Playbill: Neil Simon, BMoCA’s MediaLive, BiTSY Stage and a Legally Blonde Benefit

This week on metro Denver stages, you can enjoy a modern classic with Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues at Miners Alley Playhouse or explore the avant garde world of multimedia performance at MediaLive in Boulder, with plenty of stops in between. Which direction will you take?

Biloxi Blues
Miners Alley Playhouse
May 20 through June 26
7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
6 p.m. Sundays (2 p.m. June 26)
Tickets: $16 to $27 
303-935-3044
Part of Neil Simon’s Eugene trilogy, the Tony Award-winning Biloxi Blues follows World War II army recruit Eugene Morris Jerome through boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi, in a coming-of-age tale about learning to deal with life through thick and thin. This is the kind of show that Miners Alley does best; expect a night of solid traditional theater that will make you laugh and cry.

MediaLive: Michelle Ellsworth, Maotik, Flinching Eye Collective
Atlas Institute, CU Boulder campus
6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 21
Free
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s MediaLive festival, which ends Sunday, lands at the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder on Saturday, May 21, for a high-level mashup featuring CU’s movement and multimedia diva (and Guggenheim Fellowship awardee) Michelle Ellsworth, a rare Colorado performance by the sound artists of the Flinching Eye Collective, and mind-blowing visual environments from the Canadian new-media artist Maotik. Admission is free; remember to bring your thinking cap and a sense of wonder.
The Stone Coat Woman: An Iroquois Tale
The BiTSY Stage
May 21 through June 26
11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays (no shows May 28 and 29)
7:30 p.m. Fridays, June 10 and 24
Free (donations accepted)
BiTSY Stage, the kid-friendly division of Denver’s Shakespeare-loving Betsy Stage, throws down some quality children’s theater with The Stone Coat Woman: An Iroquois Tale, a play based in Native American storytelling lore and done up in a serious tone with beautiful costuming, staging and a fine cast — for free. Introduce your little ones to the thrill of the stage — and be swept away yourself — at this tour de fource from director Patti Murtha.

Denver Actors Fund Presents, Legally Blonde
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
6:30 p.m. Monday, May 23
Tickets: $20
The stage show Legally Blonde, based on the Reese Witherspoon movie, opens May 20 for a run at Town Hall Arts Center in downtown Littleton. But you can get a taste of the show and do some good in the local theater community at the May 23 edition of Denver Actors Fund Presents, a film-and-theater crossover series that helps raise funds for the charitable organization, which provides grants and respite to theater folk in need. This time around, enjoy a live snippet of the Town Hall show and meet film director Robert Luketic and screenwriters Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah in person, before settling back for a screening of the movie version at the Alamo Drafthouse.

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