Kahane Corn Cooperman’s engaging and heartwarmingly hopeful “Creede U.S.A.” stars the residents of Creede, Colorado, a sparse place (population: 300) so remote I had to look it up on Google Maps, only to discover that it’s just a three-hour drive west of where I was raised. The last silver boom town in the state, Creede is now home to a 40-foot aluminum sculpture known as the Creede Fork. But the town’s most famous attraction would have to be the thriving Creede Repertory Theatre, which was the focus of an August 2021 article in the New York Times — which is how the nearly 60-year-old institution came to the attention of an Oscar nominee like Cooperman (recognized for her 2016 short “Joe’s Violin”), a self-described “former theater nerd” who’d been longing to escape the “echo chamber” of her big city bubble.

On its surface, the story of how...