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Person 2 Person: Sally Dietlein

727 views · Published 21 October 2014 · 4:44 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: KUTV 2 News Salt Lake City · 2014 · News & Politics

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(KUTV) Sally Dietlein cofounded Hale Center Theatre back in 1985 alongside her husband, Mark Dietlein, and his grandparents Ruth and Nathan Hale. She is currently the executive producer for the theatre and oversees all areas of the production process.

In this week’s Person 2 Person, Sally tells Shauna Lake how the theatre has grown over the past three decades and why she truly believes in what the theatre provides for the community.

SHAUNA LAKE: How many years have you been involved with Hale Theatre?

SALLY DIETLEIN: We opened in 1985; July 12th is the exact day. It has been the most amazing ride and I don’t know where 30 years went. I honestly don’t.

SHAUNA LAKE: Did you feel a need to open a theatre company like that?

SALLY DIETLEIN: Well what happened was my husband’s grand folks are Ruth and Nathan Hale. Someone said, “Look you’ve written all of these plays, and they had written many; why don’t you just open your own theatre and begin to produce?” So in 1947 they opened in a house on Colorado Street in Glendale, California, and they started to produce. It started to fill. They built another one. It filled, and they started selling both out entirely. Then they built another one of Orange Street and it filled. So they wanted to open a new theatre in Salt Lake City. So they asked us, an aunt, a daughter of theirs to come and we opened our doors in 1985 on South Main Street in South Salt Lake. In a year and a half’s time we were selling to the gills. So we knocked out the south wall and added a hundred…added seats up to 350. And then a year later we had to knock out over the top of the lobby and added some loft-kind of balcony seats to take us to 387.

SHAUNA LAKE: Did you expect that kind of success when you started?

SALLY DIETLEIN: No. I’m from Wyoming. This thing doesn’t affect me. In fact one of my dear friends Bob Welty, you know long time weatherman. And you know he was talking with me one day as we were kind of beginning the theatre and he just said, “How in the world are you going to make this work in Salt Lake City?” But people came Shauna. They came, and so the sellouts were so frequent and we couldn’t keep up with it and you know you can only tell people for so long that you’re sold out and then they stop even trying to call. We were nuts in that we would close a show on a Monday night, do the change-over throughout the night in the middle of the night, and be open to a full house on Tuesday night.

SHAUNA LAKE: Now why did you operate it like that?

SALLY DIETLEIN: Because we couldn’t afford to let one paying house go, and whenever you’re in a business and you’re running your own business, you do whatever it takes.

SHAUNA LAKE: What were people seeking do you feel…Utahans who came and gave you a sold out crowd night after night after night all these years?

SALLY DIETLEIN: That’s a real interesting question. I think that’s a multi-faceted answer. But first of all, the kinds of plays that Ruth and Nathan Hale wrote were funny. And people loved to laugh, and they would laugh and laugh and laugh and go out, and I would watch them walk out just having felt like every care in the world was gone.

SHAUNA LAKE: If you could have a conversation with Grandma and Grandpa Hale today what do you think they would say to you about what you’ve done with their baby?

SALLY DIETLEIN: They’re going to say carry on. Sometimes the arms get tired because it is a 24-7 thing but it is so essential to a community to have arts that everyone can participate in. It is so essential to have the idea of learning from watching a person go through an element of life that may be hard to explain or hard to understand and learn it from a third person value. It is so essential that grandma and grandpa would say carryon.

SHAUNA LAKE: Your emotion, does it come from just all the hard work that went into it?

SALLY DIETLEIN: Some of it, some of it because I believe in it. That’s the most important thing. I really believe in what we do.

SHAUNA LAKE: Thank you so much. It’s nice to get to know you better Person 2 Person.

SALLY DIETLEIN: Thank you. Thank you, wonderful.

SHAUNA LAKE: Thank you for your time.       

(Copyright 2014 Sinclair Broadcast Group)

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