by Susan Dugan

For Gloria Shanstrom it was love at first sight.

GLORIA SHANSTROM NEVER CRAVED THE SPOTLIGHT, but has become one of Denver’s strongest voices in support of live theater. She doesn’t write the scripts that come to life on stage, but her words are equally responsible for bringing paying customers in the door.

Born in Ohio and transplanted to Phoenix at age 12, she married right out of high school and divorced two years later. Shortly thereafter, in 1974 she traveled to Denver on vacation. “I cried all the way back to Phoenix. My parents met me at the airport and I said, ‘I have to go.’ Phoenix is a pre-World War II city that has no core. Here it was mountains, seasons, architecture. Denver felt like it had some roots and some bones.”

Two months later, Shanstrom returned to start a new life and has never looked back. “I was coming down 6th Avenue from Golden last night and there’s that little point where you’re just coming up the hill and then it drops off – and around the bend you can see the whole city. I still get a little gut-clenching thing every time.”

Founder of Full Court Press, general manager of the Colorado Theatre Guild, and longtime theater professional, aficionado and PR whiz, Shanstrom earned a living in hardware for many years before her interest in theater morphed into paid employment. “I spent 16 years in the nut and bolt industry and ended up in sales. At the time, there was me and one other woman, and so it was challenging to win over these old farts who had been building buildings for a hundred years, and getting in past the ‘shucks, darn, little lady’ routine. I worked hard and learned quick and actually had information to share with them, so that was kind of fun.”

Meanwhile, she attended every theater production she could afford along with a group of like-minded friends. In the mid-1980s she landed an ushering position at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. “When they started you in 1985, your first appointment was at the Coliseum for the circus,” she says, laughing. “If you survived that, you got to move on to the Stock Show – and if you maintained some level of dignity with all the drunk and crazy cowboys, it provided an entrée to work for Boettcher Concert Hall.”

Promoted to assistant house manager at Boettcher the following year, she moved on to become house manager for the Auditorium Theatre. “That was bizarre, because I’ve taken maybe two college courses in my entire life, so it was all on-the-job training and I think that was apparent to a lot of people. I had the awesome opportunity to work (DCPA founder) Bob Garner’s first three-week run, which was Les Miserables. They were starting to expand and Denver was starting to be recognized as an important spot for these Broadway companies going out. When people started planning to gut the old arena and make it the Buell Theatre, they asked if I wanted to move to the Buell, and I was like, yeah!”

The opening of the Buell transformed Denver’s theater scene. “That’s when the really big tours like Phantom and Miss Saigon started. They were all six-, eight-week runs. As my husband so deftly put it: ‘It’s like you host the biggest party eight times a week!’”

With the Buell opened and established and her days free, Shanstrom started looking for other outlets for her enormous energy, and discovered that small theaters were begging for help with group sales. With experience gleaned from working with Denver Center’s box office to address any problems Buell patrons might encounter, she contracted her services out to small theaters for the next three years.

When the assistant marketing position for Denver Center Attractions opened up in 1997, Shanstrom left the Buell and went to work for the Broadway touring division of DCPA. “I got to know all these marvelous media people – reviewers, television and radio people – because my job was to get them to the talent. We did all the press releases, so I got an education on how to write in a way I’d never written before. And I got to meet people you would never dream of meeting, like Carol Channing – how awesome is that?”

A couple of years later Shanstrom and husband Mark, who already owned a frame shop in Highlands Ranch, were walking down Old South Pearl Street and peered in the window of the Old South Frame & Gallery shop. “And, I don’t know, the universe and all the gods aligned, and they were willing to sell and we were willing to buy. I figured I’d leave Denver Center Attractions and help Mark with the new store. We bought right when they announced redoing I-25 (expanding traffic lanes and building the southeast light rail line), joined the merchants association, and became co-presidents, because we had some experience dealing with CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) we could share. I was active and Mark was president for several consecutive years through the development of the Sunday farmers market, which was started to retain and attract business in the area during all the construction.”

When the Colorado Theatre Guild (dedicated to promoting and supporting live theater statewide) was formed in 1999, Shanstrom became an original board member. “I was the only person on the board who did not have a full-time day job, so I told them I had time to get some things done.” In 2003, she launched their website, began requesting content from the theater community, and started receiving “awful” press releases that required rewriting.

Because most small theaters did not have the time or resources to draft effective press releases themselves, Shanstrom began offering to write them on the side at a reasonable price. “I figured if I could cover my car payment I’d be a happy girl. It grew from covering a car payment to making a living as I expanded my services to include a couple of small but affordable packages – things like creating and promoting video clips of their productions. Full Court Press has grown enormously over the past five years.”

How is that possible given the economy? “Some companies have folded,” Shanstrom admits, “others are waiting to get their houses in order to build up something to bankroll. 2010 was not so bad because the grant money being given was from the 2009 (Scientific and Cultural Facilities District) pot. The impact was this year, when we had the decrease in sales tax revenue to deal with. That has had a great impact on SCFD.”

To weather the storm, companies are working leaner and smarter. “Many have started doing shows with smaller casts or shortening runs for shows with large casts.” Still, Shanstrom can’t help but marvel at the wave of new theaters opening in Denver. “There’s been a crazy amount of new companies coming in with new concepts, and working to put together a season – be it two shows or eight – even though it’s going to take them several years to become eligible for SCFD funding. But good people are still going to theater, whether it’s community or professional or a Broadway tour.”

She credits Denver’s generous media community with helping to keep local theater alive. “Even with every paper I know scaling down, we still get an amazing amount of coverage for free. Let us never forget to add those two, huge, important words. Come Christmas, I wish I could give everyone presents.”

When asked if it ever gets old, she answers with an emphatic no. “Seeing the people, the actors, the producers, the directors that have been around for years, doing their work, still astounds me. Seeing an actor that I know get that one role they’ve been waiting for forever ... seeing the new kids come along, new directors and new talent coming out of schools like Metro and Naropa: it thrills the hell out of me every day. When my husband and I were dating, he asked me the ‘what if you could do anything’ question. And I said, ‘I want to see people entertained. I don’t personally want to entertain them but I want to help facilitate entertainment.’ And, God love him, his response was: ‘Do it.’”

(Editor’s note: Since 1989, Scientific and Cultural Facilities District – SCFD – has distributed funds from a 1/10 of 1 percent sales and use tax to cultural facilities throughout the seven-county Denver metro area. The funds support cultural facilities whose primary purpose is to enlighten and entertain the public through the production, presentation, exhibition, advancement and preservation of art, music, theater, dance, zoology, botany, natural history and cultural history.)