It Takes Guts

Haunted houses, common in October, are unusual for mid-November, but that’s just one of the ways HorrorHouse Fest veers from your typical haunted-house setup. For one thing, it’s more of a haunted bar – or at least it takes place in a bar. For another, the “haunt” here is actually…

Kong Day’s Journey

Denver may never host a Super Bowl, but we’ve got the next best thing: the Donkey Kong world championships! Fully sanctioned by Twin Galaxies, video gaming’s high-score keeper of record, the Kong Off 3 will host 22 of the world’s best Donkey Kongers, including The King of Kong’s Billy Mitchell…

T.E.A. and Sympathy

Theatre Esprit Asia, a local company bringing together pan-Asian casts with culture-centric works, has already proven in its first season that the concept is no flash in the pan. Not only is T.E.A., the theatrical brainchild of actors Maria Cheng and Tria Xiong, strong on talent, but the fine acting…

Buy Locally, Shred Globally

Looking to support the local shred economy by sending your ski and snowboard dollars to Colorado companies? Copper Mountain likes the way you think, and will present its third annual Colorado Days event this weekend in Burning Stones Plaza, at the base of the American Eagle lift. “It’s really pretty…

Kitchen Confab

A San Antonio-based comic actor by way of Chicago, homegirl Ruby Nelda Perez is an old friend of Denver’s Su Teatro ensemble and artistic director Tony Garcia. And when she brings her touring one-woman show Doña Rosita’s Jalapeño Kitchen to Su Teatro beginning tonight for a weekend run, it won’t…

Screen Shot

Most films are meant to be shown from beginning to end, delivering a set narrative that is the same every time. But when the audience sits down at First Person Cinema: Nicolas Rey for his film anders, Molussien, they’ll see just one of the 362,880 possible versions of the film…

Space Is the Place

As hard as it is to properly describe the late keyboardist and jazz experimentalist Sun Ra, it’s easy to turn his story into a comic book. But this much is true: Born Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, he was drawn to music as a child and graduated to playing in…

Child’s Play

Although it might sound at first like child’s play, The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide is a production packed with heavy themes. “I have a personal love for new works,” says director Dr. J. Nick Dickert, “especially new plays that are problematic. Bullying is a pertinent subject right now,…

Laugh Until You Cry

The team players at Buntport Theater make it their business to upend every cornerstone of drama, and that’s how they’ll start their new season — with Electra Onion Eater, a tragedy-turned-comedy that peels Sophocles’s Electra down to its soap-opera core, with a pared-down, floating chorus that speaks from the strangest…

The Good Book Is Back

It’s hard to believe, after last year’s hoopla over The Book of Mormon’s premiere at the Ellie, that its return engagement will be just another show. A very good show, as Westword’s Juliet Wittman pointed out in August: “The show is smart, cheeky, raunchy, irreverent and also surprisingly and exuberantly…

Fallen Owl Tattoo’s annual toy drive: Give and get inked

Now through December 1, giving also means getting at Fallen Owl Tattoo, 8789 West Colfax in Lakewood, where anybody who brings in a few unopened toys during the third annual Toys for Tattoos Toy Drive receives a gift certificate good toward a tattoo. See also: The Boulder Tattoo Project puts…

Author Carol Berg on Tolkien and writing realistic fantasy

Reading is about more than following a narrative or learning facts; it can also be a profound shared experience that culminates in a better understanding of ourselves and each other. In that spirit, welcome to the Westword Book Club, a weekly feature celebrating the books that inspire Denver artists.