David Lindsay Abaire, who first achieved fame with such surreal and fantastical comedies as Kimberly Akimbo, about a young girl with a disease that causes rapid and premature aging, and Fuddy Meers, in which a woman wakes up day after day remembering neither who she is nor what recently happened,…
For the past several years, a pair of alternating biennials have been presented in the month of March (though the shows and events associated with them often start in February and end in April). In odd-numbered years, there’s the well-established Month of Photography, and in even-numbered years, like 2014, there’s…
Critical Focus: Ian Fisher. This show, located in the informal Whole Room at MCA Denver, is made up of a group of mostly monumental paintings of the sky. It’s the type of thing that has become the artist’s signature. Though Fisher begins with photographs of clouds used as studies, the…
The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a brilliant work, its flaws so intertwined with its crazed strengths that you can hardly separate one from the other. McDonagh grew up in London, the son of Irish parents, and invented an Ireland — and an…
Dystopian movies don’t have to make sense. As the audience, we’re obligated to sit down with our popcorn and soda and pretend that, yes, of course, in the future monkeys rule the earth, women can’t bear children, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is an everyday construction worker. It’s a mutual contract of…
If you count forward from Jim Henson’s mid-1960s TV appearances with a fringy pup named Rowlf and the lizard, made from an old winter coat, who would later become Kermit the Frog, the Muppets have outlived most of their early puppet peers by more than two generations. That endurance isn’t…
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is more than just men in tights: It’s a performance of camp that requires expert precision. Begun in 1974 as a parody of the sometimes stuffy dance form, the Trocks have since evolved, bringing dance to a new level with expert elements of comedy,…
This year’s Big Read was turned over by the city to Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Denver’s writing school and unofficial community center, and to the organization’s credit, they’re doing a bang-up job of sharing the book selection — Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel, Housekeeping — with the book-loving public. As part of…
To help celebrate Colorado Craft Beer Week, the Colorado Brewers Guild wanted to put on a truly special event. And that’s how the inaugural Collaboration Fest was conceived — because what better way to promote craft beer than through one-of-a-kind brews created by multiple breweries? “Breweries literally work together every…
While on tour, drummer Shawn King of DeVotchKa found inspiration in fellow gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello’s relentless immigrant-rights advocacy and the slogan “No Human Is Illegal.” Upon returning to Denver, King connected with well-known local director José Antonio Mercado to collaborate on the original play Dreaming Sin Fronteras: Stories of…
In our city of wheels — cars, bikes, scooters, ’blades and skateboards — going for a walk has almost become an oddity. But the Colorado-owned business Walk2Connect works to remedy that situation by inviting people to just slow down. Part of the program is a series of community walks and…
If there’s one thing science-fiction writers love as much as the idea of exploring space and meeting aliens, it’s traveling back in time and screwing things up. From H.G. Wells to the recent reboot of Star Trek, time travel is one of the genre’s most well-explored tropes, but authors keep…
There’s a new food fest in town, and promoter Cat Kirk says A Bite of the Rockies will fill in the holes that some of the bigger events ignore — starting with its timing. “I’m a festival junkie,” Kirk admits. “I love Taste of Colorado and Cinco de Mayo, but…
The Denver Avant-Garde Music Society has been hosting monthly open-call solo and duet performance nights for about a year now, says event organizer Kurt Bauer of Bangsnap Records, and attendees never know exactly what they’re going to get. For some performers, the nights represent a chance to try something new…
The cinematic quality of Goldfrapp’s recorded work has always been evident: Singer Alison Goldfrapp and musician/composer Will Gregory create breathy, synthesizer-heavy songs that could easily sweep across a movie screen. Tonight those songs get a chance to do just that in Goldfrapp: Tales of Us, five music videos that coalesce…
Wes Anderson is arguably the most popular “underground” filmmaker of our time; although his films are widely distributed and avidly watched by his fans, he still maintains an indie sensibility through his whimsical settings and plots. “He definitely has a style,” notes Keith Garcia, creative manager for the Alamo Drafthouse…
As an obituary writer for the New York Times, Bruce Weber contemplates mortality more than most. For example, in 1993, at the age of 39, he packed his saddlebags and rode his bike across the United States as a way to salute his youth and pedal into middle age. He…
Collaboration takes center stage at the Athena Project Festival, where 200 up-and-coming female creators will get together to showcase their plays, music, visual art and other creative endeavors through a variety of workshops, performances and programs. A highlight of the ongoing fest is tonight’s Utopia/Dystopia Fashion Show, a futuristic look…
Michael Paglia visits Open Press in this week’s review, taking in an exhibit made up of 125 pieces by 50 different artists. Much of the focus is on Mark Lunning, printmaster and owner of Open Press, celebrating his work from the last 25 years. Continue reading for photos from the…
DeVoktchKa’s Shawn King may not think too highly of didactic protest songs, but he has devoted himself to Dreaming Sin Fronteras: Stories of Immigration and American Identity, a massive theatrical collaboration about “dreamers”: undocumented students who have been in the United States since they were children and are seeking a…
Jovan Mays, the first-ever poet laureate of Aurora, wants his poetry to capture the voices of the city’s people, who first inspired him to write and perform poetry. An Aurora native and graduate of Smoky Hills High School, Mays has been invested in the Aurora community since he was a…
When artists Taylor Boylston and Chelsea Bashford recently decided to officially “close” Inca House, their home gallery and show space, it was for reasons all too common to a DIY spot: the rent got to be too much and people weren’t respecting the venue. “We felt like people were taking…
