Reader: With Germinal closing, culture is dying in Denver

Ed Baierlein, the founder of Germinal Stage Denver, has sold the building the theater moved into back in 1986. Juliet Wittman took a look back at Germinal's impact on Denver performers, and Denver itself, in a story posted here yesterday that included an interview with Baierlein himself. "I don't know...

By Patricia Calhoun

January 10, 2013

Audio By Carbonatix

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Ed Baierlein, the founder of Germinal Stage Denver, has sold the building the theater moved into back in 1986. Juliet Wittman took a look back at Germinal's impact on Denver performers, and Denver itself, in a story posted here yesterday that included an interview with Baierlein himself. "I don't know how important from any perspective Germinal Stage has been," Baierlein told her. "I know it's been great fun and very absorbing. There's a core of people who will really miss us, maybe a thousand. That's not a lot in the final determination. It's been a really good life for us and will continue to be as long as we can keep doing stuff: I view what's coming up as a new project, just to find out what's out there and what's available, if anything."

The piece ends with this quote from Baierlein: "But I'm not really concerned with my legacy. Like all theater, it's ephemeral and transient and when it's gone, it's gone. The things that we've done were gone when we closed or when somebody saw them, and that's the great thing about theater. It's there at a particular point in time and then not there any more."

In response, strangefortune says simply:

Culture is dying in Denver.

What will you miss about Germinal Stage? What do you think its impact has been on Denver?

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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