After more than 20 years working devotedly as the General Manager for The Colorado Theatre Guild, Gloria Shanstrom is set to retire on July 31, 2017.
Gloria Shanstrom has been involved in Denver Theatre since the 1980s, but not on the stage. She started ushering in 1985 at Boettcher Concert Hall and within a year and a half was moved to the Auditorium Theatre as House Manager. In the summer of 1991, Gloria moved to the “not quite open” Temple Buell Theatre to ready staff for the opening that fall. She also did group sales on a contract basis for the area smaller theatres and from 1996 to 2001 she co-produced the Denver Drama Critics Circle Awards with Melanie Mayner. Gloria remained House Manager of the Buell until November of 1997 when Denver Center Attraction hired her as Marketing Assistant. Working at DCA taught her an entirely new way of putting butts in seats and she found she worked well with the media.
She was invited to join the Colorado Theatre Guild in 1997 and CTG's first elected Board convened in early 1998. Leaving the DCPA in 2000 she maintained her theatre connection as a Board member of the Colorado Theatre Guild and in 2004 started Full Court Press, a company specifically designed to assist small non-profit arts organizations with media relations. In 2006 CTG hired Gloria as its first General Manager and first (and only) paid staff member. She has invested the past 20 years in helping make the Colorado Theatre Guild the source of information on live theatre for both those who work in theatre and the theatre loving public.
