Artistic Director Jada Suzanne Dixon Gets Curious - PART 1

On a temperate June evening in 2023, attendees of the Denver Stories soiree at the Curious Theatre Company headed to a nearby tent in the adjacent parking lot to continue the celebration of Jeremy and Susan Shamos. Subjects of an original play written for the company’s ongoing series, which honors the city’s machers, the couple had been longtime supporters of the indie theater as well as other significant cultural institutions. Their son, the actor Jeremy Shamos, had flown in from New York City as a surprise for the one act written and directed by Dee Covington with an assist by Chip Walton, who co-founded the theater in 1997 with a collection of other theater-makers.

Beneath the calm, the internal climate of one of the city’s beloved theaters was less clement. Darkening clouds had been gathering for months, and you didn’t have to be Kathy Sabine to detect a chill in the air when Shamos took the stage after the performance and praised Walton and Covington effusively, yet failed to mention the theater’s new leader, Jada Dixon. 

Walton and Covington deserved the abundance of praise. And this was a formal celebration after 25 seasons. They had built a vital theater company in a city where the Denver Center for the Performing Arts often chews up much the scenery with its Broadway division and theater company. But for the lifetime board president to forego a nod in the direction of Dixon, whom he had a hand in choosing — and Walton and Covington to be equally mum from stage — was confusing at best.

For some lovers of the company, it was a missed opportunity. A deft reader of rooms, Shamos surely knew what it looked like. It could have been one of those accidental Oscar speech omissions in the heat of a tribute (an oops I forgot to thank the hubby, gaff) but was it something thornier? An intentional snub of the new artistic director by the former leaders and their most ardent champion? If so, something had gone terribly awry. 

During the summer of 2022, Walton, Shamos and the board solidified plans for Dixon to become artistic director. Jeannene Bragg, who’d worked at Curious, would join as managing director. Sitting at his home with Walton in August of that year, Shamos praised Dixon. “When Chip came up with Jada for artistic director, it was a no brainer,” he said. Then added, “I think Jada’s going to be sensational.” In less than a year, Shamos would be letting Dixon’s presence go unacknowledged at one of Curious’ most important events.

The fall before the 2022 handover, Walton had made Dixon an artistic producer. “Jada and I have an artistic kinship,” he told the Denver Post at the time. “We’ve always just had some common understanding, some collaborative kind of vibe going on. First and foremost, that’s what matters.” 

Since that celebratory night when the Shamoses, Walton and Covington took their bows, people have shared that the company’s former leader and its great patron have been lavish in their behind-the-scenes criticisms of Dixon and her team in ways that could harm the new leader’s ability to raise funds. 

So how did the best laid plans for a transition set to honor both legacy and possibility go awry? The answers  are less interesting and more familiar  — hurt feelings, perceived slights that can be tied to status, newbie misstep — than the lessons they might offer. Ones that may prove instructional to other arts organizations and their veteran leaders, donors, boards, as well as the new leaders walking into storied organizations that come with longstanding relationships but also with professed hopes for vision and continuity.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for parts 2 & 3 of this article!