Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center

Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center

This former movie theater now serves as the home of an important community performing arts company, where it tells the stories of the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood and its residents. Su Teatro, translated “Your Theater,” is housed in the Denver Civic Theatre, which was created by theatre impresario, Henry Lowenstein, at the site of what was originally the Cameron Building, built in 1921 as the Cameron Movie Theater. Located on Santa Fe Drive, in the neighborhood of La Alma/Lincoln Park, the company’s home is in the heart of Denver’s historic Latino neighborhood.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the building was used as a meatpacking plant before it became a photography studio and then the Denver Civic Theatre. It was renovated in 2003. In 2009, after years of raising funds to build a new facility in the Westside neighborhood, the City of Denver granted Su Teatro a lease on the Denver Civic Theatre providing them a larger, more permanent location. Su Teatro purchased the Denver Civic Theatre in 2010 from Denver.

The present facility combines three buildings that existed when Lowenstein renovated the space for live theatre. The building houses two theaters. A large proscenium theater, The Martinez Performing Arts Hall, seats 332. A smaller, flexible, black box theater, The Frank Trujillo Salonde Arte, seats 134. An adjacent art gallery and cafe space is ideal for all types of events. In addition to putting on its own shows, Su Teatro rents out the facility to groups.

Su Teatro is a nonprofit arts organization with an emphasis on Latino culture featuring plays, concerts andfilm events. The third oldest Chicano theater in the country (only Teatro Campesino and Teatro de la Esperanza are older), Su Teatro features dual-language events—Spanish and English—that espouse social activism. The group predominantly performs pieces written by Latinx(Latino/Latina) playwrights speaking to the life experiences of those in the community.

Su Teatro began in 1971 as a student theater group at the University of Colorado Denver in 1971. In 1989,they purchased the old Elyria School in Northeast Denver and expanded their programming. After moving to a series of different facilities across Denver, the group eventually landed at their current home in the Art District on Santa Fe.

References
La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association.
Su Teatro, About Us. Retrieved from http://suteatro.org/about-us.

Download this site description here.