They say when a butterfly takes flight, the ripple it causes can build into a tornado half a world away.
Rebecca Remaly and Stephen Weitz flapped their wings in 2006 when they started the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company with nothing. Seventeen years later, they have built BETC (or, more colloquially, “Betsy”) into one of the most stable, accomplished and honored theater companies in Colorado — one, appropriately enough, now known as the Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado.
BETC will have staged 71 plays by season’s end, most of them thought-provoking contemporary works, world premieres and reimagined classics not being staged elsewhere. The annual operating budget has grown from $12,000 in 2006 to just shy of $1 million. The company has employed hundreds of artists over the years, with an annual payroll now around $350,000.
Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado founders Rebecca Remaly and Stephen Weitz will be laving the company after 17 years.
“Rebecca and Stephen are just so committed,” said Associate Artistic Director Heather Beasley. “They relentlessly show up for the people around them.”
But it’s time, they both say, to give their wings a rest.
Remaly and Weitz, who married in 2008 and became parents in 2012, announced today they will be leaving the company when the current season ends on April 29. It’s just the latest foundational shift in the local theater landscape this year, following the departure of Chip Walton and Dee Covington from Denver’s Curious Theatre Company and the impending closure of the 46-year-old BDT Stage dinner theater.
For the Weitzes, and millions like them, the pandemic was a time to take stock.
“Being forced to stop and slow down was a real wake-up call,” said Weitz, who was named the Colorado Theater Person of the Year in 2012. “I don’t think either of us realized the reality of the life we had been living for 17 years. And I don’t think either of us realized how burned out we were at that point.”
BETC was in the best financial shape of its existence in 2019. But the full economic fallout of the shutdown is only now becoming clear.
“A lot of companies are realizing just how far set back this whole industry has been by the pandemic in terms of resources, budget size and getting audiences back,” Weitz said. “I won’t lie. For me, the awareness of how far back up the hill we would have to push the boulder to get back to where we were in 2019 is definitely a part of the equation.”
Especially when running a small theater company doesn’t pay the bills. Remaly’s day job is as a full-time university advancement services professional. “That’s how we pay the mortgage and have health insurance,” she said.
Rebecca Remaly and Stephen Weitz with son Jamison in 2012.
“At the end of the day, I have been doing this for 17 years. And I have been doing two jobs the entire time. And halfway through this journey, we had a child. I am really proud of what we have done. But we are only on this planet for a limited amount of time, and I am ready to do something else.”
The couple’s decision leaves the company's future, like a butterfly in motion, fully up in the air.
“We are being completely transparent when we say we don't know what the future of BETC is going to look like,” Remaly said. Lauri McNown, head of the company’s 10-person board, said the directors are now “working toward clarity of what the future of BETC might look like.” But even if the company endures, Weitz said, "it’s a given that it’s going to look different than it does now.”
Karen Slack and Stephen Weitz in 2007's 'Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.'
Remaly and Weitz claim to have had no great long-term vision when they soft-launched BETC in 2005 as “The Oddball Players.” Like many other artsy couples, they just wanted to do a play together — so they started their own company. BETC made its official bow with Jean Anouilh's adaptation of “Antigone” at the outset of the worldwide housing collapse in 2006. Boulder Daily Camera critic Mark Collins said the new troupe made a strong impression “both for what's on stage and who's on stage.”
BETC has been surprising — and challenging — audiences ever since, giving consistent voice to some of the most nationally respected (and at times aggravating) playwrights of the day, including Sarah Ruhl, Donald Margulies, Theresa Rebeck, Michael Hollinger and Annie Baker.
The first of many world premieres was William C. Kovacsik's “Morisot Reclining” in Season 3. While other companies struggled through the financial crisis, BETC had less to lose, and grew steadily.
Perhaps what stokes Weitz the most about those early years was mentoring up-and-coming actors and designers including Jamie Ann Romero, Benjamin Bonenfant, Matthew Mueller, Jihad Milhem and Erika Mori.
“We didn’t ‘make’ any of those people, but providing a place where people can have the opportunity to grow and learn and prosper and discover the best version of the artist that they can be is a huge part of what a company like ours can offer,” said Weitz. “Maybe the best part of the job is getting to see people go out into the world and prosper as artists.”
Remaly and Weitz have both acted and directed for BETC while splitting the artistic (Weitz) and business (Remaly) duties. They both consider projects they worked on together as their favorites, including modern takes on “The Seagull” (called “Stupid F***ing Bird”) and “Cyrano.”
As the company grew, so did its programming and initiatives. Among the highlights:
• Four years after BETC started its own seasonal staging of “The SantaLand Diaries” in Boulder, Weitz partnered with the Denver Center to co-produce David Sedaris’ caustic holiday classic at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, where it played for the next five Decembers. In that first year of “SantaLand,” BETC’s overall season attendance grew 63 percent.
• “Generations” is BETC’s signature (and now widely replicated) niche new-play program in specific support of playwrights with young children. Nine winners have been brought to Boulder to work on their developing scripts in residency.
• In 2021, BETC launched a summer truck tour to bring provocative outdoor theater like Aaron Posner’s “JQA” (John Quincy Adams) and Beasley’s children’s musical “Amelia’s Big Idea” to communities throughout Colorado on a mobile, 16,000-pound, 35-foot stage with sound and lighting systems.
• In December 2021, Remaly announced a radical commitment to increasing artist wages to professional union scale (regardless of union status) and to shorter work days and weeks. “Rebecca and Stephen have built a place where people get paid fair wages for their work,” Beasley said. “It’s not just emotionally valuing art — it’s walking the talk.”
Dozens of startup theater companies have come and gone since Remaly and Weitz launched BETC with co-founder Stephany Roscoe in 2006. BETC survived, Remaly said, “through sheer luck and timing.” But really, she added, “it’s because we chose really well-written, engaging, thought-provoking, captivating, entertaining stories — and we always made it a priority to compensate our artists.”
Remaly and Weitz, who plan to stay in Boulder, are leaving with BETC at the top of its game. The just-completed play “The Royale,” set in a boxing ring and inspired by the first Black heavyweight world champion (Jack Johnson), was hailed as “a gripping, action-packed sports drama that explores the value of representation and the cost of success” by reviewer Toni Tresca of OnStage Colorado.
The founders will remain active at BETC through its two 2023 productions: "Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B" by Kate Hamill and "Eden Prairie, 1971" by Mat Smart. In a bit of kismet, on the same day “Eden Prairie” closes in Boulder April 29, Remaly will be opening a play she directs called “Grand Horizons” at the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. Bloomsburg is the small Pennsylvania town where both Remaly and Weitz grew up.
“If people are sad about us leaving and what the future of BETC might look like, then I appreciate their emotional investment in us,” Weitz said. “But I will also say, ‘Hey, get out there and find a new local theater company to love — and support it.'”
Legacies are yet to be written, but McNown made the founders’ mark plain: “Boulder and the surrounding areas are a better place to live because of their artistic accomplishments,” she said. If their 17 years running BETC were a play in itself, Remaly said, “I hope people don’t look at it as a tragedy. I hope they think of it as a wonderful, epic story that was funny at times, dramatic at times — and ends with a quirky question mark.
“But just because something ends doesn’t mean that it wasn’t wonderful.”
Luke Sorge in 'Stupid F***ing Bird.'
Five seminal BETC productions
Kate Gleason and Chris Kendall in BETC's 'Annapurna.'
"Annapurna," 2014: A woman who walked out on her ex-husband’s life 20 years before mysteriously walks right back into his trailer nestled in the isolated woods near Paonia, Colo. What I wrote for The Denver Post: "An intimate and utterly relatable look at failed relationships. Kate Gleason made it look so easy playing Emma, she might have actually made it easy to overlook the most natural, believable and wrenchingly real acting performance of the year." Written by Sharr White, directed by Rebecca Remaly.
"Stupid F***ing Bird," 2015: An irreverent update of “The Seagull” where the occupants of a country house necessarily search for the truth of love and art – but this version is a whole lot more fun than Chekhov. One reviewer called it "as riveting as it is profane.” Written by Aaron Posner, directed by Stephen Weitz.
"Vera Rubin: Bringing the Dark to Light," 2016: In an unusual collaboration, BETC presented the world premiere of William C. Kovacsik's short play about the pioneering 1960s astronomer and scientist at Boulder's Fiske Planetarium as a way of introducing young women and girls to the possibility of careers in science. Rubin was part of the team that uncovered the concept of "dark matter" – the idea that up to 90 percent of the universe is invisible and unidentifiable.
"Cyrano," 2016: The most legendary nose in literature got a makeover with a new American adaptation of the French classic by Michael Hollinger and Aaron Posner. Witty wordplay, fierce swordplay, romance, comedy, poetry and a top-notch ensemble. Starring Stephen Weitz and directed by Rebecca Remaly. Featuring Adrian Egolf, John DiAntonio, Logan Ernstthal, Brian Shea, Casey Andree, Benaiah Anderson, Michael Bouchard and Sammie Joe Kinnett.
"CO2020," 2021: When the pandemic shut the performing arts down, BETC dispatched six writers to conduct a variety of interviews exploring the seismic events of the previous year. (I was one of them.) Excerpts were then turned into a script performed for the camera by dozens of local actors at a time when there was little other work available for actors. BETC’s first-ever devised piece captured a crucial moment in time.
And one more, just for fun ...
"Mauritius," 2011: What I wrote for The Denver Post: "It's almost as if Theresa Rebeck – a disciple of the 'king of mean' himself, David Mamet – wrote this play on a dare. And the rising Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company has taken it. 'Mauritius' is a shout-a-thon that starts out unpleasant and just gets nastier from there. Call it an homage to or rip-off of Mamet, but, hey, every seat was claimed for the entire opening weekend in Boulder. I guess some people just like being screamed at."