Performing Arts

Taylor Mac’s Hir is a mess — but it’s a seething, evocative, darkly funny mess tangled in a host of issues, with sex and gender at their center. Intelligently directed by Josh Hartwell, Hir represents a daring step for Miners Alley, providing entry into a world that feels somewhat alien and hermetically sealed. It’s fascinating to observe for an evening, though you wouldn’t want to stay too long there.

Steven Burge has had many challenging roles, including serving as Westword’s receptionist. But now he really gets to play God: as the lead in An Act of God, which runs through April 8 at the Garner Galleria.

Making water safety videos in the context of Ophelia, the potential wife of Hamlet who drowns herself toward the end of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, isn’t the most intuitive response to the play. That is, unless you’re Niki Tulk, the United States born, Australian raised performance artist, who will be presenting her immersive installation, Ophelia | Leaves, in Boulder, on Friday, January 27.

The beginning of Brilliant Traces, now playing at Vintage Theatre, is wonderfully evocative: A young woman in a wedding dress stumbles into a remote and dilapidated Alaska cabin. Her car broke down some time ago, and she’s been wandering in a blinding whiteout — the kind that disorients and kills…

Kathy Griffin is a writer, actor, television mainstay and astoundingly prolific standup comedian who has achieved a record-breaking number of career milestones since getting her start in the venerated Groundlings improv troupe during their mid-80s salad days.

Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will just premiered at the Denver Center, and the play is a delight.

Denver is a storyteller’s town. Ongoing programs like the Narrators, Raconteur Denver, the Denver Moth StorySLAM and Boulder’s Truth Be Told thrive in a niche that falls somewhere between standup comedy and performance art. But Denver transplant Laura Condi thinks there’s room for one more event. Her venture Storycraft differs from the…

Jamie Lee is coming to Comedy Works January 19-21; after her show, she’ll sign copies of her book Weddiculous.

If you’ve never seen William Hahn on a stage, you need to catch him as Pale in the Edge Theater production of Burn This.

One of Europe’s most famous working comedians, Gad Elmaleh recently relocated to New York to make his mark on the American entertainment industry, the last frontier of stardom. Born in Morocco, the multilingual Elmaleh has been performing one-man shows in Paris since the ’90s, and he wrote, directed and starred in Coco, a European box-office smash. Stateside, Elmaleh is probably best known as a character actor who stole scenes in films like Midnight in Paris, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn and Crisis in Six Scenes; since moving here, he’s appeared on Conan, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In anticipation of his Sexpot Comedy-sponsored headlining showcase on Thursday, January 19, at the Gothic Theatre, Westword caught up with Elmaleh to discuss translating his act into English, his friendship with mentor Jerry Seinfeld, and his fascination with the Big Blue Bear, aka Lawrence Argent’s “I See What You Mean.”

Thoroughly Modern Millie, now playing at Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, couldn’t be lighter. It provides a comically paper-thin plot, hummable but hardly memorable tunes and serviceable dialogue. But also lots and lots of fun, sparkly performances and some of the best tap dancing you’ll see around here.

Brace yourself for a harrowing season of dance, including classics like Firebird and a collaboration between the contemporary dance troupe Wonderbound and the hip-hop group, the Flobots.

Comedian Heather Snow passed away on December 31, 2016 after a battle with leukemia.

Kent Thompson isn’t talking much about the reasons for his departure as artistic director, but he has no problem sharing favorite memories and proudest accomplishments at the DCPA.

Very few comedians have amassed television résumés as impressive as Dana Gould’s — and almost none have made it as far without a starring role on their own eponymous sitcom. Yet with an HBO special, two one-hour Showtime specials and guest appearances on The Late Show With David Letterman, Conan, Maron and Real Time with Bill Maher all under his belt, Gould has hours of material waiting to delight the newly initiated; he has also had prominent guest roles on shows like Anger Management, Seinfeld and in the dirty-joke-etymology documentary The Aristocrats. Westword caught up with Gould before his visit to Denver this week for headlining engagements at The Dairy Arts Center and Comedy Works Downtown to discuss failed projects, his new show and the concept of “peak TV.”

Here are the ten best comedy events in Denver in January.

For six years, Too Much Fun united Denver’s comedy and DIY communities with an anarchic celebration of laughter, hedonism and the bonds of friendship. Unfortunately for local comedy fans, the sixth-anniversary showcase — at the Deer Pile on January 4 — will be its last. The focus of a Westword…