It’s okay to be a Scrooge when it comes to theater. If you want a real, grown-up show that isn’t full of fluff and wrapped up in a bow, you can find plenty of performances on local stages that will make you think — even in December. Here are four…
This fall Gear Junkie introduced us to the lumbersexual. Described as a flannel-wearing outdoor enthusiast with an unkempt beard, the lumbersexual can be found barhopping with his MacBook Air in tow. Since the term was coined, the world has become infatuated with finding these bearded men — and this obsession…
Christmas was never my thing. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a Grinch, Scrooge or even just a hater, but except when my oldest daughter was young, the holiday got little more than an indifferent shrug from me. But over the past year or two, I’m suddenly…
Bob Knox and Michael Clapper. The William Havu Gallery is presenting simultaneous solos: Bob Knox: Real Abstract, which is made up of paintings, and Michael Clapper: Portals, which comprises sculptures. Knox is a New York artist; Clapper lives in Denver. The paintings mark various points of progression in Knox’s self-appointed…
Anything Goes.Anything Goes premiered in 1934, after a hasty rewrite: The original plot concerned a shipwreck, and shortly before the scheduled opening night, a fire broke out on a cruise liner and 137 passengers were killed. By then the writing team, which included P. G. Wodehouse, had moved on, and…
Hospitals are depressing. Until recently, medical shows glossed over this basic fact of life by focusing on the most glamorous clique within them: doctors. For the past two decades, the upwardly mobile audience identification integral to most TV shows taught us to look away from the bedpans and sheaves of…
Seeing a living legend laid up in an oxygen tent shouldn’t be fun. But in Alan Hicks’s doc Keep On Keepin’ On, it somehow is. Now in his nineties, diabetic and facing the possible amputation of a leg, the great jazz trumpeter Clark Terry lies there jamming. He doesn’t have…
Second in Japan only to Takashi Miike as an outrageously prolific and wicked genre geyser, Sion Sono is most notorious here for the four-hour teen-perv epic Love Exposure (2011). The cut-artery farce Why Don’t You Play in Hell is less typical, and a good deal goofier, riffing on yakuza films…
The fiber arts are elevated beyond a simple do-it-yourself craft in a new show at Boulder’s Dairy Center for the Arts. The Art of Fiber explores the rich history and modern technological advancements in the field while honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the Handweavers Guild of Boulder. Showcasing a juried…
From now until the new year, tired music, forced cheer and gaudy decorations are the order of the day, and Scrooge you if you don’t like it. If you do like it — or maybe are just suffering from the holiday version of Stockholm syndrome — you might as well…
In the midst of celebrating twelve wonderful years of facilitating projects by kids and artist-mentors, PlatteForum is pulling up stakes from its Riverfront-neighborhood home and taking a leap into the Temple, a Curtis Park venue-in-progress in the heart of Denver’s growing artist community. Though the nonprofit still has a lease…
Most of the year, Britt Madden of the Banshee Press printmaking studio handles big loads of finely crafted commercial work that’s artful if not always actual art. But she’s decided to have some fun this month – during what she calls her “down season” — by collaborating with a handpicked…
Denverites have an undying love for dressing alike and carousing through the city in throngs. Weather conditions and an innate sense of propriety are ignored as locals seize upon even the slightest pretense to don silly outfits and take to the streets in a spirit of beery bonhomie. Despite its…
Santa Claus knows if you’ve been bad or good, and that means that most of us are screwed. Forget that fat, judgmental elf, and revel in your badness at Krampus Nacht Denver, a holiday festival for those who find it too damn hard to be good. “The legend of Krampus…
When Anna Winter and Laura Conway put out a call for submissions for their in-home art show, Staycation, they weren’t expecting a global response, but sculpture, photography, videography and even live performers from as far away as Denmark, Poland and Russia all made their way to Boulder. The curators asked…
Tonight is the fifth annual 1940s White Christmas Ball, and as befits an event that was put together to commemorate and celebrate the past, organizer Khyentse James is getting even more nostalgic than usual. “We’ve always thought of doing something completely different from the ‘White Christmas’ theme,” she says, “but…
Colorado has its own homegrown wrestling entertainment scene thanks to Primos Hardcore & Wrestling’s commitment to training some of the ring’s brightest stars. At tonight’s Xtreme Xmas smackdown, Primos brings a mix of fierce longtime competitors and new brutes center stage for a wild night of celebration and fan appreciation…
Colorado’s entry in the “Lost Ski Areas” series from History Press turned out to be a bigger project than Caryn and Peter Boddie imagined: They found 140 abandoned ski hills in all and ended up writing two books. They’ll introduce the first, Lost Ski Areas of Colorado’s Front Range and…
Christmas traditions come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s never too late to add another one to the mix. This year, consider the potent combination of a drinking game and the world’s best (only?) Christmas-action movie hybrid at Films on Tap: Die Hard. “Die Hard is my favorite Christmas…
Mare Trevathan is learning that Balls! A Holiday Spectacular, the annual variety show she helped found six years ago, has a life beyond her and the others who created it. “Now I feel like it has its own stamina; it now exists beyond any of us,” she notes. The charitable…
Before Garrett Ammon’s ballet company got its makeover as Wonderbound, The Nutcracker was a stock annual performance for what was then Ballet Nouveau Colorado, just as it is for so many other companies. But in the present, Ammon wanted to drop the stiff crinolines of the Tchaikovsky classic for something…
Everyone has seen A Christmas Carol — probably more than once. But no one has seen that story as it’s told in An Improvised Christmas Carol. “When I was in Seattle last year, I saw fliers for An Improvised Christmas Carol, and being an actor-producer-improviser person, I went to see…
