Chip Walton believes this story should open in the late 1990s, when Curious Theatre Company began casting its first show. Walton and other local artists had recently earned acclaim for their independent production of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America (“a stunning achievement for all involved,” gushed the Denver Post) and wanted to spin the momentum into a new theater company in Denver. They decided Curious’ debut show would be another Pulitzer winner, How I Learned to Drive.
“It’s a comedy-drama about a pedophile,” Walton says. The main characters are Uncle Peck, the pedophile, and Li’l Bit, the victim. Casting of the latter, who narrates the play as an adult but also appears at times as an 11-year-old, came down to two locals, C. Kelly Leo and Jada Suzanne Dixon. Leo and Dixon were evenly matched in terms of training and experience, but Leo won the role. “She had this real sort of—and it wasn’t an acting thing, it was part of who she was as a person—you just bought her as this young, vulnerable girl,” Walton says.
The anecdote does have dramatic effect because—in a third-act twist worthy of Hitchcock—the once-rejected Dixon became Curious’ artistic director in August. Walton will step down as producing artistic director following the company’s 25th season, (September 10 to October 15). Co-founder Dee Covington, Walton’s wife, will also leave her role as education director. “One of the beautiful opportunities that is in front of me and the staff is that this is a transition year,” Dixon says. “It’s not, ‘Dee and Chip are out next week and Jada is in.’ ” Eventually, though, that will happen. The question—the thickening plot, if you will—is whether a theater company meticulously constructed in the image of its founder can succeed without him.
