The Star Wars films are known for their incredible space battles, bizarre aliens and other crazy sci-fi visuals. But underneath all that, the films also tell a classic story, a near-perfect example of what Joseph Campbell called The Hero’s Journey. That iconic story structure is part of what makes a…
In a 1951 obituary for singer-comedian Fanny Brice, the New York Times mentions her parody of the famed “Dying Swan” ballet from Swan Lake and “her take-off of Camille with W. C. Fields as the maid,” and adds that Times critic Brooks Atkinson called her “a burlesque comic of the…
Chris Gethard is a hero to a certain mawkish cadre of alternative comedy fans. An Upright Citizens Brigade-hewn improviser, Gethard has branched out into writing, acting and standup, but has never wavered in his good-natured if unsettling commitment to absurdity at the core of the UCB ethos. The Chris Gethard…
Podcasts are in tune with the democratized spirit of Internet media; anyone with a microphone and a computer can offer their listeners unlimited hours of recordings, usually for free. Limited only by their imaginations, podcasters have a freedom of expression unrestricted by commerce, censorship or geography. Several great podcasts have…
This week we’ll post the 2015 winners of our My Best/Worst New Year’s Eve contest. To prime the pump, Brad Weismann is sharing his memories of not one bad New Year’s Eve, not two — but three. Keep reading for the sad stories. Ah, New Year’s Eve! That gala night…
The Addams Family relies on our enduring affection for a group of death- and darkness-loving misfits created by New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams in the 1940s. His work inspired several television shows and three films before morphing into this musical by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Andrew…
A jovial group of marijuana smokers and comedy fans romped their way through town last night on the maiden voyage of the MassRoots Tacky Light Tour, a more organized (but not much more) version of the impromptu light-and-light-up tours that Coloradans have taken on their own for generations. Sam Tallent and Aaron…
Are you sick of it yet? We are drowning in a tidal wave of promotion pushing Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s everywhere you look, and the premiere set for next Friday, December 18, is the anticipated film opening in history. Things weren’t always this way, though. Creator George Lucas was…
Talk about a sign of the times! Like modern poets, some marquee writers are masters of minimalism, capturing our culture in a few giant, black block letters. Others create the equivalent of urban fortune cookies that we must crack. No matter the motivation, we always enjoy stumbling on clever marquee…
Shane Mauss has had a lively career since winning “Best Standup Comic” at the Comedy Arts Festival in 2007. With five appearances on Conan and a Comedy Central Presents special under his belt, Mauss set about creating thematically sound hours of comedy, first on the Netflix special Mating Season, then on his most…
To its credit, Edge Theatre Company has staged a world premiere annually for the past four years, all scripts by local playwrights. Some of the productions have revealed major talent, and that’s what I thought during the first hour or so of Jeffrey Neuman’s Exit Strategies. Sure, the play’s basic…
Many Denverites got the same chill yesterday watching the official video premiere of Those Who Can’t — the new show on TruTV from the Grawlix, the comedy squad comprising local heroes Ben Roy, Adam Cayton-Holland and Andrew Orvedahl — as they did watching Rateliff and the Night Sweats on Fallon: It’s…
December is a traditionally festive month. But between its Judeo-Christian holidays, family gatherings and glittering lights, it can be easy to go the entire month without replenishing your giggle stores. Fortunately, December is also a month of giving, and hoards of presents await under the chuckle tree, ready to reward Denverites…
Like it or not, the holidays truly arrive the day after Thanksgiving, along with a spate of Christmas plays. That means venues are bringing back traditions old (the DCPA Theatre Company’s A Christmas Carol opens November 27 in the Stage Theatre) and newer (Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company is bringing its…
Simon is thirteen years old — that confusing in-between time when most of as are struggling to find our own identities and our imaginations are at their most fluid, expansive and fantastical — and he’s a religious obsessive. He isn’t filled with love or wonder, he has no sense of…
This week on local stages, hear immigration stories from Theatre Esprit Asia, learn the greatest source of angst for professional opera singers at Opera on Tap (clue: it’s not the opera’s bombastic plot), or help a couple of local nonprofit endeavors while having the time of your life at the…
Peter Shaffer’s Equus was written in 1973, when many cultural assumptions were being upended and some influential thinkers questioned the most basic premises of psychiatry. Their essential point — and I may be oversimplifying — was that the culture was insane, and to remain sane in an insane world is…
Pursuing a career in standup comedy is a lonesome journey through the gloom of uncertainty, with nothing but self-doubt as your constant companion. Competition is fierce and benchmarks of progress are few and far between. For a comedian fumbling through this desert of opportunity, a home club is both a…
Growing up in Denver, Zach Reini liked to draw and got into punk, playing in such noteworthy local hardcore bands as Crawl, Dethbox and, currently, Citizen. His wide-ranging imagination also led him to explore experimental electronic music with his Data Rainbow project. But Reini never gave up on the visual…
As I watched Curious Theatre Company’s production of Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet, there were moments when the close-to-heretical thought entered my mind that playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney has been anointed a giant of the contemporary theater far too soon, that this play is raggedy in conception and goes…
This week an old Broadway favorite is returning to the Buell, while Denver’s Wonderbound rolls out a new work at the Mizel Center’s JAAMM Fest. And in celebration of Denver Arts Week, Chance to Dance invites the public to check out what’s coming out of dance studios around town. Disney’s…
Emily K. Harrison, artistic director of Square Product Theatre, has always preferred presenting work that’s either original or hasn’t been seen in this area before, but she taught Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive at the University of Colorado and feels a strong connection to this complex,…
