AURORA | It starts with an ancient Egyptian artifact that cracks open a passageway through time and space.
A docent at an American museum shows a crowd newly procured fragments from the Book of Thoth. The ancient pages haven’t lost any of their magic with the passage of millennia, and that much is clear as the museum employee reads from the age-old text. The present moment slips away. The setting suddenly shifts to ancient Egypt.
In the age of pharaohs and sphinxes, a doomed love story starts to unfold.
That rapid transition from present to distant past kicks off “Aida,” the landmark 1998 musical featuring songs by Elton John and Tim Rice. It’s a key to the story and mood of the piece. That’s why the crew from the Ignite Theatre Company’s production currently running at the Aurora Fox didn’t want to take any chances in making that journey feel real.
“I thought having actual artifacts will help people get engaged before they even get into the theater,” said director Keith Rabin Jr. “It helps pull the museum element on to the stage.”
A display featuring a mix of authentic and replicated pottery, jewelry and clothes from ancient Egypt greets audience members in the Fox lobby before they set foot in the theater. On stage, the first moments of the show feature actors and actresses donned in carefully researched and fabricated period costumes. Dusty scarabs, cracked clay amphorae and a life-sized replica of the Rosetta Stone set a definite mood for this Tony Award-winning show.
It’s all thanks to the generosity and dedication of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The 16 pieces on display at the Fox as part of Ignite’s production of “Aida” are one of the museum’s traveling education collections. The Egyptian collection combines authentic historic artifacts (pottery pieces and oil lamps from the Mediterranean region date back thousands of years) and replicas (the recreated Rosetta Stone features the same dimensions and etchings of the real piece housed in the British Museum).
The museum staff didn’t hesitate in lending their educational materials to a theater company. According to Rabin, Ignite’s co-founder and artistic director, they saw the stage as an educational venue just as viable as the classroom. That came as a surprise for Rabin when he reached out to museum officials months ago with little in the way of real expectations.
“It was just a shot in the wind. Thinking they’d give us artifacts from thousands of years ago was hard to believe,” Rabin said, adding that DMNS Manager Colleen Carter worked with Rabin closely to find the right kind of items. “They gave me a list of what everything was and I went through and did the research. I put it in a museum guide that’s in the actual program.”
The pieces give the show a sense of detail and scope that feels fitting, considering the headaches that went into getting the show produced. The show based on the Italian opera wasn’t the first choice for the finale of Ignite’s 2013-14 season. Plans for a production of the musical “West Side Story” fell through because the Ignite troupe couldn’t secure rights to the show.
“Every time we apply, they don’t give us the rights,” Rabin said. “But I’m happy that we decided to do ‘Aida.’ It’s a show that’s eluded me over the years,” he added, pointing out that plans to produce the show years ago in Florida fell through.
The scale and mood of the show seems to fit with Ignite’s creative mission. The young theater troupe has never shied away from big productions or epic sets since its debut as the Gravity Defied theater troupe in 2009. “Aida” fits that feel, with its award-winning score by John and Rice and its story rooted in a love triangle between a pharaoh’s daughter, a Nubian slave and the captain of the Egyptian Army. There’s a grand scale and an unflinching tragedy to this show, elements that Ignite has sought in productions of shows like “Next to Normal” and “Sweeney Todd.”
“It’s not that whimsical love story that has a happy ending. You get a lot of that in musical theater, but it’s something that’s totally different,” said Olivia James, the local actress making her Ignite debut as the title character in “Aida.” “I think ‘Aida’ for me is the perfect example of what happens to girls’ minds that moment you fall in love. It doesn’t always go the way you want it to.”
It’s the kind of flawed love story that makes for timeless tragedy, James added. It’s also the type of story that fits into Ignite’s holiday slot at the Fox. Even though the run of “Aida” will wrap up in January, Rabin sees seasonal spirit to the show.
“We try to do something that has a lot of emotion,” Rabin said. “It’s about a love that transcends time, so I think that it really speaks to this time of year. It speaks to us as well,” he added, speaking specifically of the ups and downs of the season.
The exhibit pieces, both real and fake, also speak to that timelessness. It’s in the stone statuettes of ancient gods and goddesses, in the cracked clay jars that held oil thousands of years ago, in the replicated version of the Rosetta Stone that opened up an ancient language to modern scholars. It all speaks to the grand themes and eternal elements of a show that flips between the present and the past.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com