely flop on its face. I don’t know. That’s primarily my concern. Was this the right thing to do? Not being here for a full winter season and not seeing it before booking it.”
In addition to reaching out to the arts community, there is also a new local membership program that was launched last week. About 100 people have signed up already.
Tickets for the Laff Festival have also been moving. About 200 are out the door so far.
