Class issues loom large in Messenger #1‘s potent visual images

There are messengers all over Shakespeare. They fetch and carry, run on and off with news — but no one gives them much thought, despite the dangers of their profession. There are exceptions, of course: Someone occasionally flings a messenger a coin; at other times messengers are hit or killed…

Despite the buzz, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is a letdown

Ben Dicke, a local actor and director, was inspired, astounded, knocked out, when he saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson in New York last year, and he decided it was a show that Denver audiences had to experience. The musical tells the story of our seventh president, set to propulsive emo-rock…

The Denver Center works to build August Wilson’s Fences

The sixth play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, Fences revolves around a deeply flawed protagonist, Troy Maxson. The year is 1957, and Maxson is a garbage collector; fairly early in the play, he becomes the company’s first black driver, only to complain later about the isolation of that position. Maxson…

Luminous Thread Productions brings dreampunk theater to Denver

Mixing steampunk with the surreal and combining opera, theater, dance and circus arts, Luminous Thread Productions wants to give Denver a kind of show that the city has never seen before. That’s what Mary Lin and Ben Sargent had in mind when they began dreaming up their unique production company…

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The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity. The opening moments are pulse-poundingly exciting — music, live wrestling, flashing lights, tons of adrenaline from an already hyped-up audience. But the actual scripted beginning of the play is quiet, as a Puerto Rican kid called Mace describes his lifelong fascination with pro wrestling…

An out-of-this-world deal to see Dava Sobel’s play: free!

Pulitzer finalist Dava Sobel is definitely a star — the asteroid 30935 davasobel is even named after her. And tonight you’ll be starstruck when the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company offers a free reading of Sobel’s play And the Sun Stood Still, which dramatizes the events that led Nicolaus Copernicus to…

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is absorbing, funny and smart

The opening moments are pulse-poundingly exciting — music, live wrestling, flashing lights, tons of adrenaline from an already hyped-up audience. But the actual scripted beginning of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety is quiet, as a Puerto Rican kid called Macedonio Guerra — Mace — describes his lifelong fascination with…