Performing Arts

Denver’s creative community has everything you need – from high culture to dick jokes – to stave off boredom and despair as you welcome the sun-dappled days of June. With street fairs, elegant concerts, medieval festivals and a full-on corgi takeover, the only way to lose this weekend is by staying home. Best of all, locals can attend all of the following ten events, listed below in chronological order, for less than ten American dollars – and seven of these events are free.

Dave Chappelle’s Red Rocks stint sold out in a fury, and now Live Nation has announced it will be adding a second show at the Colorado Convention Center’s Bellco Theatre, on July 13.

Members of the Evergreen Players improv group will be studied by a Harvard neuroscientist looking for the source of their creativity.

I can’t remember how many productions of Cabaret I’ve seen over the last decade, but Len Matheo’s version at Miners Alley is by far the clearest, most intelligent and most exciting.

As May rolls into June, penny-pinching locals, whether they’re comedy fans (or wanna be comedians), fashionistas or mystery buffs, have a full week of events to enjoy.

The Equinox Theatre Company has generally made a name for itself with cult, campy, genre shows, says artistic director Deb Flomberg: “Reefer Madness, Carrie, Little Shop of Horrors. Our audiences love them, and they’ve been asking for this one for quite a while.” Get ready for the Rocky Horror Show

Denver residents rightfully complain that our city is pricing out artists. Even so, the local creative scene is thriving – for the time being. While cash-strapped Denverites have less and less disposable income to devote toward leisure, adventurous and thrifty locals are in luck. With art-gallery openings, stoner-friendly comedy shows and even a city-wide festival going on this weekend, everyone from bookish nerds to active families have affordable entertainment options to suit their tastes.

At Buntport Theater, The Crud is Waiting for Godot as written by Edward Lear: a world of color, strangeness, mystery and nonsense that you most definitely want to enter.

Last year, HBO announced it would be recording a special with T.J. Miller, at the Paramount Theater. The broadcaster just announced it will be releasing the special on Saturday, June 17 at 10 p.m. It’s title: T.J. Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous.

Chip Walton is dedicated to bringing work by promising young playwrights to light at Curious Theatre Company. Meridith Friedman and Walton received a commission for The Luckiest People from the National New Play Network, and it’s a lucky choice.

The Secret Garden, now playing at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, is a gorgeous show, a musical version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s story, filled with visual and aural riches.

From special visits to fond farewells, Denver comedy has enough entertainment in store to keep locals a-maying all month long.

William Goldman’s Misery, a dramatization of Stephen King’s horror novel, is now receiving a searing production at the Edge Theatre. You may have read the book or seen the film starring Kathy Bates and James Caan, but you have never experienced this freaky story in such an intimate environment.

Square Product Theatre founder Emily K. Harrison focuses on innovative work that has audiences talking and guessing — and perhaps feeling just a touch unbalanced by the end. Now Square Product is presenting the regional premiere of Amelia Roper’s acerbic, wonderfully-titled one-act comedy, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, at the Dairy Arts Center.

Juliet Wittman’s review of the Arvada Center’s Waiting for Godot — one of the best productions she’s seen of Godot, she says — inspired plenty of discussion on her Facebook page. That’s pretty good for a play in which “nothing happens, twice,” according to eminent Samuel Beckett scholar Vivian Mercer. Here’s…

Denver is positively bustling with activity all weekend long, which means thrifty locals have plenty of opportunities to enjoy everything our city arts scene has to offer without breaking the bank.

Geoffrey Kent’s Waiting for Godot at the Arvada Center is one of the best versions of this play we’ve seen: funny, lively, sad and moving, seeming simultaneously to take forever and to move rapidly along. Most important, it’s well cast.

Having fun and experiencing all that Denver has to offer needn’t be the lone purview of bourgeois weekenders. Our city is too vibrant, too filled with the creations of odd characters to let something like pricey tickets keep you home-bound.

Sondra Blanchard, the artistic director of the Public Works Theatre Company was visiting the Montreal Biodome, when she met a friendly puffin. That encounter served as the inspiration for her new play, Flight of Fancy, a gentle conversation starter about ecological collapse and mass extinction.

Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky deals with an important topic — the ignored contributions of women scientists — but it feels more like a young-adult novel than a living dramatic work.

Frozen fans, delight! The Broadway musical Frozen, based on the Disney cartoon, will be staged in Denver August 17-October 1, and the producers have just announced the principal cast.

I’ve been trying to moderate my immediate reaction to Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced: that it’s a nasty, mean-spirited, dangerous and anti-Muslim piece of work, and I have no idea why a Pulitzer committee would have awarded it the 2013 prize for drama. But I can’t. The play falls into the general…