Part of being on the fringe – i.e., traveling the fringe-festival circuit – is surrendering to chance. With every venue, in every town, the vibe is different and the audience’s level of acceptance a roll of the dice. What’s lauded in New York might get a blank stare in Oklahoma…
Radoslaw Konopka, Christopher Thomas Gilkey and onetime Denverite Kristin Arnesen are Theatre Reverb, a Brooklyn outfit that’s not only familiar with the fringe circuit, but hosts the ongoing Floating Kabarette performance series/cabaret at New York’s open-minded Galapagos Art Space, where anything might happen, from aerial dance to neo-burlesque. Here for…
“The film program embraces the spirit of the Fringe,” says Kestrel Burley, associate producer of the Boulder Fringe Festival, whose Fast Forward Fringe includes everything from digital films to 16mm to 35mm, in keeping with the festival’s goal of promoting diversity and “creativity that creates community.” Feature presentations range from…
LoDo Bites is a great opportunity for foodies of all stripes to taste small bites from twenty participating restaurants throughout the lower downtown neighborhood. “Some restaurants are going to be doing small appetizers, some will be doing small appetizers and desserts,” says Jeannie Wert, communications and events coordinator for the…
ArtLab is a joint venture of PlatteForum, run by Trish Thibodo, and Labyrinth, where Jose Mercado is at the helm; both nonprofits are dedicated to helping at-risk and underserved youth in Denver. Working together as ArtLab, they select high school students and create a project to get them interested in…
It speaks of Lev Grossman’s savvy as a journalist, as well as an author, that his new book, The Magicians, stands on the shoulders of J.K. Rowling. After all, writing a novel that’s being billed as a grown-up Harry Potter guarantees a certain level of media attention – not that…
There are some strange, serendipitous ways to meet that special someone. A high school friend’s parents met at a Led Zeppelin concert, for example, and I know one couple who met while changing a flat tire and another at a strip club. Of course, not everyone has time to sit…
Now that the Merrell Oyster Racing Series is turning the advanced age of six, people may not remember that the mother of all scavenger-hunt-slash-adventure-races got its start right here in Denver in 2003. In fact, the race is named after Colorado’s most famous dish: Rocky Mountain oysters, of course, because…
The good folks of Salida are pulling out all the stops for the inaugural Salida Riverside Fine Arts Festival, and the result should be worth the several-hour drive south. “I’ve been an officer on the Visitors Bureau in Chaffee County, and I became aware of how an event like this…
The AIDS battle never ends, even if the issue has slipped from the forefront of national attention as the disease continues to spread around the world. For the Colorado AIDS Project’s Michael Lee, that’s where the real battle lies in modern times, especially when planning another Colorado AIDS Walk and…
Love it or hate it, the classic Star Wars franchise is a multi-generational geek-culture touchstone. And given its status at the very top of the sci-fi heap, it’s no surprise that over the years, the series has been lampooned by just about everyone. One of the very best of these…
One of the interesting things about the art world is how open it is. I’ve been at many events where the attendees ranged from the classic starving artists who lived in their studios to zillionaire donors, along with lots of people like me, whose circumstances lie somewhere in between. A…
Childsplay. For this show, the floor of Walker Fine Art has been covered with rough-hewn playground equipment made of wood and bronze. And despite the show’s title, all of it has been made for, and scaled to, adults, who are meant to interact with the individual pieces. The mostly kinetic…
Annie. Boulder’s Dinner Theatre is at the top of its form; it has to be. How else could the company make Annie — its mandatory summer family show — anything but a smirking sentimental bore? As everyone knows by now, the story of Annie concerns a little red-haired girl’s rough…
The cult that’s assembled around 2001’s Donnie Darko, which gets the Film on the Rocks treatment on Wednesday, August 12, seems motivated more by the size of writer/director Richard Kelly’s ambitions than by the goals he actually achieves. Simply put, the story of a troubled teen (Jake Gyllenhaal during his…
It was the best of movies, it was the worst of movies — which is to say, there’s half of a great movie in Julie & Julia. But since Meryl Streep has already starred in one titled Julia (Fred Zinnemann’s penultimate feature in 1977), perhaps it was merely necessary to…
In the Loop doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the know. In Armando Iannucci’s movie, a satire of the run-up to war with a Middle Eastern country, it means that all the poor bastards are stuck in a loop, making the same bad decisions and tragic mistakes over and over again…
I’m a sucker for reality shows such as Wife Swap and Trading Spouses; I love the scenes when you see unlikely people — a farmer and a socialite, a disciplined black family and a droopy, guitar-strumming hippie — suddenly understand each other, even if only for a moment. Every now…
William Cody’s travels with his Wild West Show took him all over the world — Buffalo Bill even did two performances in Croatia in 1906 — and across the continental United States. But he never made it to Alaska or Hawaii. “Interestingly enough, in our collection is a poster —…
What do cupcakes and the Horndribbles — those fantastic furry creations invented by Lucas Richards — have in common? Nothing, really, but the little monsters are coming for one night only to Colfax’s best cupcake and cereal bar — the Shoppe — for The Horndribbles Present Tote-Tacular. Shoppe owner Tran…
My first “fringe” festival experience involved KKK members, Satan, transsexuals and adults in diapers singing and dancing in Jerry Springer: The Opera. I learned that anything can, and probably will, happen when actors, dancers and musicians are allowed to perform completely uncensored. So expect the unexpected at the Boulder International…
Of all the things that can get a person killed, singing and dancing are generally not on the list. Unless, of course, you lived in Afghanistan while the Taliban was in power. When that regime fell, bans on TV, dancing and singing were lifted, opening the door for Tolo TV…
