Sally Dietlein
Co-Founder & Artistic Director | Hale Centre Theatre
From co-founding Hale Center Theater in 1985 to growing it into one of the nation’s most attended regional theaters, what leadership principles have guided your journey and how have you maintained artistic excellence?
Everything can be encompassed in theater: you’ve got the singing, dancing, acting, mechanical arts, electrical arts, automation arts, design arts, drafting arts, painting, costumes, etc. So, to pull in people who have all of those understandings — because no one person is an expert in all of those disciplines — has been a real joy over the years by giving them solid work and artistic freedom.
You’ve secured impressive opportunities for Utah audiences, including U.S. premieres of works like Baz Luhrmann’s “Strictly Ballroom.” How do you approach these negotiations with renowned playwrights and production companies, and what makes Utah an attractive venue for these prestigious productions?
Oftentimes, when you think of live stage or the arts, a lot of people will think New York, LA, Chicago, etc.; they don’t think of Utah. But I’ll tell you who does, and it is the publishing companies in New York. They are seeing the work that’s coming out of Utah, and it’s making writers take notice.
We’re constantly finding out what’s out there and making each relationship count so that people will know they have a place to call and that we can take a look at their creative project to see if it works for the theater. Everything is about relationships. You find out who the ones are who are really moving and shaking the world, and you get connected to create a trusting relationship with them, as in any other business.
Your community engagement initiatives include donating over 20,000 tickets annually to charitable organizations and creating the Story Weavers program for schools. What inspired these outreach efforts, and how do you measure their impact?
One thing to know about me is that I was a high school teacher, so teaching is really important to me. Every year, there are about 14,000 students who come in, free of charge, to see a show at the theater so they can have the wonder of theater from a very young age.
One of my greatest dreams was to have what I called “Troupe in a trunk,” which meant you put all of the things that you would need to put on a 30-minute production in a trunk and take it out to the schools. Mr. David Smith got a hold of the idea and he called it the “Story Weavers.” They went out about 70 times last year, going all over the state and with a trunk and a 30-minute story. These initiatives have been a big thing as they grow a love of the arts. When you have art in your life, your ability to learn other things grows exponentially.
The idea is that what we do is for a broad-based community. We try to play to the heart of the community and we love our community. We are not a community theater, but we like to think we’re the community’s theater.
Looking ahead to the completion of the Mountain America Arts & Education Beehive, what is your vision for how this expanded facility will serve Utah’s artistic community and economy?
We love the fact that we’re a gathering place where people can be happy, and the Beehive gives us one more theater space to be able to do new and additional works. It is a beehive of activity; there will be so many things happening over there to be a beehive of learning. There will be a lot of honey coming out of that.
Each of the stages [at the Beehive] is completely different from the other. They each have different kinds of technology, so we’re kind of a one-stop shop. We love to be able to give creativity its best shot and its best capacity to grow. Creativity is a seed that is in every human being, and we love to be able to give it the most fertile ground to grow.
