2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 12

One high school has generated about $58,000 since 2014 to help the Denver Actors Fund pay down Colorado theater artists’ medical bills

Everyone had a potentially traumatic first day of school. The kind that can go either way: Either some older kid smells your fear, seizes on it and sets you down a tortured path. Or some older kid puts his arm around you and assures you that everything is going to be A-OK.

On Aug. 24, Denver School of the Arts junior Isaac Dechtman donned a large blue wizard hat with stars and a moon – like the one Mickey Mouse famously wore in Disney’s “Fantasia” – and playfully led a group of nervous incoming sixth-graders on a 3-kilometer bonding walk, followed by a full morning of group games in Lowry’s Great Lawn Park. His fellow officers in the school’s honor-society thespian troupe did the same.

It’s called “Drama Dash,” and it is an annual fall tradition at DSA, a public magnet school that offers rigorous academics in college-style degree programs such as dance, theater, creative writing and orchestra.

When the day was over, all those festively costumed new students were assured that their new older buddies will always have their backs. That’s a kindness Dechtman was happy to repay from 2022, when he was a sixth-grader who was paired with a thespian officer named Ben Feldman.

“I remember this so specifically,” said Dechtman. “We were doing a group kickball game, and the age gap just didn’t really matter. It was so much fun – and I have been bonded with Ben ever since. He then introduced me to the thespian board, and because of him, I’m now on the thespian board. He’s attending (the University of Southern California), and now I’m interested in USC because of him.

“That first Drama Dash was such a really big eye-opener for me because I’ve gotten to be friends with an older kid like Ben since the sixth grade. How often does that happen?”

The Drama Dash, which dates to 2003, is a labor of love for Shawn Hann, who is now in her 25th year as DSA’s director of theatre. And a core component of its purpose has always been community service and fundraising through pledges from friends and family.

This time, DSA students raised a record-smashing $13,000 for the Denver Actors Fund, a grassroots nonprofit that helps Colorado theater artists pay down their medical bills. That beat the previous Drama Dash best by more than $3,400.

“Oh my God, that’s absolutely insane,” said senior student Julia Rivero. “I’m so grateful to be a part of a mission that allows us to lift people up.”

Since 2014, DSA’s overall efforts on behalf of the DAF now come to just under $58,000. And that does not even count the $6,400 raised by a cohort of (mostly) DSA students who self-produced an all-teen cabaret at the Arvada Center in May under the name New Generation Productions. That’s a company founded by DSA seniors Grayson Allensworth and Maya Eisbart when they were 12. 

I’m not crying, you’re crying. (No, wait, I am crying, because I am the guy who started the Denver Actors Fund back in 2013.)

You can see why I might think the cumulative good being repeatedly done by our young people qualifies for a True West Award, which is our effort to tell 30 positive stories from the Colorado theater year daily in December.

In its 12 years, the DAF has paid down local artists’ medical bills by $1.8 million. Among them have been DSA faculty, parents and, by now, multiple alumni.

The DAF assisted Beki Pineda, a longtime local properties designer who is well into her 80s but has run the DSA’s box office for 13 years, with nearly $10,000 in cancer bills.

“I think one of the biggest things that helps the kids clue in to all of this is that they see Ms. Pineda in our box office all the time.” said Hann, who also tells them that Pineda is an active DAF volunteer who played a vital role in a group effort to save an elderly actor from eviction while he was in the hospital recovering from lung-cancer surgery.

“When they hear those stories, they can see that her selflessness is something to admire,” Hann said.

When a parent who also works as a sound designer around town was left with a broken neck after his car was T-boned just after dropping off his daughter at DSA, the DAF provided about $10,000 in living expenses. Most recently, the DAF paid down about $6,000 in bills when Samantha Piel, who graduated from DSA in 2016 and now works onstage and off at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden, needed emergency surgery.

All of that has impacted Rivero.

“To be raising money for this incredible organization that has lifted up all of these artists and DSA alumni who are now working in the industry makes me happy,” she said. “I mean, that could be me one day, so this is really dear to my heart.”

Tucker McTaggart, a DSA seventh-grader whose aunt was significantly helped by the DAF, has turned the Drama Dash into a personal act of creative expression. Last year, his first at DSA, he turbocharged his pledges by promising to walk the last mile backward. This year, he adopted a fish theme because he had just been cast to join the older kids as Young Will in the school’s big production of the musical “Big Fish.”

“I support the Denver Actors Fund because they help all working actors – and they helped my aunt when she most needed it,” Tucker said. His aunt, Amy Arpan, promised him a $50 pledge – with a catch (pun intended). “He had to pretend to swim for the entire duration of the Drama Dash,” said his mother, Piper Arpan McTaggart, a big-time area choreographer who is currently performing in the Town Hall Arts Center’s production of “Annie.”

“For the first quarter, I had to doggie-paddle,” Tucker said. “For the second quarter, I had to frog-swim. For the third quarter, I had to go overhead. And for the fourth quarter, I had to backstroke – all while singing ‘Baby Shark’ the whole way.”

Talk about commitment to craft.

DSA has been supporting the work of the DAF since 2014, when two caring, self-starting students named Jimmy Bruenger and Madison Kitchen collected lobby donations as audiences were leaving their student production of “Hairspray.” Their $2,400 gift was, at the time, the largest in DAF’s short history. And look at them now: Bruenger is the coordinator of Creative Development at Disney on Broadway. Kitchen is attending New York University’s Silver School of Social Work.

Hann believes it is crucial for teachers to instill the value of community service in high-school students because it builds vital life skills like planning, teamwork and communication while also fostering empathy for people in need everywhere.

“I am constantly seeking ways to help these students think outside of who they are and think of the greater community,” Hann said. “And that thinking goes into the work that we do for the Denver Actors Fund.

“We raise money for a variety of causes, but the reason the DAF is the perfect organization for us to partner with is because there’s such a high percentage of our kids who are thinking, ‘I want to be a professional actor someday.’ And the reality is that professional acting is a very difficult career choice. There are no guarantees. These are not jobs with benefits. So having them go out now and raise money for people who are living that same life brings them an awareness of that at a very young age.

“Theater is a community,” Hann said, “and in Denver, this theater community has your back. I think that is a massive life lesson for them to take away from this process.”

To Hann, teaching students to care about others is part of the overall mission of teaching, period. 

“To me the bottom line is that, at the end of their time at DSA, yes, they should have performing skills. But really, ultimately – I want them to be good human beings.”

Judging by Bruenger, Kitchen, Dechtman, McTaggart, Allensworth, Eisbart, Rivero and by now, hundreds of others: Mission accomplished.

“I want my legacy to be something like giving and supporting others and cheering people on because I know that this industry is a tough one,” Rivero said. “But as long as we are kind and courageous and we support others, then we can all strive for our dreams.”

The Cherry (Creek) on top

Denver School of the Arts and the New Generation Players are among several youth groups that have raised funds for the DAF over the past year. The list includes the Arts Hub in Lafayette, the Mile High Youth Theatre and, most reliably, students from Cherry Creek High School’s Thespian Troupe 1730.

Every show, every year since 2015, Creek has collected money for the DAF, with this year’s efforts bringing the school’s overall total to $14,180.

Cherry Creek Theatre Director Alex Burkart believes it is an imperative for his program to instill the value of community service in the next generation of theater artists.

It’s working.

Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations. He is also the founder of the Denver Actors Fund. Email him at john.moore@denvergazette.com.

More True West Awards coverage:

• Meet the New Generation Players

• Denver Actors Fund in Action: Amy Arpan

• Denver Actors Fund in Action: Beki Pineda

• Denver Actors Fund in Action: Samantha Piel

• 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano

• Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’

• Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact

• Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side

• Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77

• Day 6: Mirror images: Leslie O’Carroll and Olivia Wilson

• Day 7: Philip Sneed will exit Arvada Center on a high

• Day 8: Ed Reinhardt’s magic stage run ends after 27 years

• Day 9: Costume Designer Nikki Harrison

• Day 10: DU’s tech interns getting the job done

• Day 11: Husbands, wives keep home fire burning