BETC Selects New Artistic and Managing Directors

When Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado (BETC) co-founders and husband-and-wife team Rebecca Remaly and Stephen Weitz announced back in December 2022 that they would be stepping down from their leadership positions at the end of its 2022-2023 season, they left big shoes to fill. And the theater’s board of directors, which conducted the search for their successors, worked carefully to find the perfect fit.

“BETC’s mission statement was the board’s standard for deciding on the future of BETC after the founders’ departure,” says board president and chair of development Lauri McNown. “Instead of sticking to a timeline or feeling that we needed to get positions filled, we considered a number of options, both in terms of personnel and programming, that would continue our tradition of providing powerful, engaging, top-quality performances and programs with meaningful impacts beyond the stage.”

For more than three months, the theater community waited with bated breath for the announcement of BETC’s new leaders and the next steps. The silence was broken on March 30, when the theater announced that BETC’s board of directors had unanimously voted to hire Jessica Robblee as artistic director and Mark Ragan as managing director. Both Robblee and Ragan have been active in the Colorado theater community for years and are fierce supporters of BETC.

“Stephen and Rebecca are heroes,” says Ragan. “They have done so many years of nonstop work alongside Heather Beasley, and the BETC ensemble members are amazing as well. We feel the awesome responsibility of continuing their work.”

And while Ragan and Robblee acknowledge that they have a tough act to follow, the incoming leaders are accomplished artists who believe they have what it takes to continue BETC’s impressive legacy. 

Robblee is a director, writer, teacher, producer and Equity actor who has created theater in Colorado for more than twenty years. She served as a director for Buntport Theater for twelve seasons, where she performed 103 episodes of a fortnightly original comedy series, 37 episodes of a monthly original comedy series, and six original touring shows. Her work with Buntport Theater led to a partnership with the Denver Art Museum, where she created plays to educate students and families about art.

She has won a number of awards – including a 2015 Best of Denver for Best Actress in a Comedy – for her work with many theater companies in the area, including the Arvada Center Black Box Repertory Company, Buntport Theater, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Curious Theatre Company, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and many more.

Ragan is a former national political reporter who covered the White House and Congress in the 1980s and 1990s. He left journalism to found Ragan Communications and PR Daily, a nationally recognized content and communication company in Chicago, which he grew to over $12 million in sales. After retiring from his business, he embarked on a career as an actor, director and producer in the Boulder and Denver areas.

His 2021 production of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, which he directed for Breckenridge Backstage Theatre, was nominated for six Henry Awards and won three.

Robblee and Ragan met while performing in Mary Zimmerman‘s adaptation of The Odyssey at the 2021 Colorado Shakespeare Festival. “While we were backstage snacking during a rain delay or something, we started talking about future theater projects,” says Robblee. “I told him about stuff I had done at Buntport and other theaters, which evolved into a larger conversation, and we ended up staying in touch. I would jot him a note here and there asking what he was up to and planning.”

That backstage conversation became reality when they co-founded Clover & Bee Productions earlier this year. Early in the production process for the first show, The Belle of Amherst, which Ragan was directing and Robblee was starring in as Emily Dickinson, Ragan requested to rent theater space at the Dairy Arts Center for their next shows.

“We had hoped for one or two spots, but we were approved for four,” says Robblee. ‘We were like, ‘What? Why did we get four?’ Then we learned a little while later that Rebecca and Stephen were stepping away from BETC, which meant they weren’t applying for any venues in the space, which had been their spot for so long.”

Shortly after that, Ragan received a call from Margot Crowe, BETC’s director of development, who asked him to consider applying for the vacant position. “[Margot] told me that I should really think about it because the board hadn’t made a decision on what to do,” recalls Ragan. “She said that Stephen and Rebecca had left that decision up to the board, and that led to a more in-depth conversation with the board.”

BETC, Ragan and Robblee were brought together by a confluence of events, according to McNown. “Mark and Jess had just launched a new theater company when they learned of Stephen and Rebecca’s planned departure,” says McNown. “They contacted us, and we began to explore their potential involvement with BETC. The board had several long question-and-answer sessions with Mark and Jess about all aspects of their approach to theater. We explored basic values in production, business matters such as the budget, commitment to the community, EDI issues and so many other matters.”

Robblee and Ragan are currently going through orientation in BETC’s transition committee, and will officially take on their roles on July 1. Beasley, Remaly and Weitz are actively working with the new leadership to ensure a smooth changeover.

“The timing of projects that fell into our laps has been serendipitous,” says Robblee. “When we heard that Stephen and Rebecca were stepping away, that became an opportunity for us to join forces. Clover & Bee and the Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado – it’s all these insects melding and cross-pollinating different artistic projects, and we are pretty excited about it.”

One of their top priorities is selecting four shows for BETC’s 2023-2024 season. “We are looking for balance above all else,” says Ragan. “How can we bring audiences everything from madcap comedies to classics to new plays? And when I say new plays, I mean both works by local playwrights that have never been performed and shows right off Broadway. One of the plays we are looking at, which I can’t name right now, has never been performed outside New York. After it finishes its critically acclaimed run in New York, we’re going to bring it to Boulder.”

Robblee stresses that building a great season is an art form and wants to make sure they have everything in order before releasing information about BETC’s upcoming season. 

“Conservatively, I would say we will announce our next season in late May or early June,” says Robblee. “But we have to wait for approval from our board, and we still have a lot of steps we need to complete. So I would put an asterisk next to that time, too.”

“This is different from how we were operating before with Clover & Bee, when it was just Jess and me,” adds Ragan. “Now we have a budget that has to be approved by a board; we have a season that has to be approved by a board; we have a staff that has to be approved by a board. So it’s a long process.”

As for Clover & Bee, he says, “Our plan is to fold Clover & Bee into Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado,[which has to be approved by the board]. One of our ambitious goals is to do a one-off production in addition to BETC’s fourth show. We might add musical events that might be a one-night event, an improv night or a staged reading that we would program through Clover & Bee, and we are thinking about ways to use it as our outreach point to Denver.”

The first production under Robblee and Ragan’s leadership will debut in October 2023. BETC’s operations will continue with a mix of new and longtime staff members. The final BETC production under the leadership of Remaly and Weitz is Eden Prairie, 1971, by award-winning playwright Mat Smart, which runs at Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center through April 29.

“BETC’s board of directors encourages everyone to join us for this National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere of Eden Prairie, 1971 as a way of showing appreciation to Rebecca and Stephen for their years of artistic excellence and stewardship, and to welcome Jessica and Mark as they lead BETC into its next evolution,” says McNown.

Meanwhile, Robblee and Ragan are excited to continue cultivating relationships in the community that BETC has already established, as well as to develop new partnerships. 

“As far as what we have before us, we have this incredible canvas, and it’s not just a blank canvas; it is a canvas that was handed down to us by brilliant people,” says Robblee. “So it already kind of feels like a rarefied canvas that is being handed to us to play with and extend to Boulder audiences.”

Learn more about BETC at betc.org.