For Denver theater company ScreenPLAY, less is more. Each of its one-time-only performances sees a rotating cast of established Denver actors take on the script of a cult-classic film using no sets and only minimal props and costumes. Instead, the production relies on acting skill and audience interaction to create…
Since I moved into a beautiful house in the Barnum neighborhood almost five years ago, my car has been hit four times while parked out front on Knox Court. A few months ago, it was completely totaled — hit so hard by the other driver that my car was pushed…
The R&B crooner Kitty Crimes is not to be missed. One moment, she’s getting low to the ground, throwing one hand in the air as she cups the mike with the other; the next, she’s serenading every face in the crowd as she makes her way across the stage with…
The Phamaly Theatre Company has been going strong in Denver for more than two decades, producing shows like Fiddler on the Roof, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and this season’s The Fantasticks, which just wrapped up a run at the Arvada Center. Now the company has a chance to take its…
When Catherine Barricklow joined the first class of the Tara Performing Arts School in 1997, there were fewer than a dozen students, and instruction was in the basement of a home in Boulder. As the school’s population expanded, Tara became nomadic: The students were taught on makeshift stages around the…
In a recent conversation I had with rapper and activist B. Dolan, I asked him why he chose to write about issues that, on the surface, didn’t affect him directly. He does a lot of work to bring to light the concerns of women, people of color, trans people and…
This Sunday, the Black Actors Guild will launch Soul Food Standup at the Savoy — and that’s just one of the busy group’s projects. Last week Westword profiled the Black Actors Guild, a multi-faceted performance troupe that has been working hard on stages around Denver for the last few years. We spoke…
Listening to be B. Dolan’s music is as much about ingesting a modern history lesson as it is entertainment. An East Coast rapper who works within the same social justice realms as the acts that have inspired him — like Public Enemy and Bob Marley — the artist has been…
“It’s stuff like this,” Jay Walla says, holding up his cell phone. According to Walla, who has run Roach Gallery/Roach Photos for the last 33 years, the digital age of photography and the accessibility of things like camera phones have propelled the steady decline of his family business. This Friday,…
Anton Krueger is not a DJ. He is, however, up for a challenge. A few weeks ago, New York-based MC, performance artist and author Mykki Blanco came through Colorado as a guest lecturer for the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design’s series on identity and art. Blanco was also…
Last week I saw a primary-care physician for the first time (thanks, Obamacare!) since I was in college and was covered by my parents’ insurance. As a 34-year-old person who has never been to the hospital, doesn’t take any prescription medication and makes under $15,000 a year, insurance was not really…
It’s been five years since MC and activist Tim Holland, aka Sole, parted ways with the seminal hip-hop label Anticon, which he co-founded. In the interim, he moved to Denver and has been focusing on his own music. But now he’s back with a new imprint: Black Box Tapes. Holland…
Set foot inside storied DIY space Rhinoceropolis and it is clear that whatever show or performance is about to be experienced is going to be a unique one. With nearly a decade under its belt as Denver’s premiere all ages gallery and music space, Rhinoceropolis is all about the unexpected…
Back in 2009, Denver School of the Arts student Quinn Marchman and a group of friends decided to take the lead and create an original production for the school’s annual Black History Month production. Together they wrote, directed, produced and acted in a play about a fictional character named Barry,…
It makes no sense to me that I love Pitbull so much — he’s this lizard-like pop star, a dude who, over the last decade, has made a name for himself by throwing gnarly verses about not-very-consensual-sounding sex acts with women into the middle of mindless, often bland club-bangers. Yet…
Cells phones have taken over. We use our phones everywhere — in the car, on the toilet, while we wait in line for coffee or groceries. We even use them in the sacred space of our bedrooms, in our beds, when we are supposed to be sleeping. We’re shameless about…
At first glance, Sharon Feder’s work seems to focus on sweeping, modern landscapes; train tracks and abandoned buildings fill massive canvases, alongside other familiar structures from Denver’s not-so-distant agricultural and commercial past. But she sees the paintings a little differently. “The reason I began painting buildings was because I had…
Local nonprofit Youth on Record hosted a special invite-only question-and-answer session with seminal post-Riot Grrrl trio Sleater-Kinney last night, in advance of the band’s sold-out show tonight at the Ogden Theatre. Just before 5 p.m., kids and parental figures loomed in a scattered line outside the recording studio and music…
He slashed at the air with a large knife. Well, it was a knife on one end and a microphone on the other, an instrument of terror that Marilyn Manson took turns screaming into and then waving across his face wearing a threatening smile. As he came to the end…
It’s hard not to take everything we see on Facebook at face value. Often, a social network is the only place we interact with an old coworker, distant relative, former classmate or less-than-close friend — and this means only experiencing a certain projection of who they are. As I was…
Yes, AC/DC came out and did whatever that is that they’ve been doing for the last four decades, and then later on Ed Sheeran and John Mayer wanked gently while Herbie Hancock sat on stage, but no where near the spotlight (probably because he is so awesome he would have…
When police violence brought the community of Ferguson, Missouri, into the national spotlight, LadySpeech Sankofa was struck by the urge to act. “The verdict happened in Ferguson and I knew that there was something different about the energy — it was a catalyst,” says the poet, activist, musician and spiritual…
