Simon is thirteen years old — that confusing in-between time when most of as are struggling to find our own identities and our imaginations are at their most fluid, expansive and fantastical — and he’s a religious obsessive. He isn’t filled with love or wonder, he has no sense of…
This week on local stages, hear immigration stories from Theatre Esprit Asia, learn the greatest source of angst for professional opera singers at Opera on Tap (clue: it’s not the opera’s bombastic plot), or help a couple of local nonprofit endeavors while having the time of your life at the…
Peter Shaffer’s Equus was written in 1973, when many cultural assumptions were being upended and some influential thinkers questioned the most basic premises of psychiatry. Their essential point — and I may be oversimplifying — was that the culture was insane, and to remain sane in an insane world is…
Pursuing a career in standup comedy is a lonesome journey through the gloom of uncertainty, with nothing but self-doubt as your constant companion. Competition is fierce and benchmarks of progress are few and far between. For a comedian fumbling through this desert of opportunity, a home club is both a…
Growing up in Denver, Zach Reini liked to draw and got into punk, playing in such noteworthy local hardcore bands as Crawl, Dethbox and, currently, Citizen. His wide-ranging imagination also led him to explore experimental electronic music with his Data Rainbow project. But Reini never gave up on the visual…
As I watched Curious Theatre Company’s production of Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet, there were moments when the close-to-heretical thought entered my mind that playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney has been anointed a giant of the contemporary theater far too soon, that this play is raggedy in conception and goes…
This week an old Broadway favorite is returning to the Buell, while Denver’s Wonderbound rolls out a new work at the Mizel Center’s JAAMM Fest. And in celebration of Denver Arts Week, Chance to Dance invites the public to check out what’s coming out of dance studios around town. Disney’s…
Emily K. Harrison, artistic director of Square Product Theatre, has always preferred presenting work that’s either original or hasn’t been seen in this area before, but she taught Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive at the University of Colorado and feels a strong connection to this complex,…
This November, let us give thanks for the cornucopia of Denver comedy overflowing with imported and locally-sourced bursts of mirth. Though games of sport typically dominate the autumn entertainment landscape, stuffing comedy into the locker of obscurity like some schoolyard bully, the bounty of joke shows this month is burly…
The summer theater season is ending, but there are still a few shows to see this weekend. Here are capsule reviews of two productions on local stages this weekend. Relatively Speaking. Witty, surprising dialogue as tangled and twisty and as continually knotting and unfurling as a ball of wool between…
When Uncalled Four began, few people would have guessed that a bar show featuring Denver comics riffing on Cards Against Humanity-style prompts would grow into one of the scene’s most popular nights. The show, which pits comedians against one another in a race to the gutters of irreverence, has been featured…
Scary stories about madness, S&M and the ghosty tales of our youth are popping up on stages all around town. ’Tis the season for indoor entertainment with maybe a touch of the spooky. Trick or treat: Here are three new shows this weekend: Equus Avenue Theater October 29, through November…
Thanks to the Denver Center Theatre Company’s New Play Summit, we had the privilege of seeing Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale — which had a reading at the DCTC in 2011 and earned a full production by the company a year later — before it became a major success in…
To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy families are alike; each dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way. The family at the center of Nina Raine’s Tribes is dysfunctional in a highly verbal, entertaining and also dismaying way. Father Christopher is a writer and critic whose loud carping spills over into…
Indie design blogger Jeanne Connolly loves to see how creative people put their houses together. In this series, she shares some of her favorite homes, taking us inside unique private spaces in Denver and beyond. Dorothy Tanner harnesses light and sound to transport her audience into another realm of reality. Her…
New productions this week include hard drama with the Boulder Ensemble Theater Company, a paranormal trip back in time with the Theater Company of Lafayette, and a cabaret-style musical at the Garner Galleria. Here’s where to grab tickets and go for a theatrical ride. BETC, The Few Dairy Center for…
Some of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth century were made by gentleman explorer-scientists. But Charles Darwin never devised a test for pet guinea-pig intelligence, nor did botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker name a plant that induced first euphoria and then death for a woman he was attracted to. And…
When the original idea for BoomBaptricks — a variety show debuting tomorrow night at the Oriental Theater — was conceived, it was about creating an evening celebrating multiple art forms. A producer of comedy events around the city through her company 52Eighty Entertainment, LaRae Martinez had been working with Corin…
Stories about family life, the Internet and sex all take the stage this weekend in local productions, from Edge Theater’s Alan Ayckbourn comedy Woman in Mind, to a titillating installment from Denver’s dramatic reading staple, Stories on Stage. Here’s how to get all hot and bothered — or enjoy a fresh new…
As I was trying to understand the cause for my scratchy irritability when I left Spirits to Enforce — particularly surprising since I’d liked playwright Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, which Catamounts staged last year — I thought of Aldous Huxley’s essay “The Rest Is Silence,”…
It seemed like it was all coming together for Corin Chavez, an actor, comedian, writer, producer, teacher and master improviser who passed away on Friday, October 9, at the age of 23. Over the past few months, his closest friends had noticed that Chavez was really settling into himself —…
“I took a break from standup due to lack of skill and ability,” went a typical Michael Carter opener, “but I’ve decided that I’m not going to let that stop me.” While the archetype of the self-deprecating comic is so well-established that it’s become something of a ready-made persona, nothing…
