AURORA | The immediate fate of the production of the musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” at the Aurora Fox theater remains unclear following the injury of director and actor Ben Dicke.

Ben Dicke directs cast members at rehearsal Wednesday evening, Aug. 29 at Aurora Fox theater. Dicke ran for 24 hours to help raise money to put on the rock musical as an independent production. (Marla R. Keown/Aurora Sentinel)

Less than two hours before the scheduled premiere of the show Sept. 7, Dicke fell into a trapdoor in the Fox’s backstage area and sustained multiple injuries. According to Aurora Fox Executive Producer Charles Packard, Dicke broke four ribs, punctured a lung and suffered gashes to the back of the head.

Dicke was treated at the University of Colorado Hospital and released on Sunday.

The scheduled performances for Friday night and Sunday afternoon were canceled, and Packard said the fate of the remaining performances has yet to be determined.

“When last I met with decision makers, they were not ready to announce a plan,” Packard said, referring to Dicke and the rest of the show’s creative team. “In the best case scenario, Ben … would go on Friday. I think that’s unlikely. They could put in an understudy on Friday.”
Another possibility would be to cancel the schedule of shows for September, Packard added.

“There’s some possibility of that,” he said.

Dicke’s efforts to bring the regional premiere of the rock opera by Michael Friedman and Alex Timber to the Fox have spanned nearly six months. In May, Dicke took to a treadmill on the 16th Street Mall in Denver, running a full 24 hours in an effort to raise $10,000 for the show through the Kickstarter website.

The show garnered plenty of buzz before its debut, and Packard said the theater was expecting a commercial success.

“The unique thing about the way that Ben did the fundraising was that everybody who donated got tickets … I thought it was a really good way, a really responsible way to fund it,” Packard said. “We all knew … that this had a pretty good chance of being a highly successful show.”

Depending on how the producers move forward, the show may bring in enough revenue in the coming weeks to fund a remount, Packard said.

“Any time you have a (show), the first thing you start looking at is whether you have a hit,” Packard said. “I know that they have a hit.”