I went to see The Thanksgiving Play at the Curious Theatre this past week and I’m having a hard time writing about it. Not because it wasn’t well-produced (it was) or beautifully played (it was indeed), but because I walked out of the venue feeling like yet another clueless white person who should probably just shut up for a while. That’s a weird thing to write and it makes the play seems like kind of a downer, which it both totally is and completely isn’t. It was simultaneously both one of the most uncomfortable and one of the funniest things I’ve seen in 2019. The premise is this: the... Read More

The Denver Film Festival unleashes its craziness all over the mile-high metropolis this fortnight. I had the pleasure of attending the arguably least-film segment of the entire event, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth my time. It definitely was. In fact, you could say it was “worth the wait.” The event that I’m talking about is “Escape from Godot,” which is just about exactly what it sounds like. The classic, curmudgeonly piece by Samuel Beckett (“Waiting for Godot,” for those who live in the present and don’t waste their time on post-War philosophical struggles) showcases... Read More

October is known as “gig-tober” amongst performers because the modern incarnation of Halloween lends itself so well to dressing up and being dramatic; every troupe in town has a zombie-themed show running this month, and I’m here to talk about one of them. It’s Audacious Theatre’s Grimm’s Scary Tales. The production nicely represents the two things that humans fear: death and the unexplained (which arguably includes death). October is the season when we get to exorcise and process those fears in a way that involves slutty outfits and huge volumes of high-fructose corn syrup. How completely... Read More

I’ve mentioned in previous columns that “immersive theater” is having a moment. At the Aurora Fox Arts Center, it’s having an orgasm. Or perhaps a petit mal seizure. Or maybe both. Petit mal, petit mort…whatever; I walked into Control Group Productions’ staging of Cutting Room Floor and walked out 90 minutes later, not quite sure how that time-loss had happened, but desperately hoping to make it happen again. The idea is this: the historic Fox Theater, founded in a Quonset hut in 1946 and thriving for decades as a movie house, was gutted by a fire in the early 80s, by which time it... Read More

Caution: Includes Spoilers! With October comes pumpkin spice lattes, last year’s limp Halloween decorations dragged back out onto my neighbor’s lawn, and gothic theater productions. Front and center of Denver’s autumnal theater roster is Equinox Theater Company’s production of Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Bug Theatre in LoHi. Stephen Sondheim’s opus is notoriously difficult and, well, the Bug isn’t quite Broadway, so my expectations were…reasonable. I’m happy to report that those expectations were far exceeded. Sweeney Todd is basically a Liam Neeson... Read More

I tried to write a different column about today’s topic and “the thing didn’t happen.” It was stiff and weird and totally contrived, which is a total contrast with the thing that I want to actually write about. That thing is Mouse Couch, a local improv team that I think is really going places. Mouse Couch (no idea what this name is for, except probably something with the repeated “ou” diphthong?) is made up of three dudes, two of whom are deeply strange and one who seems fairly normal and sells real estate in his spare time. The strange ones have respectively inverse relationships with... Read More

I’ve written about boylesque before, the male iteration of the classic art of the striptease. It’s a lot of fun, even if the performers don’t have boobies—boobies being the currency of fun, of course. I want to talk about another specific boylesque event because it’s happening not only for the sheer joy of ogling males with the female gaze, but also for the protection and promotion of all booby-having people in the Denver area. The Front Range’s male improvisers and stand-up comics are moonlighting as Chippendale dancers and taking (most) of their clothes off to raise money for women’s... Read More

Immersive theater is having a moment. I attended a “summit” on immersives just last week. I actually had no idea what “immersives” were and just went because I was invited by someone who thought I should be there. The MC of the event informed the audience that the genre is defined by the audience being an active and interactive part of the theater experience. It’s a broad genre that includes everything from dinner detective shows to escape rooms to live action role-playing games (LARPing). Turns out I’ve been writing about immersives for months and didn’t even know it.  I intend... Read More

Denver Magic Show —————– By Jessie Hanson   Mondays in my world need a lot of help. Case in point: I was supposed to turn in this column on Monday, but it’s now Tuesday and here we are, still pecking away at this keyboard. Let it be known that I don’t do mornings or Mondays. Thus, when I heard that the first day of the workweek would be endowing with a magical evening every week, I trotted my caffeinated bones out to Capitol Hill to see what was going on.  Parking is a bitch in Cap Hill; a magician will never tell you the secret of her tricks, but I’ll... Read More

It’s never too late to enter the Dungeon!!! I’ve never done any role-playing games before, since my mother had warned me that it was a portal to demonic possession (long story—buy me a beer to hear the whole thing), but 2019 is the year to try something new, demons be damned. Mark Zuckerberg, a true nerd who I’m sure played his fair share of chaotic-neutral characters, recently suggested that I might enjoy a dip into the LARP end of the pool. Why not? I clicked the link and dove into the wild world of Woodlands & Wyverns, a partly-improvised, audience-guided, scripted theater piece... Read More