9 Circles. On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death entered the nearby home of a fourteen-year-old girl named Abeer Qasim Hamza. Steven Green, a private, took her parents and six-year-old sister into…
Playwright Steve Dietz never bores me. His dialogue is usually smart and his imagination fresh. He likes to come up with intricate plot twists, bend theatrical form and refuse the audience a satisfyingly tied-up — or even entirely comprehensible — ending. Becky’s New Car is the lightest of his works…
It takes guts and ingenuity to write a play in which the protagonist is a morbidly obese man, constantly on stage and essentially tethered in one place. Charlie is dying of his own weight. He sleeps on the sofa — propped up so he can breathe — and spends almost…
The online rush to buy tickets for The Book of Mormon nearly crashed the Denver Center for the Performing Arts servers and the show sold-out in five hours. But for those willing to brave the February cold, the wait for the highly anticipated show — of which Denver is the…
I have an adult niece in San Francisco who’s into theater on the fringe; she’s been a stage manager and a world traveler to various festivals, writes about theater for a Bay area newspaper, and every so often, hosts lives theatrical performances in her living room, sort of like a…
Although the Avenue Theater has moved around and changed hands now and then, it’s still been a fixture on 17th Avenue for 25 long, good years. To kick off its 25th anniversary season, the Avenue will jump into 2012 with its fifth annual Womens’ Performance Series, a showcase for the…
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939 On March 12, 2006, five soldiers stationed at a dangerous traffic checkpoint in an area of Iraq that the military called the Triangle of Death…
You couldn’t find a more fitting interpreter for Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man than the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League. The play tells the story of Joseph (or John, as he came to be called) Merrick, a man born with hideous deformities: spongy masses of flesh, protuberances…
As a feminist, I believe no woman should have to defend her journeys into girl culture. As a realist, I offer the following defense as to why I took my friend Katie’s free ticket offer and went with her and two friends to Bring It On: The Musical on Saturday…
Deep in the bowels of the Denver Performing Arts Complex lies the mysterious little Jones Theatre, which sits on the backside of the complex like an afterthought. But what goes on in there? For one, there’s Cult Following, a monthly improv-based (but not exactly) performance serial with this motto: “Theater…
Belgians and Greeks do it, Nice young men who sell antiques do it Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love. The Brontes felt that they must do it, Ernest Hemingway could just do it Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love. Tennessee Williams, self taught, does it, Kinsey with a…
Got an itch in your tights to take up dancing? You’re not the only one. One way that adventurous dance companies like Ballet Nouveau Colorado bankroll work that’s not run-of-the-mill is through instruction. BNC, for instance, offers year-round dance and fitness classes for all ages and ability levels, from toddlers…
If the flurry of excitement and variety we’re being offered in January is any indication, this is going to be an amazing year for theater. The month opens on a light note: a 1930s Noel Coward play set in the big-haired 1980s. This isn’t the kind of interpretation you expect…
Phantom. While playwright Arthur Kopit and composer Maury Yeston were still putting together Phantom, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Operatrundled onto the scene, and their backers vanished — along with any chance of a Broadway opening. This Phantom is much smaller-scale than Webber’s, with less spectacle and more emphasis…
The Black Actors Guild was originally founded by five juniors at the Denver School of the Arts who were frustrated with the available material and also by the stereotype of the black actor, according Ryan Soo, the guild’s director of operations. “A lot didn’t apply to them, and a lot…
Any new production of West Side Story has to stand up to the dozens of high-school productions we’ve seen over the decades, as well as our communal memory of the movie and intimate knowledge of the score: Sing the first phrase of “Tonight” or “Maria” or “I Feel Pretty” to…
Vaclav Havel, the unassuming playwright dissident who helped spearhead the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that overthrew Communism in Czechoslovakia, died on December 18. He became the country’s president after the revolution, presiding over its peaceful break-up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, leaving and then returning to the office, before…
It’s a Wonderful Life. The film It’s a Wonderful Life is a much-loved American classic. Some families watch it together year after year at this time, like Miracle on 34th Street and varying versions of A Christmas Carol. What makes It’s a Wonderful Life interesting and original is the twist,…
If performance-on-the-fringe is your cup of tea, here’s a great way to support it — Silver and Gold: A Holiday Extravaganza, hosted by Band of Toughs at Naropa University at 7 p.m. Friday, focuses on a handful of qualifying Boulder fringe ensembles and their friends buy presenting three-minute, holiday-tinged introductions…
Looking for a quick — if pricy — gift for theater lovers? You can name a seat after them in the Ricketson Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The price is $1,000 per seat, but this is a gift that keeps giving — the money goes to the New…
After a seven-and-a-half-year run, Greg Baumhauer is pulling the plug on the Squire Lounge’s open-mike comedy night. “We’ve crushed enough dreams,” he says. And tonight, you have one last chance to catch Baumhauer and the Wrist Deep crew in action at what was once hailed as the meanest open-mike night…
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Book-to-stage adaptations are often wooden, but playwright Laura Eason has done a terrific job with Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Her playhas energy and charm, and it really does communicate the fears, uncertainties and joys of childhood, as well as the atmosphere of…
