See also: The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver opens its doors.
Westword: Is this the first year that MCA is hosting Twelve and a Half Days of Xmas Live?
Sarah Kate Baie: Yes, we started this year with the new program. We're launching December 20 and we'll run through January.
Where did you get the idea to host performance art here?
It's part of what we do in general, part of what our program component is at the museum. So in addition to the exhibitions that we have, of course, we also have an ambitious programming calendar that runs throughout the year, including Mixed Taste in the summertime, which is sort of our flagship summer series. We bring together two lecturers, and they each speak on two different topics; then they take questions and answers at the same time. In addition to that, we were interested in finding different ways to connect to creativity in our area. Ideally, we're looking for a wide range of performers. We're looking for musicians, performance artists, dancers and things we haven't even thought about. Like puppeteers.
What kind of puppets? Not ventriloquists, I hope?
No, it's mostly like marionette-style. We haven't seen any ventriloquists yet. I'll be honest, ventriloquists scare me.
Ventriloquist dummies are inherently creepy. Anyway, how do you currently connect with local performers?One of the ways we connect with local performers is through our Black Sheep Fridays program, which is going on right now in our cafe. It's a similar kind of thing where we curate twelve Friday night programs with local creative people. Last week we did "Debating for Guffman," where two teams of comedians debated Waiting for Guffman versus Waiting for Godot. Taylor Gonda was part of that. These are the kinds of ways that we're already connecting to the Denver community with creativity, but we wanted to create other spaces to showcase the abundant creativity that's in the region. Maybe some that we don't know about. So rather than create another event like Black Sheep, where we start with people who we know, people who we're sure will know what they're doing, we thought we'd do a program with an open call for entries as a way to get to know some people who are maybe outside of our circle. Maybe they're just starting up, or maybe they're doing things that we would have never even thought about.
Have you had many entries so far?
Yeah, we've had a pretty good response so far. From a lot of people we don't know and people who have some really crazy, fun ideas.
