Curtain comes down for festival

The fat lady sang Thursday night.

Organizers of the Colorado Festival of World Theatre have called it quits.

"I am very, very sad, but you know, there's nothing we can do," festival founder Suzy Bassani said Thursday. "We've really looked at this from all different ways, and we're just not going to be able to make it."

Organizers blamed the poor economy, which they said would threaten both donations and ticket sales.

"Rather than go into debt at a time like this, I think it's just prudent to do what we have to do ... unfortunately. It's very sad," Bassani said.

The festival would have celebrated its sixth year in the fall.

"We had a fabulous season planned," Bassani said. "We've all been so busy because we've had to cancel everything. Everyone we've spoken to has been terrific. Everybody is just so sad this is happening."

Bassani said that in folding the festival, she's getting the true scope of all the people the festival has touched, here and around the world.

"It's been very gratifying to know that we have had an impact," she said. "And that is wonderful. We hope we've made a difference."

The festival has featured such stars as Shirley Jones, Lynn Redgrave, Zoe Caldwell and Allison Janney as well as famed composer Stephen Sondheim. At its height in 2005, the festival crammed 14 international productions into 16 days at several venues throughout the region.

Organizers had considered scaling back on the festival, as it did last year, but decided it went counter to its mission.

"We have decided that you want an event that is worthy of definition as a world theater festival, not just a theatrical event that brings nothing particularly unique," Bassani and board chairman Jerry Dickman wrote in a joint e-mail Thursday.

"For that reason, the board of directors has decided to terminate the festival before we enter into contractual obligations for productions that we may not be able to fund. This decision was made only after a month of an intense survey of all possible funding prospects."

Bassani said she hopes that the idea of a world theater re-emerges in better times.

"It will just have to be somebody younger who does it," she said.