For three years, Rick Yaconis's Edge Theatre Company has mounted an eclectic mix of new plays and classics and encouraged the work of local playwrights with an annual Festival of New Plays — one of which gets selected for full production each year. This year, that play was Gifted, a flawed but vivid and thoughtful exploration of the dynamics within a mixed-race family: The protagonist is the teenage son of a widowed white American mother and an Indian father. Edge also mounted an excellent production of the 1960s absurdist comedy House of Blue Leaves; brought in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which caused a stir in New York a couple of years ago; and knocked it out of the park with The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
Readers' choice: Denver Center Theatre Company