The Off Broadway Theatre
“My thing was making people laugh, and I could do that.” For Eric Jensen, founder of The Off Broadway Theatre, comedy came long before theater became a career. Growing up in Murray as one of seven children, he was surrounded by a close family and parents who supported whatever he decided to pursue. As a boy, he loved watching Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, and Harvey Korman. Eric then reenacted their sketches for friends, whether or not he fully understood the jokes.
By junior high, making people laugh had become Eric’s calling card. He borrowed routines from Steve Martin, wrote sketches for pep assemblies, and discovered that comedy came to him far more naturally than athletics. “I remember thinking, gosh, this is so much fun. I wish I could do this for a living.”
A theater scholarship took him to Utah State University where Eric discovered there was more to acting than comedy. He performed dramatic roles and Shakespeare, later studied at BYU, and graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in theater arts. Along the way, he began working at Desert Star Playhouse, first as an actor, then a director, and eventually a writer. Each step taught him another piece of what it took to put on a show.
Just as Eric was finishing college, he and several friends decided to create a theater of their own. They found an empty former movie house downtown near Third South, a street long nicknamed Broadway. Since their theater sat just off it, the name seemed obvious - The Off Broadway Theatre.
The company opened in 1994, initially producing plays while also experimenting with improvisational comedy. The improv took off. At a time when few groups in the valley were doing it, The Off Broadway Theatre offered family-friendly performances that drew sold-out audiences.
Eventually, his original partners moved on, leaving Eric and his wife, Sandy, to decide whether they could continue on their own. Sandy took charge of the books while Eric handled much of the writing, directing, scenery and creative work. They planned to pay off the theater’s debt and close. Instead, the audiences kept coming.
The theater later became a nonprofit, broadening its mission and opening its productions to actors throughout the community: children, older adults, seasoned performers, and those who had barely stepped onto a stage. Eric found particular satisfaction in watching inexperienced actors discover what they could do. Someone who might have spent years in the chorus elsewhere could suddenly find themselves playing a leading role. The productions themselves developed a personality all their own.
The Off Broadway Theatre, through its specialty of family-friendly comedy, often takes familiar stories and turns them sideways. There has been Peter Pun, Eric’s comic spin on Peter Pan; Star Ward, which combined Star Wars with distinctly Utah humor, and Hamlet’s Son, a retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy inspired by the rhythm and energy of Hamilton. Classics, including The Importance of Being Earnest, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance, have also received the Off Broadway treatment. Eric writes many of the shows himself, though the theater encourages other writers as well. His son has now joined that tradition, co-writing an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that will remain in its period setting while amplifying the comedy.
Equally distinctive is Eric’s approach to staging. He learned early that theater does not require elaborate scenery to create an illusion. A discarded chair can become a pharaoh’s throne with fabric, paint, and a little ingenuity. Plastic bins can become a car. Gatorade bottles and a trash bin can help create a robot. “The fun is the pretense,” he explained. If the actors believe in what they are doing, an audience will happily go along.
The company remained downtown for twenty-five years before losing its longtime home when the building changed ownership. That began a series of moves - first to Draper, then to a smaller space at Trolley Square and, most recently, to its current home on State Street. Through each relocation, the theater itself has endured.
More than three decades after he began, Eric is still writing, directing and performing while also teaching music, art and theater to elementary school children - another role that seems remarkably connected to the boy who once discovered that making his classmates laugh was something he could do especially well. Now in his sixties, he has no desire to stop. “I hope I do it forever.”
