As part of the season opener for Stories on Stage, Executive Director Norma Moore was looking for some political healing. Her hope was to find readers from both the Democratic and Republican parties to read great orations by their political opponents. She ended up halfway there.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb will read from Ronald Reagan's address to the Republican convention of 1992, a kind of farewell to politics.

But instead of a Republican politician, actor Jamie Horton will read Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second inaugural speech.

It was a matter more of logistics than ideology, Moore says.

"Nobody went, 'Well, we're not touching that. Unless they have some connection to it.' It's one of a thousand phone calls they're getting in a day."

In fact, she only reached out to one Republican, the governor, who was unavailable.

"I know he's a good speaker, and I didn't have any other ideas of someone who I thought was a good speaker who I also thought would have manners," Moore says. "I didn't want someone who would get up there rolling their eyes and treating it as a joke. I needed someone whose sense of dignity I had confidence in."