Annie Barbour in Theater of the Mind. Photo by Matthew DeFeo.

Fifteen years zips by in the most confounding ways. Ask any parent buying a dress and hiring a deejay for their daughter’s Quinceañera. Or ask Charlie Miller, the Executive Director and Curator of Off-Center — celebrating its 15^th anniversary — who has been doing some marveling about how its early years feel like yesterday and a “lifetime ago.”

In 2010, the Denver Center launched its experiment in experimentation. Helmed by Miller and Emily Tarquin, Off-Center began as a way to find playful and engaging ways to bring in new (and less graying) audiences to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and to use its underutilized Jones Theatre, the intimate, 196-seat theater facing Speer Boulevard. The pair thought of their undertaking as a lab, or better yet a “test kitchen.”

One of the first shows in that prototype season, was The Ultimate Wii Baseball Game. Miller and Tarquin used the Wii video-game console and fielded two teams to compete. The evening even had a Kiss Cam and looked like a larky fun, a hit if not an RBI. The first sold-out show was Drag Machine, which sashayed audiences through the history of drag but also of gay liberation. That same year, Lawrence Dai was met at the airport by Miller and Co., waving fanboy and fangirl signs the night before he participated in The L&J&J Project, a rather zany celebration the blogger’s 365th viewing of the Amy Adams-Meryl Streep movie, Julie & Julia.

Yes, a lifetime ago. And yet, “Everything we were saying and thinking [then] is still so relevant,” says Miller, sitting in the Denver Center’s Wolf Theatre one August afternoon. “It’s been cool to see the progression and the evolution and also feel like what we were onto 15 years ago is the path we’re still on, to where we are and where we’re going.” The fundamental aspect of those early years was what Miller and co-founder Tarquin call “the recipe.” To this day, their five-ingredient process for centering audiences in the storytelling or experience remains: immersive, convergent, connective, inventive and now.

Deeply thoughtful and inventive creators, Tarquin and Miller weren’t theater-makers so much as experientialists, intent on crafting productions — all manner of productions — that don’t fall into the traditional notions of theater. When Tarquin left to the famed Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she was just named Managing Director, Miller became the immersive impresario of Off-Center: sniffing out interesting virtual reality projects; pondering how voracious Denverites’ appetites for the innovative might become; cultivating local, national and global relationships; asking the hard and fun questions.

The impulses originally were about how do we engage an audience that maybe sought entertainment elsewhere, and that felt like theater wasn’t for them. We developed this recipe that was a sort of template for how we could reach that more adventurous audience who wanted to have a more active role in their night out or in their entertainment and arts and culture. And those ingredients still feel super relevant to today and what we’re doing. — Charlie Miller, Co-Founder, Executive Director & Curator

“Charlie and Emily really had the vision and foresight to understand that immersive and experiential work was one of the new directions that theater was heading,” says Zach Morris. The former Coloradoan is the co-founder of one of the nation’s premier immersive theater companies, Third Rail Projects. “To be able to keep pace with that, it required thinking outside of the box, thinking outside of the traditional theater settings, and, in fact, thinking outside of established programmatic and producorial contexts.”

Brendan Duggan in Sweet & Lucky: Echo. Photo by Jamie Kraus Photography

The weekend before Miller sat down to talk, Off-Center’s latest offering, Sweet & Lucky: Echo, opened in a vast space off South Broadway called Broadway Park. (It runs through Oct. 5). Devised by Morris and Third Rail Projects, the show invites attendees into a collective act of grieving and remembrance. Over two hours, participants help recall the lives of two dearly departeds: rummaging through their knick-knacks; packing their boxes; hearing stories told about them — even being asked to recount our own imagined stories about them; and watching the pair in a kind of theatrical flashback dancing at a lake early in their courtship. It’s tender stuff.

It’s more than fitting that Echo marks Off-Center’s 15^th year. After all, Echo nods to one of Off-Center’s most transformative collaborations: Sweet & Lucky. In 2015, Morris and the Brooklyn-based company set up shop in a Denver warehouse and delivered the show that changed Off-Center’s fortunes and trajectory. Sweet & Lucky unfurled in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse in RiNo that had been turned into a labyrinth of impressive spaces and scenes that connected discreet groups of attendees along with actor guides.

Critics and audiences — who had yet to experience “immersive” performances — were in awe. Just as gob smacked were attendees lucky enough to see immersive work like Sleep No More and Then She Fell in New York City. The ardor for Sweet & Lucky can sound nearly apocryphal, but it was just that good. In other words, the show became one of those events that raised the bar and elevated expectations for what Off-Center could do among audiences, artists, and the Denver Center itself.

Lia Bonfilio in Sweet & Lucky. Photo by Adams VisCom.

“We had arrived at a new destination,” says Tarquin, during a recent video call. “And this destination had the full swimming pool, the graveyard where it rained, a life-size house, a drive-in movie.” Sweet & Lucky remains, she believes, the largest scale production she’s ever worked on. “That was the moment that I would say we at Off-Center said, we want to have the full immersive environment as much as possible for everything we do from here on out,” recalls Tarquin.

“It’s been so exciting to see the work that Emily and Charlie started together and then the work that Charlie has helmed over these years,” Morris says. “He really catalyzed an extraordinary community of artists in and around the Denver area. And I think he also really helped move the conversation forward about this type of work.”

Perhaps “Off-Center” is an ironic moniker for an enterprise that is intent on placing participants in the center of the storytelling, in the midst of an unfolding tale: be it in the Jazz Age (The Wild Party, 2017-18); a space station (Space Explorers: THE INFINITE 2023-24); or trying to navigate the harrowing physical challenges of immigrants who cross the border between Mexico and the U.S. as patrol helicopters hover (Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning CARNE y ARENA 2020-2021). Among the many people Miller tapped early on was Lonnie Hazon. The one-time dresser of Barney’s New York’s famous yuletide season display windows, turns his hoarding of thisses and thats into a collection of cheeky, glittery, marvelous rooms of winking wonder dubbed Camp Christmas (multiple seasons).

And then there was the no-small matter of the former Talking Head Frontman David Byrne’s noggin, when Theater of the Mind arrived questioning perception and memory — both personal and neurological (season 2022-23).

“Although it may not always feel like it, theater has a leg up on the future,” Tarquin points out. “And in a world where AI will replace a lot of our communication tools, will replace some of our jobs, the thing it won’t replace is anything that is fostering a sense of connection, real connection, and so Off-Center is primed to do that. It’s positioned to be so integral in that.”

Miller, too, has AI but also the deeply human element on his busy mind.  “Just yesterday I listened to a podcast about AI and sort of the future of work,” he says. “And the guest on the podcast said, any profession related to human connection is not going anywhere because it’s the one thing that AI can’t replace.” Whether that will be born out or not, Miller “found a lot of comfort in that,” he says.

“Because in theater, we’re in the business of connection — and that’s what I love about immersive,” Miller continues. “I love traditional theater, too. But the fact that you are inside of the story and you’re not watching it from some distance, it’s happening all around you, and you have a role in it.” Thanks to Off-Center, Denverites have been part of that storytelling transformation 15 years and counting.