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…
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 in Art 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…
Buntport — Denver’s funniest, cleverest, most low-key and least pretentious theater company — sets aside a benefit night for every production, usually to help a deserving local organization. Fittingly, with Moby Dick Unread, the company is wading into deeper waters. At Thursday’s 8 p.m. show, some ticket proceeds will go…
The Denver Center Theatre Company is opening its 2010/2011 season on a light note: Patrick Barlow’s screwball adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal film noir. The 39 Steps opens for previews tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Ricketson Theatre of the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, Denver Performing Arts Complex, featuring a…
Garage Sale Loud: This Is It. Almost every summer, the folks at Heritage Square stage what is essentially a musical review with a thin sustaining plot line and the word “loud” in the title. The conceit is that T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer are siblings, and they’re reliving their youth…
Resident theater companies have been on their way out for decades. One of the last was at the Denver Center under Donovan Marley, whose loyalty to his company meant that first-rate actors could actually make a home in Denver — while audiences reaped the benefits. That’s an economically unsustainable model…
Reefer Madness is a take-off on a legendary 1930s movie about the dangers of marijuana — a black-and-white film, shadowy and portentous, full of lurid warnings about how dope leads to crime and madness. Now that marijuana clinics are opening all over the state, city councils are discussing zoning far…
What’s hot, and what’s not? Check here everyday for a random look at Fringe haps. Find out what’s going on after the jump…
Gemma Wilcox is the closest thing to a household name at the Boulder Fringe; she took “Pick of the Fringe” there in 2005 for The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over and Leela’s Wheel, and again in 2006 for Shadows in Bloom. And in 2008, 52 Pick Up was named Best…
Native Denverite, dancer and quintessential performance artist Judith Ren-Lay long ago left these parts for New York, but she did return periodically to perform here in `80s and `90s, all the while wowing the critics in the places where it mattered most: The L.A. Times called her an “urban griot,”…
What’s hot, and what’s not? Check here everyday for a random look at Fringe haps. Find out what’s going on after the jump…
That old reefer madness has us in its spell: The time is ripe in Denver for a revival of Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children), the 1938 anti-pot propaganda film directed by Louis Gasnier. The subject of various revivals over the years, now as a work of comedy, Reefer Madness…
