American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose. Written by Richard Montoya, of the San Francisco performance group Culture Clash, American Night: The Ballad of Juan Josetells the story of immigrants in America through a crazed mix of skits, historical references, inspired parody and moments of pathos and insight. But the…
There’s something about the work of Athol Fugard — or at least about this particular work, The Road to Mecca — that reminds me of the plays of August Wilson. It has the same rich sense of place and culture, the same emotional complexity and the same kind of humanism,…
The Grawlix comedy show has been selling out the Avenue Theater since it launched (it runs the last Friday of every month), so we figured it was time to catch up with one of the founding members, Andrew Orvedahl to talk about the history the show and its future, including…
What’s a dance club without booze? Some might say “intolerable,” but Darina Miteva — perhaps better known as DJ Darina, Bulgaria’s #1 female DJ — would beg to differ. “Everything is full of drunk people,” Miteva says. “People at home don’t like the environment in the nightclub.” Miteva, who doesn’t…
When local actor Royce Wood saw an announcement last week that Lev Grossman’s fantasy novel The Magicians was in development to become a Fox television show, he knew he wanted to be a part of it. “How on earth do I get from here, Denver, Colorado, to you know, the…
The play Enrique’s Journey, adapted by Su Teatro artistic director Anthony Garcia from the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nazario, debuted last weekend in Denver, bringing to light the harrowing story of Central American immigrants who risk life and limb riding the tops of freight trains north, in search of…
My Hideous Progeny. When Mary Shelley — poet, essayist, novelist and, most famously, the creator of Frankenstein — lost one of the four babies she conceived with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (only one child ultimately survived), he placed her in a tub of ice water to stop the hemorrhaging that…
Immigrants and those who support them often talk about the richness and vitality that newcomers bring to this country, from the original settlers to the slaves dragged here in chains to the lonely and much-reviled Chinese men who built the railroads (Chinese women being legally excluded at the time). They…
Although rare, there were once American musicals that talked about politics and even acknowledged that poor people existed. Bertolt Brecht was their father. Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, written in 1937, was a fable about workers and corporate greed so outspoken that the House Un-American Activities Committee tried to…
Improv theater is risky, especially when it calls for pulling an unsuspecting audience member onto the stage for the entirety of the show. Case in point, the Garner Galleria’s production of Blind Date, in which the show’s creator and only star, Rebecca Northan, hand-picks a fellow from the crowd to…
Of Love Songs for Poomouse, which opens tonight in Boulder, this much we know: It stars Bobby Dartt, whose unique sense of humor and elan is central to the musical revue. And it is all about the love songs — during the first half, Dartt covers some favorites; in the…
Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…
One of the main things that differentiated America’s hippies from their counterparts around the world — France, Mexico, Poland, Germany and Ireland were all seething with protest at the time, and the Soviet Union drove its tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to quell the Czech spring — was a zany…
To Kill a Mockingbird is an institution, a revered American novel that’s a must for every high-school curriculum, the inspiration for a well-loved film starring Gregory Peck and scripted by Horton Foote. Mockingbird has influenced discussions of race ever since Harper Lee’s novel first appeared in 1960; idealistic lawyers like…
2009 Broadway revival cast photos below by Joan Marcus. I don’t know exactly what I expected when I walked into the Buell Tuesday for the opening night of Hair, and after the curtain went up and the once-controversial musical got started, even my theater-going companion, an old hippie in every…
Denver comic extraordinaire and former Westword writer Adam Cayton-Holland is scheduled to make his TV debut tonight on the ABC sitcom “Happy Endings.” “I ably played the role of ‘Customer’ and it was my duty in the scene to order a sandwich. And I ordered the shit out of that…
Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…
When Mary Shelley — poet, essayist, novelist and, most famously, the creator of Frankenstein — lost one of the four babies she conceived with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (only one child ultimately survived), he placed her in a tub of ice water to stop the hemorrhaging that threatened her life…
At the beginning of Parlour Song, demolitions expert Ned is showing videos of his work to his neighbor, Dale, owner of a car wash. Dale is polite but uninterested — he’s seen these many times before, though Ned seems to have forgotten showing them to him — but for the…
Beginning Saturday, Paragon member and executive director Michael Stricker joins co-founder Warren Sherrill and Emily Paton-Davies in the troupe’s production of Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song, the last show of its present season, as well as the last to be performed in a sublet venue (in this case, the Kim Robards…
Clybourne Park. Racism persists, but the ways in which we feel and express racism change with the times. Bruce Norris’s brilliant Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, at the end of which the Youngers, a struggling black family, are about to move into a…
As a musical, Ragtime inevitably lacks the complexity — as well as the violence and darkness — of E.L. Doctorow’s wonderful novel, but it still has a thousand times more intelligence, charm and integrity than the average musical. As written by Terrence McNally, with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics…
