Performing Arts

Screenwriter, actor, podcaster and comedian Brock Wilbur’s outsized ambition matches his mountainous physique. He records at least an hour of standup every year and then starts fresh with new material and he’s coming to Denver for his autumnal joke harvest this year. In addition to touring across the country as a standup as well as writing and producing films, Wilbur co-hosts the podcast with Rob Ondarza and Joe Starr (who will also be recording his set for a standup album of his own). This is the third live album for the industrious Wilbur, this saturday at the Voodoo Comedy Playhouse. He’s also featured on friday night’s Sex Pot Comedy Aerial Menagerie showcase with locals Jay Gillespie and Haley Driscoll along with co-headliners David Hunstberger and Dan St. Germain. Westword caught up with Wilbur before his trip to town to discuss his slash and burn work ethic, balancing screenwriting with comedy, and the motherly guest of honor at his taping.

Animal Farm. Germinal Stage’s new theater — only a few miles from the one the company left last year, and even smaller — is cozy, welcoming and workable. Walking in feels a bit like entering a time warp. The Germinal faithful, along with a few young initiates, throng the lobby,…

The Moth is coming to Denver! The internationally beloved, true-stories-told-live-on-stage-without-notes series will host a Moth Mainstage event (the theme is “When Worlds Collide”) on Tuesday, September 30, at the Paramount Theatre. And it needs one more storyteller — a local one — to join the four others who’ll be standing…

All the Rage is a sequel to Martin Moran’s first one-man play, The Tricky Part, which told the story of his molestation by a counselor at Colorado’s Camp St. Malo when he was twelve — a relationship that continued over three conflicted years. Moran, who’d grown up in Denver and…

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” So said J. Robert Oppenheimer of his work on the atomic bomb, quoting the Bhagavad Gita. There’s grief and guilt in the statement, as well a daunting realization of just what he’s unleashed on the world. But as you think about it,…

Margaret Tobin Brown was not the perky, Debbie Reynolds-like character from The Unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, she was not even known as Molly when she lived in Denver. The “Indomitable Mrs. James J. Brown” might have been a better nickname, since despite being snubbed by this city’s society mavens…

The fall theater season is in full swing. This weekend you can send off a local production as it takes to the road, re-view an old stage classic or catch the world premiere of a new play from a local playwright — and there’s an old-fashioned musical, too. Here’s a…

Animal Farm. Germinal Stage’s new theater — only a few miles from the one the company left last year, and even smaller — is cozy, welcoming and workable. Walking in feels a bit like entering a time warp. The Germinal faithful, along with a few young initiates, throng the lobby,…

The public is becoming more and more aware of the dangerous power wielded by the nation’s police. We’re learning that as cops charge into civilian neighborhoods, they’re armed with equipment developed for military combat — and few of them have the training to handle such equipment. With the explosion of…

Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of internet media; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer their listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship, or geography. Indeed, several great podcasts have blossomed from Denver’s own flourishing arts community. Here to celebrate them is Podcast Profiles, a new series documenting the efforts of local podcasters and spotlighting the peculiar personalities behind them.

Josh Hartwell, writer, actor and director, is one of the area’s treasures. A modest, diffident soul, he seems to prefer being out of the limelight, but we recently named him one of our 100 Colorado Creatives, and he’ll be getting even more attention this week, when he directs George Brant’s…

In the wink of an eye, the Fine Gentleman’s Club’s annual drunken joke-fest and recreational opportunity — the Too Much Funstival — came and went this past weekend. Photographer Brandon Marshall was there to capture the action at Friday night’s TMF romp at the Curtis Club. See also: The Ten…

Denver’s Governor Jack has been busy in 2014 — the improv group has been performing across the U.S. this year, hitting the Detroit Improv Festival, the Omaha Improv Festival, the Del Close Marathon in New York and, most recently, the Out of Bounds Comedy festival in Austin. The troupe of…

Mack & Mabel. Mack & Mabel has a brilliant score and a piss-poor book. The musical purports to tell the story of the confused and conflicted love between Mack Sennett, impresario of the early comic silent movies, and Mabel Normand, the young woman he discovered and made a star. The…

Theater companies all along the Front Range are springing to life as fall seasons get under way. Catch a rocking musical or a taut dark comedy close to home, or venture north for a one-woman tour-de-force or an evening of colorful folklore, with awesome stage moves. See also: M. Butterfly,…

As the year lumbers toward autumn and Denver shakes off its various summer-festival hangovers, our city’s bleary-eyed revelers have few better live entertainment options this month than comedy. From a nice roster of comedy club headliners rolling through town, banner months for some of Denver’s most esteemed local showcases, to a greedily stacked comedy festival, comedy fans have solid options nearly every week this month.

At the beginning of last year, we heard that Germinal Stage Denver was closing its doors after forty years — 25 of them in a small theater just off Federal Boulevard. But Germinal wasn’t going away completely; artistic director Ed Baierlein simply wasn’t ready to stop his work. He’s always…

Every now and then, you realize you’re watching a genuine star. Not just a very good, emotionally generous actor who makes intellectually interesting choices, but someone possessed of a quality that goes beyond that, a performer you’d happily watch in the dumbest and most boring show imaginable. This happened to…

On Golden Pond. As this play opens, Norman and Ethel Thayer are moving back into their summer house in Maine. Every summer for 48 years, he’s come here to fish and she to putter around, read, gather strawberries. This, their last visit, represents a slow, gentle fading. There’s just a…

This week local stages will host the next installment in an ongoing series from Denver’s Control Group Productions and a cop drama from Edge Theatre Company (see below); a new company will also debut with an original world premiere. Keep reading for the details. See also: Police Action: A Steady…

Eugene Cordero is an improviser, actor, and comedian who developed his skills in comedy laboratory of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. He’s recently appeared on the Showtime series House of Lies as well as Comedy Central’s Kroll Show and Key & Peele. Westword caught up with Cordero for a phone interview before he joins the 65 other comics descending on Denver for the High Plains Comedy Festival to discuss following the cues of soused storytellers on Drunk History and going to high school with HPCF co-owner Andy Juett.

Mack & Mabel purports to tell the story of the confused and conflicted love between Mack Sennett, impresario of the early comic silent movies, and Mabel Normand, the young woman he discovered and made a star. I’d read that the musical has a brilliant score and a piss-poor book, and…