With Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner introducing themselves not just to America but the world, the stories of transgender people are beginning to find vocal and visual platforms. From This Day Forward, a documentary screening Tuesday at the Sie FilmCenter, adds a fascinating new chapter. It’s the story of…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. The wheels are turning for photographer Evan Semón. Cycle Culture Colorado: We BikeDenver,…
This week is full of free thrills and chills, with starring turns from a rising comic and a veteran hip-hop DJ, as well as a visit from Iceland’s emissaries. Check out more events on the Westword calendar and drop us a comment if you know of a bargain that belongs…
John Lahr wants us to see what’s behind the curtain. The eminent theater critic, who retired recently after covering the beat for the the New Yorker magazine for 21 years, produces the most probing, original and well-written work on performance, performers and the theater today. His most recent collection of profiles…
It’s a banner week for art in Denver, headlined by the September 18 opening of Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty at MCA Denver. But there’s so much more — layers and layers of it — as galleries and local artists celebrate image and process with challenging installations and variations of mixed media…
If you are not a season ahead, you are a season behind. We learned this basic rule of fashion while at New York Fashion Week, which showed work from designers’ Spring/Summer 2016 collections. On September 13, we attended the Essence Street Style Block Party, which went down in DUMBO. The acronym stands…
You may not be aware that September is National Self Improvement Month. If you have some improving to do, there’s plenty of chances this weekend to make yourself better. How? Well, you can talk social issues, slam some poetry or just get drunk in the daytime. And that’s just for…
Despite September temps that felt like the height of summer, pro snowboarders hit the rail yard — built on 35 tons of manmade snow shipped in to the streets of RiNo for the occasion — at last weekend’s Vans Pro Jam at Snowboard on the Block. The event also included…
Anyone can make a zombie movie. All you need is some buddies, a camera and a few gallons of fake blood. An idea or two helps, and a little talent can go a long way, but plenty of these low-to-no-budget backyard zombie epics get made without either. Sometimes — very…
Boulder resident Arrow Zoe Amelia, a 29-year-old Florida native and Naropa University graduate, was a key member of the now-defunct Language of Fish Collective Arts in Boulder from 2011-2014. LOFCA, as it was affectionately known, was a “performance company” that utilized the diverse talents of numerous young local women to…
Nature versus civilization is a time-honored battle, and there are some beautiful, abandoned places in Colorado where it is clear nature has won: worn, rusted places returning to the earth. As summer ends, you can enjoy seeing nature triumph — and leaves turn — while also checking out everything from…
We all know that Denver is changing quickly, and a lot of those changes are terrible — from the cheesy buildings that are destroying the character of one neighborhood after another to traffic that swings from speedway to gridlock and back again over the course of a few blocks. But…
How do you Fringe? Do you pick names out of a hat, or consult a Ouija board? Part of the fun at any fringe festival is deciding what you’re going to see, and at the Boulder International Fringe Festival, that means picking and choosing from theatrical fare on display everywhere…
Maria Knowlton wanted to beautify the Mountain Thrift franchise she runs in Lakewood. But the national Disabled American Veterans organization, which owns the building, thought the street art presented an ugly image for veterans, and now wants her to cover the wall. The mural was painted on July 4 by…
For the past three decades, Marilyn Minter has produced images that are explicit, engaging, and up-close and personal as she explores human sexuality in popular culture while blurring the line between highbrow and lowbrow art. The New York artist’s fascinating career is now being highlighted in a major retrospective opening…
American Girls might be the antidote to Girls Only, a giggly, anodyne and essentially contentless production based on the teenage diaries of its two creators: never mean, never disconcerting, never surprising — the kind of show you take in when you crave drinks with your girlfriends and don’t have the…
The hardest type of guy for an actor to play is one without charisma. That’s the challenge faced by Tobey Maguire in Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice, which tells the story of Cold War-era chess champ and totally strange human being Bobby Fischer. He’s good at it — maybe too good…
Glob turned ten this month. As the sister DIY venue to our city’s flagship all-ages spot, Rhinoceropolis, Glob often doesn’t get the same kind of credit for its existence. But like Rhino, Glob is an all-ages, all-welcome, donation-based music and performance venue that has been providing Denver with some of…
There have been several setbacks since the beginning of this project, but none greater than losing my Ford F250, Bertha. Leaking oil out her tailpipe, she came to her final resting place at the inconvenient and terrifying juncture of I-225 and I-70, right at the bend in the road. Waiting…
#11: Jerry De La Cruz Artist Jerry De La Cruz, who nows splits his time between studios in Denver and Miami, has been a force in the local Chicano art movement for more than forty years. His signature magic realism is all his own, sometimes tapping into cultural roots and…
Fantasy, as a genre, can feel pretty tired after a while. The same themes — prophesied heroes saving the world, ancient evil uniting reluctant warriors to a common cause — crop up again and again. The same mythology — elves and dragons, swords and sorcery, knights and kingdoms — is…
At the dramatic end of the first act of Matilda the Musical, the much-wronged little heroine shouts out her rage, pain and defiance in one charged sentence — and a murmur arises from the audience: “What did she say?” That’s right: It’s impossible to understand half the dialogue. Or the…
