Best Real-Life Adventure for Grown-Ups
Inner Reality
After all the hype about last year's "summer of violence," Dave Stalls, former recreation director for the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation, decided it was time for a reality check. Specifically, an Inner Reality check, Stalls's invaluable, adult-oriented inner-city variation on the Outward Bound theme. The paid tour guides are "streetwise" kids from the neighborhoods--some of them former gang members, some runaways--and the itinerary changes monthly to keep the 24-hour trek "as fresh and as real as possible," Stalls says. One recent trip had participants boarding the 15L bus on Colfax and heading into the heart of Aurora's gang turf, then moving on to the Gilliam Youth Center for dinner before bedding down in the neighborhood--and they all gladly paid $150 for the privilege. After all, truth is the best defense.
Best Dance Showcase
Colorado Dance Festival
Now entering its twelfth year, the Colorado Dance Festival brings major dance companies to Boulder for a concentrated month of culture filled with performances, workshops and, beginning this year, a collaborative project linking local teenagers with guest artists. In the process, you get a taste of what folks take for granted in New York City--and you get it with a mountain view.
Best Inner City Dance Venue
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theatre
119 Park Ave. W.
Cleo's roost is one of the hottest beds of physical creativity going and it's made all the more charming by its location in the old Shorter A.M.E. Church building on Park Avenue West. The resident troupe graces the old neighborhood with several performances a year, while the dance school sets young artists into motion. And the excitement doesn't stop there; last year, the venue brought modern dance grande dame Katherine Dunham to town, and this year Robinson and crew are collaborating with vibraphonist Jay Hoggard in a piece to be performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City.
Best Outer City Dance Venue
Space for Dance
2590 Walnut St., Boulder
The Space for Dance was once the Watts-Hardy Dairy, but this former home of four-legged hoofers has since been transformed into a spacious, airy place where local dance troupes of the two-legged variety can put their best feet forward. They may not bottle milk anymore at the facility, but the cream still rises to the top.
Best Place to Do-si-do
Temple Events Center
1595 Pearl St.
Good, clean fun is alive and well at the Old Time Community Dances held at the Temple Events Center on the second and fourth Friday of each month. If the idea of a Capitol Hill hoedown strikes your fancy, this is the place to find it--no experience is necessary and a fiddle band keeps things lively, while a caller teaches the steps, most of which are related to New England-style contra dancing. All ages are welcome to swing their partners, peel off and promenade into the night.
Best Local Theater Production
Black Elk Speaks
Denver Center Theatre Company
Black Elk Speaks was a genuine contribution to the literature of the American theater. Politically correct and proud of it but also substantial, the beautiful play gave the history of contact between Native Americans and European-Americans from Columbus to the mid-twentieth century from the Indians' perspective. Tragic as that history has often been, the play leaves the viewer with a shred of hope.
Readers' choice: Black Elk Speaks
Best Production of a Bad Play
Baltimore Waltz
Victorian Theater
Despite a "disease-of-the-week" writing level, the performances and staging in Baltimore Waltz stood out valiantly. Jeremy Cole's direction was especially inventive and witty as he pulled out all the stops with inspired hilarity. Cole gambles with the shows he produces and he always seems to win--he likes the risks, and he maneuvers through them brilliantly.
Best Performance by a Ghost
Pam Clifton
Rebecca
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities
Witty, engaging and intelligent, Pam Clifton's Rebecca, a one-woman history performance piece for kids presented at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, was first-class interactive children's theater. Clifton was anything but transparent, and nary a boo was heard from the young audience.
Best Production of a Dysfunctional Family Drama
A Breeze From the Gulf
Theatre on Broadway
The excellent performances from Darrett Sanders, Erin Hart and Arthur Payton in A Breeze From the Gulf shed light on abuse--of the substance, spousal and child varieties. Terry Dodd is a master at bringing out nuances of character, but here his sensitive direction produced a transcendent experience. Dodd avoided waxing sentimental without undermining revelatory feeling.
Best Theater Company Season
Industrial Arts
Our Town and The Elephant Man were standouts and Rashomon brought the season to a worthy conclusion. Industrial Arts uses its intimate space at the Loft Theatre with a brilliant ingenuity--on a small stage, the company creates whole worlds out of thin air.
Best One-Man Show
Don Becker
Back on a Limb
Avenue Theatre
Becker took the substance of his troubled life and made a witty, testy, insightful piece of theater out of it. The use of live music was terrific, but the show's true highlights were Becker's perceptions about mental illness and the revelations of his art.
Best Old-Fashioned Fun in the Theater
Stage Door
Hunger Artists
Hunger Artists' stage production of Stage Door proved better than the movies, as T.J. Geist led a fabulous cast on a merry romp into a nostalgic past. You can't beat great dialogue, and the whole point of this play is how wonderful the theater is and how terrific it is to be able to act on the stage itself. Katherine Hepburn's Hollywood film version seems absolutely banal by comparison.
Best Play That Got Rotten Reviews
Romeo and Juliet
Mirror Players
Director Tom Rowan's unappreciated but razor-bright interpretation of one of Shakespeare's least interesting plays demonstrated how wrong the critics can be. Particularly original in this Mirror Players production was Scott McKinstry's brooding, mature Romeo, who turned a teenage crush into deadly doings.
Best Actress
Debra Persoff
Debra Persoff was brilliant this year--poignant in the sickly sentimental Marvin's Room at the Theatre on Broadway and radically funny as the fussy Florence in the female version of The Odd Couple at the Avenue Theatre.
Best Supporting Actress
Cheryl McFarren
Cheryl McFarren's bright, sweet-tempered Patricia, mistress to a thoroughly ordinary bloke in the Germinal Stage production of The Millionairess, was a masterfully timed comic characterization.
Best Actor
Christopher Selbie
In the Compass Theatre's Othello, Christopher Selbie was the essence of evil--and the most interesting and malevolent Iago to come along in a great while. Free of self-pity and rage, this Iago was a monster of amused malice.
Best Supporting Actor
Keithwayne Brock Johnson
In two excellent performances at the Denver Civic Theatre--Inspecting Carol and especially Split Second--Keithwayne Brock Johnson demonstrated presence, wit, excellent timing and a phenomenal ability to create whole human beings inside the confines of even small roles. Most important, you can't take your eyes off him on stage; Johnson radiates power.
Best Contrasting Roles by an Actor
Phil Luna
As Manolo Costazuela in the Avenue's female version of The Odd Couple, Phil Luna was endearingly sexy and very funny. As the bandit Tajomaru in Industrial Arts Theatre Company's Rashomon, he played three versions of the character, revealing layers of personality and vice in clean, decisive strokes.
Best Impresario
John Ashton
The versatile John Ashton directed the year's biggest hit, The Odd Couple, wrote the wonderful white-guys-sitting-around-talking one-act Five Card Stud, saw his interactive mystery Murder Most Fowl continue its endless run, and produced one of the year's most insightful shows, Back on a Limb, with Don Becker.
Best Food Run
Nicholas Nickleby, Parts 1 & 2
Denver Civic Theatre and El Noa Noa
The Compass Theatre Company took on a bear when it decided to stage this lengthy Dickens two-parter--but the Compass took it on with style. Those who braved the full five hours on Saturdays had the option of spending the intermission at El Noa Noa, the Mexican restaurant across the street from the theater. Well, usually it's Mexican. During the Nickleby run, the eatery was dishing up all-you-can-eat fish and chips, along with English beer. It was London in a nutshell--on Santa Fe Drive--and a jolly good time at that.
Best Acting Between the Lines
Asphalt Adventures
Chameleon Stage
The members of Chameleon Stage are a flexible bunch who do their thing just about anywhere they can. The group, which has done radio theater for National Public Radio, regularly puts on outdoor shows in mountain parks. This spring they tackled a whole new frontier: parking lots. Chameleon scheduled performances-on-the-pavement at four different locations. Despite a snow-out and a rain-out, virtually no set and a complete lack of stage lighting, they set up chairs and played to an appreciative few. Nobody, we presume, had trouble finding a space.
Best Free Entertainment
International Buskerfest
16th Street Mall
The organizers of the buskerfest decided last year that all the world was, indeed, a stage. So they shipped in a flotilla of street performers--magicians, musicians, jugglers and other talented fools who, along with the best of our local buskers, sang for their suppers on the downtown streets. The bigger and better fest returns this July with a similar format but even more wacky sidewalk acts.
Readers' choice: 16th Street Mall
Best Parking Deal for Theatergoers
Al Fresco
1523 Market St.
This trendy Italian eatery offers more than just pasta, veal and gourmet pizzas--it also offers a cure for Denver Performing Arts Complex parking trauma. Drop your car at the curb, where it will be whisked away by a parking attendant. Enjoy a leisurely dinner and then board Al Fresco's free (if gaudy) shuttle to and from the theater. A nice tip to Al Fresco's valet parkers will cost about half what it would for an overpriced parking space in a lot across from the arts complex. A word of caution, however--make reservations and plan on dining early. The restaurant is hopping on theater nights.
Best Reason to Be Late to the Theater
DCTC Ten-Ten Tix
Take your time. If any seats remain at Denver Center Theatre Company productions, you can snap them up for a song ten minutes before showtime. Tickets that normally sell for $17 to $27 are a steal at ten bucks. What a great incentive for all you poor, struggling theater buffs.
Best Movie Theater
The Mayan
110 Broadway
In the age of the soulless multiplex, nothing can unseat the Mayan. Its garish Thirties gargoyles, lovely stucco, homey gloom and cine-buff clientele all provide atmosphere. Landmark Corporation stalwart Michael Williams usually puts something decent (or at least different) up on the three screens, too.
Readers' choice: The Mayan
Best High-Tech Movie Theater
The Continental
I-25 and Hampden Ave.
What else is left? Now that the UA (nee Cooper) and the Century 21 have vanished from South Colorado Boulevard, the 900-seat Continental, which still looks like a Jetsons set, is the only huge-screen, stretch-your-legs vestige of moviegoing glory in three counties. There's plenty of light on the screen, a courteous crowd and enough volume, when necessary, to send a death-metal band into hiding.
Best First-Run Bargain Theater
Paradise Village Three
5255 W. Warren Ave., Lakewood
Formerly the Target Village Three, this operation was taken independent last year by Bob Tankersley, who promptly did the unspeakable--lowered prices. Now you can see first-run features for a maximum of $5 an adult ticket and pay less than you'd expect for candy, pop and other concessions. Pray this becomes a trend.
Best Drive-in Theater
Cinderella Twin
3400 S. Platte River Dr., Sheridan
Go ahead, stuff the trunk of the Packard with illegals before America's passion pits disappear altogether. Who cares if the window speakers are trash and the double-feature is trash-times-two. Inside the Cinderella Twin, they've got corn dogs. And everyone still gleefully beeps the horn come dusk.
Best Movie Theater Snack Bar
Esquire, Mayan, Chez Artiste (tie)
It had to happen: PC has invaded the candy counter. Fall by the Esquire, Mayan or Chez Artiste, where Ben and Jerry already hold forth in several flavors, and you'll find the new Cloud 9 products--espresso-bean crunches, chocolate-covered sun-dried cherries, raspberries in dark chocolate and the like--all made with natural dyes and all dedicated in part to the salvation of rain forests. The stuff tastes pretty good, too. Just in case you unreconstructed Milk Duds junkies were wondering, Cloud 9 is based in that mission control of environmental correctness: Hoboken, New Jersey.
Readers' choice: The Mayan
Best Popcorn
Mayan Theater
110 Broadway
The fat-content scandal has everyone reeling. Even the big theater chains are now offering "air-popped" white popcorn with no salt and no oil. It tastes like a bag of jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The Mayan will provide you such stuff if you must have it, but the theater also continues to sell its famous coconut-oil-popped, absolutely superb traditional product, topped with real butter. Now there's a taste treat.
Best Pre- or Post-Movie Watering Hole
Chives, An American Bistro
1120 E. 6th Ave.
Blair Taylor's cozy boite, hard by the Esquire Theater, serves pretty good eclectic chow, but the sophisticated list of wines-by-the-glass and elegant top shelf of booze are what keeps the crowds coming back. It's the perfect spot to lubricate your rehash of Altman or Bertolucci; on Sunday nights the place is virtually overtaken by restaurant-and-bar folk frolicking on their night off.
Best Pre-Movie Dinner
Sfuzzi
Cherry Creek Mall
Since the Blackhawk pulled up its steaks a couple of months ago, this neo-Italian glamour spot with a California accent is the main stopoff for Cherry Creekers who want to catch a movie at the 'plex upstairs in the shopping center. Nouveau pizzas, inventive pastas and an imaginative Italian wine list are the attractions, along with silky service. Lighter fare than what Mama used to make, but the tony crowd that can be counted on to gather here presumes to add some weight.
Best Revival
A Streetcar Named Desire
Mayan Theater
Hey, Stella! Lean and mumbly Marlon Brando slouched back onto the Mayan screen in March, reaffirming in glorious black-and-white what moviegoers discovered 43 years earlier--Brando was the best actor of his generation, and Tennessee Williams was the best playwright of his. Director Elia Kazan was no moviemaker (Streetcar was all stagecraft-on-film), but Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter, Brando's bedeviled costars, needed no camera to love them, either. They were actresses.
Best Film Series
Boulder Public Library
1000 Canyon Blvd., Boulder
Program director Chuck Lomis, in his seventh year in that capacity, is both witty and wise. The "Food for Thought" film series he put together earlier this year tantalized with The Grapes of Wrath, Wild Strawberries, Dinner at 8 and Cold Turkey. His "Across the Pond" package, which opened June 6 and runs Monday nights through July, features half a dozen British classics unavailable on video--including Michael Powell's Edge of the World, Victor Sjostrom's Under the Red Robe, Terence Young's Corridor of Mirrors and the backstage melodrama Curtain Up with Robert Morley and Margaret Rutherford. The new 16mm auditorium is cozy--just 218 seats.
Best Showcase for Unknown Filmmakers
Eye for an I Cinema
Since its inception over a year ago, Brock McDaniel's Eye for an I has grown from a screening for a handful of (mostly) Boulder independent filmmakers and video producers to an event encompassing works from around the region and beyond. Last year the CU Program Council invited the successful showcase to put on a show on the Boulder campus; the playlist included an offering from Georgia created in part by Michael Stipe of rock group R.E.M. Proceeds from screenings have been donated to charitable causes; even better, Eye for an I has helped area reel artists form a network.
Best Denver Film Festival Film
The Piano
Little matter that Jane Campion's haunting tale of frontier barbarism and a mysterious mute woman's erotic defiance swept more-commercial audiences away just weeks after its closing-night debut here. Denver Film Festival director Ron Henderson recalls that audience anticipation in the wake of the film's triumph at Cannes and stirring word-of-mouth made it one of the hottest tickets in the history of the annual event. Rightly so: The Piano struck just the right chord between high art and popular appeal. That's any festmeister's wish, and a packed house's dream come true.
Best Denver Film Festival Sleepers
Vacas and The Red Squirrel
Not only did the young Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem prove to be one of the most intelligent and appealing guests at last October's festival, the pair of offbeat, eccentric features he brought with him fascinated ticketholders with their surreal tilt, dense atmosphere and metaphysical turn of mind. If Americans didn't know Medem last fall, Denver gave him reason to come back: Uncommonly adventurous moviegoers here put a charge into his career with their enthusiasm.
Best Local Feature Film
Alferd Packer, The Musical
Believe it. CU-Boulder grad Trey Parker wrote, directed, scored, starred in (and presumably catered) this lively toe-tapper about the misadventures of the Old West's favorite cannibal. Don't look for a smash commercial release, but the young filmmaker is now in Tinseltown, haggling with the moguls over his lunch allowance. If you still don't get the drift, take note that Parker's next project is called Beowulf on Ice.
Best Local Short
Everything Has a Spirit
Boulder filmmaker Ava Hamilton, an Arapaho Indian who grew up on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, has raked in half a dozen film-festival prizes for her 26-minute study of how Native American religious freedom has been abridged by the courts. In Everything Has a Spirit, she examines the protection of sacred sites and peyote use, among other subjects. Broadcast on PBS last November, the film was written by Lida Hogan, a Chickasaw.
Best TV Series Set in Denver
Diagnosis: Murder
The plots are weak and the delivery shallow, but how often do our local paparazzi get to dig into a real celebrity? Not only did we get Dick Van Dyke sightings here, we got Denver sightings on a weekly network show. Move over, Streets of San Francisco; this season, we got to see snippets of our own fair city.
Best Future Shock
Star Trek: Federation Science
Denver Museum of Natural History
It's not hard to translate sci-fi into fact when it's fun--and the Star Trek exhibit at the Denver Museum of Natural History pulled it off. Designed to resemble the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, the hands-on displays gave all comers a chance to see what they'd look like as Klingons, navigate through an asteroid field and imagine what it's like to be beamed up (the wildest dream of every Trekkie). Volunteer guides even dressed in Starfleet uniforms and Vulcan ears. Exhibits like this should live long and prosper.
Best Place to Eyeball an Alligator
Tropical Discovery
Denver Zoo
The biggest new arrival at the zoo last year wasn't a rhino or a zebra--it was Tropical Discovery, a state-of-the-art display that brings the jungle to life. Climate-controlled and cloaked under a high-tech roof, the pH-balanced wonderland was an instant hit with the kids when it opened last November, stocked with a menagerie of creepy crawlies--slithery snakes and lizards, exotic fish, astounding tortoises and more, all in their natural environments. There's a reason why the line to get in is always so long: Tropical Discovery is good, mucky fun.
Best Place to Track Down a Dinosaur
Dinosaur Ridge
Alameda Pkwy. and the Hogback, Morrison
Maybe you didn't even know we had them, but they've been here longer than you have. Bordering the foothills near Morrison (along with spectacular views of Denver, the plains and Red Rocks Park) Cretaceous fossils and footprints join Jurassic dino bones right there in plain sight. To call attention to the fact, the Friends of Dinosaur Ridge offer a series of Open Ridge Days, complete with roving paleontologist guides stationed at points of interest. It's an easy two-mile walk to the site, or you can take a bus; the whole tour takes approximately two hours. Pack up your little dino-maniacs and get some sun.
Best Set for a Horror Movie
Forney Transportation Museum
1416 Platte St.
Of all the vintage cars on display at the Forney, the one that seems most at home is the ghoulish old hearse. The museum is so dark, atmospheric and downright spooky that you half expect someone to jump out at you with every step you take. Alfred Hitchcock wannabes should stop by immediately.
Best Place to Go Trick-or-Treating
Trick-or-Treat Street
Children's Museum
2121 Crescent Dr.
Lots of little goblins aren't allowed to do their candy hunting door-to-door anymore. The Children's Museum throws a worthy surrogate of a Halloween party that'll keep them from missing all the fun. Trick-or-Treat Street is full of unscary costumed creatures and goodies (not just candy, but little favors and toys, too) at every turn.
Best Place to go Autograph Hunting
Tattered Cover Book Store
2955 E. 1st Ave.
The list of literary heavyweights who march through the T.C. each year is too long to recount and too wonderful to ignore. Top-notch novelists like Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Barbara Kingsolver and John Nichols, celebrities from James Earl Jones to Arnold Schwarzenegger, sports figures such as baseball manager Dusty Baker and former Mets star Keith Hernandez, mystery writers, children's book authors, cookbook mavens, politicians, poets and philosophers are among those who've taken time out to dole out their John Hancocks--all for the price of a book.
Best Literary Salons
Capitol Hill Books
300 E. Colfax Ave.
If the Tattered Cover has perfected the major book signing, Capitol Hill Books has bravely cornered the market on the small-scale, chatty sort of literary event. The monthly Sunday salons encourage interaction and conversation; they're friendly, stimulating and, best of all, unpretentious.
Best Marathon Literary Event
Bloomsday Celebration and Reading
Wynkoop Brewing Company
1634 18th St.
You might call them bloomin' idiots, but Joycean scholars and enthusiasts return to the Wynkoop Brewing Company every year like swallows to Capistrano. The James Joyce Society gathers every June for a marathon reading of James Joyce's epic Ulysses, starting early in the morning and going on--and on--into the wee hours. The event attracts a big crowd, often including a celebrity or two, and it doesn't hurt that the event takes place in the closest thing to a pub we've got.
Best PR for Poets
Denver Poets Audio Tape Series
333 Logan St., No. 200
Denver 80203
Open readings and poetry slams abound in D-town, but the Denver Poets tapes may be the most concerted effort yet at giving exposure to local wordsmiths. The brainchild of local poet Cynthia Payne, who calls herself an "L.A. refugee" and believes "theater shows hope for the human race," the cassettes (there are now two of them) feature readings by a diverse group of local poets, from Naropa bigshot Jack Collum to comedian/performance artist Don Becker and teenager Devin Scheimberg. They're available by mail order or at the Tattered Cover.
Best Book Festival
Rocky Mountain Book Festival
The Rocky Mountain Book Festival got its start last year, drawing more than 30,000 people to the Colorado Convention Center. In addition to featuring book vendors from across the nation, the festival also dished out high-profile author signings, a celebrity book auction and other book-related events. The highlight, though, was the merchandise--books of all kinds, new, rare and ancient. This year's event, being planned for the fall, already boasts speaking commitments from author Rita Mae Brown and publisher Ian Ballantine.
Best Way to Get Lit for Free
Slack
This literary rag started out like more of a 'zine but gradually became more reputable and slick. Published by Emilie and Matthew Jaffe (a thoroughly Generation X couple who worked and sold ads out of their Boulder home), the paper contained interviews with poets, musicians and artists and reviews of, well, odd things. The Jaffes have since moved on to San Francisco, where they hope to take the Colorado-born Slack national.
Best Underground Music Publication
The Seed
With an arsenal of new writers (among them ex-KTCL DJ Bill Amundson), a larger, full-color format and a global approach to music criticism and underground culture, The Seed remains one of the best indie publications in the region. And it's absolutely free for the taking! Now, if we only knew where to find the dang thing...
Best Underground Music
Starkland Records
P.O. Box 2190
Boulder 80306
Perhaps the best introduction to Thomas Steenland's record label is From A to Z, a sampler of eclectic works including Phillip Kent Bimstein's whimsical Cows, described as "a concerto in three moo-vements." You'll dance till the cows come home.
end of part 4
