China’s Legend of the Sun shines on Denver this weekend

The China Nanning Art Theatre is bringing Legend of the Sun to the Buell Theatre this weekend — for one of only three U.S. stops this tour. The show is an adaptation of a folk story told by the Zhuang people in the Chinese province of Guangxi. The tale of…

Boxing Day

Earlier this month, artist Daniel Nilsson posted an ad on Craigslist inviting one lucky stranger to live with him in a 4′ x 8′ x 4′ box for exactly one week with no food. “It was kind of like a vacation,” he recently told Westword concerning his previous experience doing…

Words to Live By

The Lighthouse Writers Workshop is well known among local writers, but it has also become a stop for visiting authors, who give readings and teach classes on their way through town. Now, works by those authors will be available for sale at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Community Book Fair. “Some…

Drew Carey on the Edge

Veteran comedian Drew Carey is well known for his off-the-cuff improv, but he still feels like a relative newcomer to sketch comedy. So when the 54-year-old host of The Price Is Right felt the urge to return to his standup roots, he took a left turn. “I wanted to start…

Stickers and Stoners

Marijuana and comedy go together like PB&J and the munchies. Perhaps not so coincidentally, those are all subjects covered in The Marijuana-Logues, a three-person off-Broadway comedy being put on this weekend at the Comedy Works in Larimer Square. The long-running show riffs on the more famous Vagina Monologues in form,…

Batteries Not Included

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, produced by Equinox Theatre and opening tonight at the Bug, is exactly what it sounds like: a play about vibrators. But in this case, the action centers around their use as a treatment for “hysteria,” a commonly diagnosed “affliction” in women at…

Red Rover

The fabled color-field painter Mark Rothko left a troubled yet brilliant legacy behind after committing suicide in 1970, something that’s brought into hyperreal focus in the Tony Award-winning drama Red, which is, in a way, an act of abstract expressionism played out on stage, as Rothko and his assistant talk…

Play It, Sam

You won’t ever find a better opportunity to visit Rick’s Cafe Americain — the famed venue in Casablanca where star-crossed lovers Rick and Ilsa reconnected — than tonight’s 1940s World War II Era Ball at the Boulder Municipal Airport. And if you’ve been to the ball in previous years, then…

A Celebration to Remember

Although Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation — the document declaring that all slaves be freed — on January 1, 1863, the news didn’t reach a still-confederate Texas until June of 1865. That’s when the slaves there celebrated, an occasion that sparked the observance of “Juneteenth.” This year’s Juneteenth Music…

Lucky Lady

Few burlesque acts involve the spoken word, and as far as we know, Lucky DeLuxe (aka Susanna Lee) is the only spoken-word comedic burlesque artist in the business. “I’ve been a standup comic for sixteen years,” Lee says. “I always loved what I was doing, but it always felt just…

Comic Relief

Our little town has hit the big-time: Denver Comic Con is here, introducing a whole new level of geekdom to the Rocky Mountain West con-going community. The weekend event, a fundraiser for the locally based Comic Book Classroom after-school program and everything a comic-book nerd could wish for, officially kicks…

Loud and Proud

Four “out” lawmakers — senators Pat Steadman and Lucia Guzman, and representatives Mark Ferrandino and Sue Schafer — will serve as Denver PrideFest 2012’s Grand Marshals this year, something that highlights the importance of the “Fight for Your Right to Pride” theme, says Dani Perea, communications and marketing manager for…

Catch the Stars

Sure, you can watch your favorite movie at home on demand or via your Internet hookup, but that’s small-time. If you want to do it a little bigger, check out Film on the Rocks, the annual movie series that puts Colorado’s greatest entertainment venue, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, to good use…

Sweet Science

“You can go almost anywhere now and find really amazing vegan or vegetarian savory food, but it’s still somewhat difficult to find really good vegan baked goods,” says Doron Petersan, owner of the Sticky Fingers bakery in Washington, D.C., and author of Sticky Fingers’ Sweets: 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes. “And…

Five great marijuana moments in standup comedy

While many comedians themselves may prefer a stiff drink, marijuana has, for some time, been the drug of choice for comedy audiences. From Lenny Bruce’s satirical pamphlet on the dangers of the herb, to sketch comedians like Cheech & Chong and Dave Chappelle building whole careers around it, entertainers have…

What a wonderful, genderqueer world!

When I was younger, I thought bisexuality was a party trick. I thought it was something that teenage girls used to get attention. Since I’ve stopped being a teenage girl, I’ve learned that there are more than just the three oversimplified dimensions — gay, straight and bi — of sexuality…