A week into his comeback tour, Dave Chappelle either had a “meltdown,” was “booed off the stage,” or was treated like a black-face minstrel by a crowd of “fucking animals” last Thursday in Hartford, Connecticut. The incident has made for a bloggery buffet of commentary on race, comedy and corporate…
#49: John Moore There is no greater friend of Denver theater than John Moore, a self-described storyteller given to telling its stories in great — and loving — detail. On his CultureWest.org website, the former Denver Post critic has laboriously followed the work of his friends in theater, of which…
The free Labor Day fun is over, but you can still fill your week with aliens, art and poetry — all without emptying your wallet. If you know of more worthy free events, post information on them in the comments section below, and visit the online Westword calendar for a…
Happily wedded Hollywood sweethearts Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman make beautiful music together — and comedy, too! And — lucky Denver! — Mullally will be singing her heart out with Stephanie Hunt as “Nancy and Beth,” while Offerman offers a sneak peek at his American Ham solo show when they…
Theresa Mercado’s Cruel Season series — Cruel Summer, Cruel Autumn and Cruel Winter — is a labor of love. The horror movie fiend launched the series last year and has slowly grown it via word of mouth, as fans tell their friends about her killer film selections and handmade souvenirs…
When indie rapper Mac Lethal launched a Tumblr blog to share the profanity laced, English-challenged, semi-delusional text messages that his cousin Bennett sent him, he had no idea it would become such a phenomenon. Now, three years and several million pageviews later, the site has evolved into Texts from Bennett,…
As our High Plains hangovers fade, local comedy fans must look ahead to the future after a game-changing August. Ironically, what lies ahead this month in Denver comedy is firmly rooted in the past. We’ve got 90’s sitcom stars, a slate of road-dog headliners, and even two Saturday Night Live alums coming to Comedy Works –one of whom is often still quite funny, and one of whom has sadly succumbed to an untreatable case of whatever it is that’s wrong with Jon Lovitz. The main event however, is the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, and the main event of the main event is a rare set from the reclusive Dave Chapelle.
There’s plenty to do this three-day weekend that won’t have you spending all those hard-earned dollars. Celebrate Labor Day with a poolside concert and comedy show, jello wrestling, free yoga and lots more. See the Westword calendar for a full roster of Labor Day happenings, and share more cheap fun…
September is here and school is back in session. Okay, now that you’re all bummed out, here’s the good news: September is also chock full of great geek events. As summer fades into autumn, Denver’s geeks get to enjoy two great cons, lots of fantastic genre film and even a…
This week, art critic Michael Paglia ventures around town — visiting the McNichols Building and other sites that were part of the 2013 Denver Biennial of Americas — for this week’s review. The first show, Draft Urbanism, is mainly comprised of outdoor installations around Denver, while First Draft is a…
The first Ray Harryhausen movie I saw was the last one he made. In 1981, the Greek fantasy epic Clash of the Titans hit theaters, featuring some of the master animator’s finest work. I was eight years old, just about the perfect age to wholeheartedly embrace a cheesy mash-up of…
The end of the world as we know it may come quickly. According to performance artist Rob Andrews, the apocalypse might even begin this Sunday. The artist’s previous pieces have involved everything from washing people’s feet for twelve hours in a marketplace in Macedonia to carrying a door from Coney…
Know any poets? Got a thing yourself for putting words together in beautiful collages? There’s a place for every poet at the Aurora Cultural Arts District’s first-ever Poetry@Play weekend, where verses by featured poets and all comers will ring out both indoors and out in downtown Aurora on September 20…
Charles Bunnell. A pioneer abstractionist is the star of Charles Bunnell: Rocky Mountain Modern at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The show was curated by Blake Milteer, the CSFAC’s museum director and curator of American art, who built it around the private collection of James and Virginia Moffett, who…
50 Shades of Loud. Heritage Square Music Hall will close down at the end of the year after more than two decades of hilarity in its Golden home, where a unique small company evolved an equally unique performing style. The shows are simultaneously bumbling and brilliantly staged, professional and apparently…
Although the middle of July marked the apex of activities related to the 2013 Denver Biennial of the Americas, the official exhibits connected to the event are still going through this weekend. The first rendition of the Biennial, which took place three years ago (meaning this incarnation was one year…
The Weinstein Company’s 108-minute cut of The Grandmaster may not be the epic Wong Kar-Wai originally intended, but it’s fleet and silvery in its own right. In the late 1930s, an aging martial-arts master from Northern China, Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang), treks to the South to find its best fighter…
There is a moment of silent incompatibility in Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies that illuminates the entirety of a relationship in a single request. As the lovely, earthy Kate (Olivia Wilde) reclines suggestively on a couch in his tasteful apartment, Chris (Ron Livingston), her gently fussy boyfriend, politely reminds her to…
Since it’s called Austenland, and since it’s a romantic comedy, you probably expect it to open with “It’s a truth universally acknowledged” and to wrap with one lovesick sap madly dashing after another, right up to an airport’s departure gates, even though both presumably have cell phones and could just…
About half an hour into Peter and the Starcatcher, I started wondering: What is it with the New York critics? They were so excited by this show — exhilarated, ecstatic. They loved that the tech wasn’t grindingly, massively hyper-expensive, but rather low-key, using ordinary objects in the way that experimental…
It’s like American Idol, only…good. Tonight marks the end of the first annual PlayOffs, an elimination-style weekly playwriting competition in which hand-picked playwrights produced new work based on top-secret prompts designed to “push them to create their best work at a breakneck speed,” says Michael Emmitt, co-founder with Sean Paul…
“Color can be kind of a tyrant,” says Scott Ogden. But for master horticulturists Ogden and his wife, Lauren Springer Ogden, a beautiful garden is about more than just visual presentation. In tonight’s 50 Shades of Green: Gardening for Sensuality, the pair will discuss the smells, textures and sounds that…
