There’s no expensive special effect or fancy set piece that can match the evocative power of a good storyteller. That was the resounding message at the Stories on Stage “New Frontiers” performance Sunday at the Denver Performing Arts Center. The performance was the third offering in the Stories on Stage…
Art. Yasmina Reza’s cool, witty, much-celebrated and much-performed play is ostensibly about art, but it’s more about friendship. At the center of the action is an all-white painting, purchased by Serge, a dermatologist, for a huge sum of money. Perhaps he feels a genuine affinity for the piece, perhaps he’s…
A few years ago, my daughter used to be all about Grease, 24/7. She watched it all the time and knew all the songs. So how was I to know that in the ensuing years, wherein she became a full-on middle-schooler and teen-in-training, everything had changed? Yet she still inexplicably…
The power of The House of the Spirits, playwright Caridad Svich’s take on Isabel Allende’s celebrated novel, lies in the accumulation of images, actions and passionate words that the play pours out into the audience, as well as the bitter sadness at its heart. Consider the scenes separately, and they…
Charles Morey adapted The Ladies Man from a farce by Feydeau — pretty loosely, by Morey’s own account. In the original, Tailleur des Dames, the beleaguered protagonist is guilty of adultery; Morey, surmising that the more puritanical American audience wouldn’t empathize with an adulterer, makes his hero the victim of…
As we reported here last week, Boulder dancer/choreographer Mary Wohl Haan is dancing solo on the Pearl Street Mall for ten minutes at 10 a.m. every single day of this, the tenth month. So far, stage fright hasn’t gotten the better of the intrepid performer, who says she’s been there…
Half the reason — at least — to love Halloween is because of all the crazy tie-ins in pop culture, from television specials to candy to costumes. And Burlycute, a local burlesque venture, is getting into the spirit (Ha! Get it?) of things with Zombielesque, which will play for one…
Hey there, hepcat, wondering why your old lady’s so down on you? Probably because the flame has gone out of your relationship and your wardrobe options have been reduced to sports-themed warm-up pants — but it also might just be because you haven’t taken her out dancing in a while…
There’s far more playing area than there is room for the audience: We’re seated on a few rows of chairs at each end of the space, while the wide floor between is marked out like a Pacman game. On the opposite wall from where I sit, a screen shows a…
The 39 Steps is uninhibitedly silly — a romp, a trifle, a takeoff on a 1930s Hitchcock film (which, in turn, was based on a novel by John Buchan) The plot, which didn’t make much sense in the previous versions, has something to do with an attempt by foreign spies…
Art. Yasmina Reza’s cool, witty, much-celebrated and much-performed play is ostensibly about art, but it’s more about friendship. At the center of the action is an all-white painting, purchased by Serge, a dermatologist, for a huge sum of money. Perhaps he feels a genuine affinity for the piece, perhaps he’s…
Cultural programming at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities has long been the product of partnerships with other arts organizations, something executive director Gene Sobczak credits with the center’s growth over the past couple of years. “So I wanted to see if the same model could fit with…
Boulder dancer/choreographer and free spirit Mary Wohl Haan began dancing in the street, literally, last Friday morning at 10 a.m. in Boulder in the “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” spirit for the entire month of October. It’s part of her HAAN Dances: 10 @ 10…
Only Buntport would think of putting a play about the melancholy Czech author Franz Kafka — his biography intertwined with scenes from his story, Metamorphosis, about the man who woke up to find he’d been transformed into a beetle — on ice. Only Buntport would come up with the perfect…
“The horror… the horror — Brraaappp!” No, it’s not Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now, it’s the Bug Theatre’s treatment of George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. The line sums up the campy goodness that Director Kristine Hipps and cast bring to their quirky stage adaptation of the…
I wasn’t interested in the discussion about the uses and abuses of cell phones in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. To begin with, the theme is dated. Most people don’t use their phones to talk these days; they’re too busy checking e-mail, playing games, counting calories, perusing their calendars…
I’d been enjoying Cavalia all along, but the moment that won me over completely came during the second act, in a piece called “Carousel.” To an exotic beat that sounded rather like Ravel’s “Bolero,” a group of robed people rode white horses through misty silver light, the white-lit outline of…
When I first attended a Buntport Theater Company production and found six people in the audience — myself and my friend two of them — I’d never have predicted that the troupe would make it ten years. Other smart and talented companies have fallen by the wayside, but the six…
Denver’s premier Chicano theater troupe for nearly forty years, Su Teatro is emerging from a few years of flux and tension, finally at home in its permanent new barrio venue, the Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center @ the Denver Civic Theatre. After months of fundraising, Su Teatro will…
You are waiting to die. You have no friends, you live in a shed behind your sister’s house and your most productive activity each day is when you eat a whole bucket of fried chicken before you cry yourself to sleep, whereupon the next day you wake up and resume…
For the past three years, the members of the Handsome Little Devils have drawn on Vaudevillian slapstick and Chuck Jones-inspired gags to form the “Squirm Burpee Circus,” a stageshow that features extreme juggling feats, damsels in distress and monumental prop pieces. Their work has paid off. Starting next month, the…
Dance is a hard sell. A lot of people don’t really understand it, nor do they desire to, and many of those who say they do like to stick to the basics: Tap Dogs, So You Think You Can Dance, once a year, The Nutcracker. But, really, that is just…
