When we interviewed hometown-boy-gone-big T.J. Miller last week, he’d just gotten back to Beverly Hills and was preparing for a quick trip to Denver to debut his new Nix Bros. collaboration: the “Denver” video that premiered at Film on the Rocks Tuesday. After that, Miller headed straight to London –…
T.J. Miller loves Denver. He was educated by the rough blocks of Colfax, by the teachers at East High School, and by the comedians who came before him. After working odd jobs here and there to support his comedic obsession, Miller has finally established himself internationally on the comedy circuit…
Michael Frayn’s Noises Off is a farce about a farce. It relies on all those familiar farcical conventions — lots of doors with people going in and out of the wrong ones, a woman in her underwear and a man with his pants down around his ankles, sexual innuendo, blows,…
Art can be funny — sometimes inadvertently — but rarely do we see a show pointedly dedicated to funny art. But Art You Can Laugh At, curated by Eric Matelski and opening today at MacSpa, is an exhibit that revels in silliness: Its sole purpose is to make us guffaw…
The theater world is full of Richard IIIs quipping, posturing, lying and murdering their way through thickets of bodies to the English crown. The role is catnip to actors because it’s juicy and bigger than life, and the bloody monsters of twentieth-century history — Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet…
Foul-mouthed, hilarious, shameless standup comic Louis C.K. rolled out his latest direct-to-fans initiative last night, saying that he was selling tickets for his upcoming tour directly to fans, much in the same way he sold his special “Live at the Beacon Theatre” online for $5 late last year. The upcoming…
The setting is a functional living space, bare-bones but lovingly furnished with pots of gardenias. There’s a large bed in the center. We hear voices — some laughter, a woman complaining, a man soothing, explaining — and a couple emerges through a trap door. It’s a bit of a struggle…
The theater gods tend to smile on resourcefulness — and with the level of adaptability that Wit Theatre Company has had to exhibit so far, it should be no exception. To mount their first show, the people behind Wit have had to bring together warm bodies from the remnants of…
Christopher Titus cut his teeth in comedy clubs in the ’80s after having an epiphany as a teenager when he fell into a bonfire. But it wasn’t until the late ’90s when Titus — whose comedy focuses on his upbringing in a highly dysfunctional family — that Titus began to…
A few days after I’ve seen Love Child, the notes on my pad — a mix of observations, reminders and actual quotes — make absolutely no sense. “I have no name.” “Xander’s in a trance.” “You’re firing me? Your own mother?” “Chef from Greece…big knife…” “She never screwed Richard.” “I…
The Oscar Wilde Experience feels less like a full-fledged theater production than a warm, pleasant evening spent with friends. The show is in the Byers-Evans House, which was built in 1883; with its dark wood furnishings, shadowy corners and shelves of old books, it provides the perfect backdrop for an…
It may seem like the members of the Addams Family have been featured in every incarnation imaginable: from animated characters to action figures to even inside of a pinball game. The wealthy, macabre-obsessed family has come a long way since it first debuted in the pages of the New Yorker…
Steven Burge, who’s currently starring with Damon Guerrasio in Love Child, a hoot of a show at the Avenue Theater, is one of the funniest actors anywhere. So it was a surprise to learn that he has to face down intense fears before he can step onto a stage. It’s…
Over his many years as a public (and bespectacled) face, 54-year-old funny man Drew Carey has paid his dues as a Marine, a stand-up comic, a sitcom star, an improv guru and, in his most recent incarnation, the on-air host of The Price Is Right. And on his current tour,…
While many comedians themselves may prefer a stiff drink, marijuana has, for some time, been the drug of choice for comedy audiences. From Lenny Bruce’s satirical pamphlet on the dangers of the herb, to sketch comedians like Cheech & Chong and Dave Chappelle building whole careers around it, entertainers have…
The six members of the Buntport Theater Company like taking up strange facts, historical anomalies and odd and eccentric bits of information and working them into their communally created plays. After one Buntporter spotted Tommy Lee Jones standing in line for tickets to La Bohème at the Santa Fe Opera,…
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play. Playwright Sarah Ruhl uses the orgasm as the prism through which she views the entire Victorian world — and, by extension, our own. From the orgasm, entirely misunderstood and invisible in those repressive times, emanate ripples that change not only the relationships…
When Scared Stiff premiered last week night at The Bar, a small crowd of bizarro movie buffs gathered to see cult classic Plan 9 From Outer Space. But it wasn’t just the campy Ed Wood-directed flick that brought folks in — it was drag queen Alexus Vain’s commentary, which runs…
Second City Chicago is this country’s Mecca of funny. Among its famous alumni are John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Steve Carrell and Tina Fey. It also happens to be the place where Frank Caeti, formerly of MadTV, and Matt Craig, a former Saturday Night Live writer, first met and performed together,…
In her book The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth Lloyd, philosopher of science, provides an exhaustive investigation into the female orgasm. After exploring many theories about the orgasm’s origins and purposes, she concludes that it is a vestigial trait like men’s nipples, a…
Ron White is best known for his appearances on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour with fellow comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Larry The Cable Guy and Bill Engvall. But his signature cigar, glass of scotch and conversational delivery has made him popular with a wide audience. White uses his personal life and…
Kurt Lewis won the Best New Theater Space award in 2008 for Crossroads Theater, the ambitious Five Points space he’d developed, but he ran into financial and health problems. And in January 2010 Denver took over Crossroads, adding it to the city’s Arts & Venues lineup. Now Lewis would like…
