Because I grew up in a time when we listened to music by the album side, the idea of the rock musical — essentially a string of related songs hung loosely over a plot — is easy for me to accept. Still, you have to wonder, as I did while…
Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day managed to knock the socks off more than a few listeners when they released the song cycle American Idiot on CD in 2004. But at the time, no one could have imagined the ruckus a stage version would eventually make on Broadway. A fabulous…
At Big Time, there are big chances taken. There are also live commercials for some of the freshest performances in the region, charming emcees, and a sense of something happening, really happening. Just like its parent organization, the Boulder International Fringe Festival, Big Time is dedicated to the extraordinary –…
It’s First Friday, and you might already have plans to be out and about. Here’s one more wonderful event to add to your itinerary, if you happen to be heading toward the Art District on Santa Fe or Gildar Gallery on Broadway: Welcome to Tomorrow, an informal unveiling of spring…
You cannot escape the groove of African dance. Doesn’t matter if you’re tone deaf, half-dead or were born with two left feet — African dance will pick you up and fill you with joy and never let you go. Which is why you should let the spirit move you to…
Nathaniel Adams Coles, better known as Nat “King” Cole, was born in Alabama, the son of a Baptist minister. He learned to play the organ from his mother, who accompanied his father in church. Originally a keyboard phenom, he later studied classical piano, but it was jazz — and the…
Maybe you never thought the day would come when suburban-Cali neo-punk would take to the Broadway stage. But, as American Idiot more than proved, the idea was neither a bad nor a far-fetched one: Based on Green Day’s eponymous, Grammy Award-winning concept album, the edgy musical took Billy Joe Armstrong’s…
Jose Mercado isn’t prone to taking on easy projects. The local actor, theater director and educator, who’s dug into tough territory through the years by producing Zoot Suit with students at North High School and other edgy works, and worked tirelessly to bring back the old Elitch Theatre, is now…
In anticipation of a sold-out March 10 appearance by cult filmmaker John Waters at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, the school and the Denver Film Society have teamed up to bring fans a special screening of the 1998 Waters comedy Pecker, which tells the story of a…
The beautiful South Broadway shop Ironwood, with its plant-strewn, new-Victorianiana steampunk vibe, isn’t very big. But it’s no doubt large enough to hold the musicians of the new, diminutive local Tinyamp Records, or at least some of them — members of Amphibian, Calliope of the Future and Year of the…
The Boulder International Fringe Festival has announced its preliminary 2012 artist lineup, which includes such past fringe faves as TinHouse Experimental Dance, Gemma Wilcox Productions, Square Product Theatre and Band of Toughs, as well as a wide range of on-the-edge artists hailing from New York to San Francisco and points…
You could say it all started with a pair of shoes — the most minimal of shoes, made of woven straw — in 1991. That’s when Denver-based artist Viviane Le Courtois strapped the first pair on her feet and ventured off on a series of foot-treks around the world, creating…
It’s always a good Friday when Untitled rolls into the Denver Art Museum: The monthly last-Friday series, which makes looking at art fun and proactively unboring, turns your museum visit upside-down from the moment you walk in the front door. Tonight’s session, Untitled #44 (Road Trip), pays homage to the…
The lesser snow goose is an undependable fellow: Cruising the Western Central Flyway during migration, it makes one of its stopovers at John Martin Reservoir near Lamar. But, hey, some days the pickings might look better at Horse Creek Reservoir outside of Las Animas. And sometimes, when the weather gets…
Elena Stonaker seems to come from a long line of secret fairies and sprites. Or maybe it just appears that way from her symbol-specked, organic drawings and soft sculptures. The latter — hand-embroidered dolls and creatures decorated with seed beads, sequins and something else (dream dust?) — will be the…
Photographer Lisa Law is the real deal, a hippie from the Sixties who’s still flying the freak flag down in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she now resides. Back in the day, Law was on the front lines at Woodstock, where she shot images behind the scenes while also serving…
I count myself among the lucky moms whose daughters haven’t been sucked into the princess syndrome that plagues so many young girls growing up in this day and age. Mine had her Disney movies and her Barbie dolls, but she thankfully put them away on her own when it was…
Nobody knows what it’s like to be disabled more than the people who actually live with disabilities. That’s why a new production of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, presented by the Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League, is certain to have added depth: The play is based on the…
Holly-Kai Hurd, art gallery curator at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, sees Black History Month as an opportunity. Her goal? First, to place the spotlight on a group of local black women who represent a spectrum of arts disciplines right here in our fine city. But — and perhaps…
Filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman not only questions why we relegate Black History Month to the bleakest part of the winter, he maintains that black history is a part of American history that doesn’t need to be recognized by its own month. To promote his argument, Hassan set off across the…
Fat Tuesday is the traditional day when folks are allowed to indulge — before Ash Wednesday shuts all the enjoyment down and Lent begins. Fortunately, you don’t have to be Catholic to get into the spirit of Mardi Gras’s last hurrah, and while Colorado is far from the French Quarter,…
Editor’s note: Westword cartoonist Noah Van Sciver paints the town like nobody else, as demonstrated in his recaps of visits to the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. (Make sure you read Noah’s blog for more comics and wonderment.) On Saturday night, we sent him…
