Kenny Moten is not “The Change.” More like “The Change-Maker.”

Moten was the most in-demand director in Colorado theater in 2023, and he not only made the most of it – he brought an awful lot of people along for the ride. 

Everywhere he went, the stakes were enormous. He made his directorial debut at the Denver Center – one of the largest regional arts centers in the country – directing a new musical that ran for six months (“Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown”). He was asked to helm the Lone Tree Arts Center’s return to producing live theater after a four-year hiatus (“Dreamgirls”). And he shepherded the final production in the rich, 47-year history of Boulder’s BDT Stage (“Fiddler on the Roof”).

But ask him which of his nine 2023 creative projects was most meaningful to him, and he will say it was directing University of Northern Colorado students in the Broadway musical “Pippin” for the Little Theatre of the Rockies in Greeley.

And that, says Boulder’s Nik Vlachos, tells you everything you need to know about Moten – and why he is the True West Awards’ 2023 Colorado Theater Person of the Year.

“That 100 percent explains who Kenny is and what he means to this community right now,” said Vlachos, who assisted Moten on “Fiddler on the Roof” at BDT and appeared as an actor in his production of “Dreamgirls” at Lone Tree. “He can work with an all-star cast, or he can work with a group of students, and he can make all of them feel valued in exactly the same way. He wants to make sure everyone in the room feels heard and knows that their collaboration is meaningful. But he particularly wants to make sure the younger generation has a voice.”

Amplifying young and underrepresented voices, and creating employment opportunities for them while engaging the community in new and more meaningful ways, is what it is all about for Moten.

“‘Pippin’ reminded me of why I started doing this work in the first place,” said Moten. “Those students were so generous and willing to take chances. That’s what I want more than anything: To help people feel unafraid.”

Moten’s 2023 was not about just staying busy. It was about taking full advantage of this particular moment in time when, right now, everyone seems to want a piece of his creative vision. And he felt a sacred responsibility not to let that moment pass.

His year wasn’t about the number of shows he directed. It was the titles of those shows. It was the people he hired – and the new paths of opportunity he set them on. It was taking creative risks and actively tailoring old stories to new and younger audiences. It was the imprint he made on his audiences.

In 2023, Moten became the gate-keeper. And all along the Front Range this year, gates were coming down.

A teacher opens up the world

Moten was born in Maryland, where his father was a human-resources executive for the Lockheed Martin aerospace company, which eventually sent the family to Colorado. Moten’s life trajectory changed when he met Wally Larson, a legendary theater teacher at Highlands Ranch High School who encouraged Moten to think about doing more than just acting on the stage. 

“He would ask, ‘Do you want to direct?’ ‘Do you want to be a music director?’” Moten said. “And I always said, ‘Sure.’ I had a lot of ideas, and Wally never said no to anything. He really opened up the door for me to do so many things.”

But growing up as a Black kid in the overwhelmingly White and affluent town of Highlands Ranch made Moten acutely aware that “the door” is not always fully open to everyone. When Larson cast Moten and another Black student to play John and Abigail Adams in a school production of “1776,” he had to teach Moten to block out the noise from the inevitable racist blowback. Still, that emboldening experience embedded in Moten a lifelong passion to create employment opportunities as both a consultant and an entertainment events producer.

Moten attended the University of Colorado Boulder and spent eight years as a performer in New York before returning to Colorado in 2010 to run the new Midtown Arts Center in Fort Collins, where Moten still resides. In 2016, he opened his own consulting business called Narrative Creative, which specializes in both creative strategy for businesses and entertainment production.

For example, on the business side: Moten has been a creative producer on National Jewish Health’s annual Beaux Arts Ball, which has raised almost $20 million over the past nine years. On the creative side: Moten conceived of a now national entertainment franchise called “Motones & Jerseys.” That’s a feel-good evening featuring the nostalgic music of Motown and The Four Seasons in a good-natured competition. In 2023, “M&J” iterations were performed at BDT Stage, the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown and the Aurora Fox. He also sent out a tour through three southern states. In all, Moten says “Motones & Jerseys” gave employment to about 50 people in 2023 alone.

Despite his Midas touch, Moten did not crack the Denver theater scene as a director until 2019, when Helen Murray hired him to helm the Aurora Fox’s regional premiere of Tony Kushner’s epic “Caroline, or Change,” starring the multiple award-winning Mary Louise Lee.

That started him on a roll that even the global pandemic hardly slowed.

When Moten’s production of the working-class drama “Sweat” opens on Jan. 13 at OpenStage in Fort Collins, it will mark the 20th play or musical he has directed in the past four years. (And with the shutdown, call it two.)  

“This play will be a punch in the face for Fort Collins,” OpenStage Producing Artistic Director Sydney Parks Smith said with abject giddiness. (She’s also performing in the show.)

“Here’s the thing with Kenny,” she said. “He shows up ready to win –  for everyone in the room. He succeeds because he inspires everyone to take ownership in their roles, and he holds them accountable. He’s grounded, practical, real and passionate. He’s making an impact.”

But what’s made his 2023 so remarkable has been what he’s done with his directing opportunities beyond simply telling stories. He’s been using most every project in a way to engage with local communities in ways that normally fall beyond the responsibilities of a director. For example, Moten believes “Fiddler on the Roof” is landing even more impactfully with audiences in part because of the company’s concerted efforts to involve members of the local Jewish community in the making of the show.

Moten was chosen to direct that final BDT show, Artistic Director Seamus McDonough said, because he is part of the family, having worked in the box office as a college freshman and, later, bringing in “Motones & Jerseys.”

“Kenny was absolutely the right person for the job because he is connected to the company going back for decades,” McDonough said, “but he was also separated enough from us by now to be able to work through all of the emotions that came along with that – from everyone involved.”

Moten began the year directing “Toni Stone,” an all-Black play about the first female to play baseball in the Negro Leagues. In a crucial supporting role, Moten hired an intentionally lower-cased actor named eden origin, who soon became the first nonbinary actor to be nominated for a Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Award. For “Dreamgirls,” a musical rarely staged in Denver because of the need for many triple-threat actors of color who can sing, dance and act, Moten gathered an ensemble of 18 – 14 of whom are based in Colorado.

He ended the year at the Arvada Center by flipping the “Cinderella” script, making the heroine a modern-day young woman very much in charge of her own romantic destiny.

“I don’t think the Arvada Center would’ve staged ‘Cinderella’ five years ago – at least not this version of it,” Moten said with a laugh. He could have easily passed on the offer because, well, you know – it’s “Cinderella.” But if he had, the lead character of Ella might not have been played by a woman of color. (Hillary Fisher is on her way to Broadway in “The Notebook,” opening March 14.) The fairytale kingdom surely would not have been infused with Moten’s modern sensibility and affinity for technology like cell phones and hoverboards. He says he was inspired by “The Hunger Games” and the horror series “Wednesday.” It was a love-it-or-hate-it gambit, but Moten’s money was on young people loving it.

“My immediate question was, ‘How can we change this so that we can level the playing field and make this story more relatable for who this show is actually for – and that is young people,” Moten said. “I really wanted to cater this fairytale kingdom to 15-year-olds, which we don’t do that often in theater unless it is specifically called a children’s production.”

But you know what they say: Today’s 15-year-olds are (hopefully) tomorrow’s avid theatergoers. You’ve got to get them when they are young.

Moten also expanded his reach in the wider community this year, accepting a spot on OpenStage Theatre’s board of directors and an offer to become co-President of the board of the Denver Actors Fund, an organization I founded in 2013 that has made $1.3 million available to help Colorado theater artists pay down their medical bills. 

“I said yes because it’s getting harder to be a working theater artist, and I see such an opportunity for the Denver Actors Fund to be a leader in the community in ways that can really change the landscape,” he said. “We have more young people staying in Colorado after getting their theater degrees these days. How are we nurturing that talent? How are we educating them?”

Moten isn’t quite sure yet what to think about being named the 2023 Colorado Theater Person of the Year, but he believes this present course he’s on was set during the pandemic.

“What got me off my butt during the shutdown was this feeling that we as an arts community needed to be more collaborative, more joyful and more consistent,” he said. “And I took a big personal risk in saying, ‘I’m going to take on as much of this work as I can in 2023,’ because I was a little bit sick of hearing that this community was in shambles. It’s not.

“It certainly hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine. But there is a whole generation of new theater artists who are doing the work and who are looking at how we can do things a little differently – and that’s exciting to see. I know I’ve always personally felt part of this community, but I probably have never felt as much a part of it as I have this year.”

I asked Moten what his place in that community today might mean to the teenager who had parents complaining about him playing John Adams in high school.

“Being a Black man in a leadership position makes me want to really shut down the gatekeeping that I experienced for so long,” he said.

The door is open.

Kenny Moten/2023

• Producer and director, “Motones & Jerseys,” Candlelight Dinner Playhouse
• Director, “Toni Stone,’ Aurora Fox
• Producer and director, “Motones & Jerseys” tour of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina
• Director, “Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown,” Denver Center for the Performing Arts
• Director, “Pippin,” Little Theatre of the Rockies (Greeley)
• Director, “Fiddler on the Roof,” BDT Stage (Boulder)
• Director, “Dreamgirls,” Lone Tree Arts Center
• Director,  “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” Arvada Center
• Producer and director, “Holiday Hi-Fi,” Aurora Fox

Additionally

• Named Co-President, Denver Actors Fund Board of Directors
• Joined OpenStage Board of Directors

Upcoming

• Jan. 13-Feb 10: Director, “Sweat,” OpenStage (Fort Collins)
• April 3-May 5: Director, “Beauty and the Beast,” American Stage, St. Petersburg, Fla.
• May 2024: Director, “Almost Heaven,” Little Theatre of the Rockies (Greeley)

• 2022: Jada Suzanne Dixon, Curious Theatre Company
• 2021: Everyone who kept a Colorado theater company afloat
• 2020: No designee named
• 2019: Bobby LeFebre, Su Teatro playwright, slam poet, actor and activist
• 2018: Jessica Austgen, Playwright, actor and improviser
• 2017: Regan Linton, Phamaly Theatre Company artistic director
• 2016: Billie McBride, Actor and director
• 2015: Donald R. Seawell, Denver Center for the Performing Arts founder
• 2014: Steve Wilson, Phamaly Theatre Company and Mizel arts And Cultural Center
• 2013: Shelly Bordas, Actor, teacher, director and cancer warrior
• 2012: Stephen Weitz, Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company co-founder
• 2011: Maurice LaMee, Creede Repertory Theatre artistic director
• 2010: Anthony Garcia, Su Teatro artistic director
• 2009: Kathleen M. Brady, Denver Center Theatre Company actor
• 2008: Wendy Ishii, Bas Bleu Theatre co-founder
• 2007: Ed Baierlein: Germinal Stage-Denver founder
• 2006: Bonnie Metzgar, Curious Theatre Company associate artistic director
• 2005: Chip Walton, Curious Theatre founder and artistic director
• 2004: Michael R. Duran, Actor, set designer, director and playwright
• 2003: Nagle Jackson, DCPA Theatre Company director and playwright
• 2002: Chris Tabb: Actor and director
• 2001: No designee named

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.