In addition to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ 35 plays and musicals, the 2025/26 theatre season offers a plethora of options on stages along Colorado’s Front Range. Mark these on your calendar and be sure to support local theatre.

SEPTEMBER 2025

Eureka Day
Curious Theatre Company, Sep. 4-Oct. 5
Artists have their ear to the train tracks and can hear what’s coming from far off, a director friend said. That seems to be the case with Jonathan Spector’s 2018 play about a Berkeley, California private school plunged into turmoil after a student comes down with the mumps. The mandatory vaccinating of children and the pieties of respect collide in ways deep funny and unsettlingly true.

The Mousetrap
Arvada Center, Sep. 5-Oct. 12
As one of the longest running plays heads to the Arvada Center, the question might be can the arts complex build a better, er, Mousetrap? Given its history of well-tuned, often gorgeous productions, the answer is a no brainer. The killer in the Agatha Christie-based whodunit, on the other hand, is not.

The Thin Place
BETC at The Savoy Denver, Sep. 12-28
BETC at Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center, Oct. 3-26
The Boulder Ensemble Theater Company — that’s BETC to its many fans — goes a haunting with this play by Lucas Hnath about a spiritualist and her rather headstrong client. In its geographical wisdom, BETC has scheduled runs in Denver and in Boulder.

You’ll be Made of Ashes Too
Flamboyán Theatre, Sep. 19-27
Sisters Evelyn and Liana already have their hands full navigating each other and their prickly history after the death of their mother. But a haunting, too? The area’s only Borica theater company kicks things off with playwright Baylee Shlichtman’s horror comedy.

Yankee Bajan
Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center, Sept. 19-20
It’s not every day that a theater cedes its season-opening turf to another company. But that’s just what Su Teatro Cultural Performing Arts Center is doing as it makes way for Parris-Bailey Arts. The company with roots in Tennessee and Barbados, will be performing a work about those roots, as well as the complicated feelings immigrants can carry about being rooted and about being adrift. In a vital sidebar, Su Teatro was joined in bringing the show to Denver after the NEA rescinded its grant with financial help from the Carter-Martinez Family Foundation, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, and individual donors. And the show is being hosted in collaboration with the African Leadership Group, the Arvada Center, and the Biennial of the Americas, proving that sometimes community is a verb.

Alabama Story
Firehouse Theater Company, Sept. 26-Oct. 26
Kenneth Jones’ play was inspired by an obituary he read about librarian Emily Wheelock Reed, who in 1959 stood fast against the legislative players who wanted to ban a children’s book. In The Rabbits” a white bunny marries a black bunny. What could have been the issue in the segregated South? The playwright has woven another, altogether resonant, story into his hero-versus-bigotry tale — one about an interracial friendship.

 OCTOBER 2025

A Case for Black Girls Setting Central Park on Fire
Local Theater Company @ the Dairy Arts Center, Oct 2-25
Committed to developing and presenting new American plays, Local Theater Company opens its season with a play by Kori Alston. Gospel and long-distance running, poetry and myth, guide the 12-year-old protagonist on a journey from Brooklyn to Harlem that is both intimate and epic.

Bless Me, Ultima
Su Teatro, Oct. 16- Nov. 2
Su Teatro returns to a classic with its production of Rudolfo Anaya’s play, based on his 1972 novel, a classic of New Mexican and Chicano literature. Sure to be a highlight: actor Yolanda Ortega returns to her award-winning role as Ultima, young Antonio’s curandera and mentor.

Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous
Vintage Theatre, Oct. 17 – Nov. 23
In Pearl Cleage’s tart, intergenerational reckoning, an actor in her sixties thinks she’s been asked by an Atlanta theater company to reprise her most controversial performance: performing the male-character monologues from August Wilson’s plays nude. Not quite. She learns she’s there for a “lifetime” nod and that a younger actor (a pole-dancer, no less) has been cast in the revival.

Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat
Buntport, Oct. 31-Nov. 16
The folks of Buntport must tire of the adjectives: eclectic, innovative, imaginative. But honestly, it’s the ensembles own darn fault. They have produced more than 50 original works over the years, and they are invariably playful, amusing, and often ridiculously smart. This outing featuring a Baltimore brother with a “Poecast” and a sister mourning her dead cat, straddles all three qualities.

NOVEMBER 2025

Job
Curious Theatre Company, Nov. 6-Dec. 7
In this thriller by Max Wolf Friedlich, things get very tense between Jane and her therapist, Loyd. Actually, he’s not “her” therapist but the one she’s been sent to after she had a very public meltdown at her Big Tech company. He must clear her to return to her at-times crushing content-moderation gig. Will he? Can he even?

Let Nothing You Dismay
Firehouse Theater Company, Nov. 22-Dec. 21
It’s always good to see an emerging playwright return to a local stage. In 2023, Topher Payne’s Phish play You Enjoy Myself premiered swimmingly in Boulder, thanks to the Local Theater Company. Now the author takes on family dysfunction, the holiday edition. A young couple waiting to hear about their new baby asks ever so sweetly for their loved ones to hold off on visits. Do they get their wish? Ho-ho-no!

DECEMBER 2025

Every Brilliant Thing
BETC @ the Dairy Arts Center, Dec. 5-28
Bring an open heart and some tissue for this solo show written by Dylan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe. After his mother tried to end her life, seven-year-old (Donohoe) began listing things that give pleasure in hopes of boosting her spirits. Whether they did, we cannot confirm. But we’re certain this show will boost yours.

Who’s Holiday!
Vintage Theatre, December (dates TBD)
That apostrophe isn’t a typo, copy editors. This mature-themed, cabaret comedy finds our childhood friend Cindy Lou Who of that Seussian classic, all grown up and waiting for her guests to arrive at her holiday gathering. While she waits, she has a few things she’d like to get off her chest.

JANUARY 2026

Bad Books
Curious Theatre Company, Jan. 8-Feb. 1
Local Theater Company at Diary Arts Center, Boulder, Feb. 5-15
Two of the area’s top-shelf theater companies tag team the premiere of Sharyn Rothstein’s drama about a mother and a librarian who face off over a book. News about the play from other cities participating in its rolling world premiere suggests the playwright figured out a way to take on one of the nation’s more divisive conflicts — parental rights and book banning — and create if not common ground, a compassionate and humorous space for all of us to think. Ah, theater.

The Shark Is Broken
Vintage Theatre, Jan. 9-Feb 15
If you didn’t already return to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws during its 50^th anniversary, you have another, if adjacent, chance with this meta-comedy about the making-of, spotlighting the on-location goings-on between actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfus, and Robert Shaw. The play is written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon. The former is the son of Robert Shaw who so indelibly plays the irascible shark-hater Quinn. (If you’re thinking the play will be swimming in “daddy issues,” you’d be right.) The trio had a great deal of down time on set off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, thanks to the famously underperforming mechanical shark. “Flaws” someone called it.

Brooklyn Laundry
BETC at The Savoy Denver, Jan. 30-Feb. 15
BETC at the Dairy Arts Center, Boulder Feb. 20 – March 15
Laundromat owner Owen and customer Fran meet at the start of playwright John Patrick Shanley’s family drama. While it’s tempting to describe the play as a romance — after all the playwright penned Moonstruck — it’s more than that, given the challenges Fran’s sisters — Susie and Trish — are facing.

FEBRUARY 2026

H-E-Double Crooked Letter
Firehouse Theater Company, Feb. 7-March 8
Leonard Madrid loves centering kinfolk. And the writer of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s recent premiere Cebollas about siblings knows well that cousins can be just that close. In this comedy, three cousins crack open a gateway to Hell in their grandma’s house. Uh-ohs and Ha-has ensue.

Romeo and Juliet
Arvada Center, Feb. 13 -March 29
One of the Bard’s greatest hits needs little marketing from these quarters. And in the care of the Arvada Center, it’s sure to be lovely. Only “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life”? Just in time for Valentine’s Day? Which poses the question & Juliet teased so well: Might the bloom be off that particular rose when it comes to over young’uns a quintessential romantic story?

Dear Jack, Dear Louise
Vintage Theatre, Feb 14-15
Ken Ludwig — Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo — has written an epistolary romance set during WWII. If it’s spot-on in its tender observations that may be because Jack, an Army medic initially stationed in Oregon, and Louise, a singer and dancer hoping to make it in New York City, are based on the playwright’s parents. Want to bask in their glow, get tickets early. It’s only playing two evenings.

MARCH 2026

Another Kind of Silence
Curious Theatre Company, March 5 – April 5
M. Feldman’s fully bilingual drama (English and American Sign Language) finds two couples in Greece at a crossroad in understanding. When Evan, a writer in a decade-long marriage with her devoted composer husband Peter, meets Chap, a captivating visual artist committed to café owner Ana, a profound connection begins to form—complicating communication, desire, and loyalty. What will happen? And what do their “shadow souls,” as the chorus of four complementary actors, is called, make of their yearnings and silences?

Just Like Us
Su Teatro, March 12-29
Playwright Karen Zacharias adapted journalist and local author Helen Thorpe’s bestselling portrait of four friends at a Denver high school. It’s been more than a decade since Just Like Us (the book’s subtitle: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America) received its world premiere at the Denver Center in 2013. Now it’s returning to the city where its quartet of friends — excellent students all and planning on college — aced the challenges of U.S. immigration policy because of their divergent immigration statuses.

Angels in America: Parts I & II
Vintage Theatre, March 17-May 10
Tony Kushner’s epic play in response to the AIDS crisis has secured its place high on the list of Best American Plays of the 20^th Century.  The Vintage Theatre is staging it and its follow-up. If you’ve seen them, now might be a good time to revisit the tensions of the ’90s they evoke. (Yes, there are some echoes.) If you’ve never seen them, make haste.

Bella, Bella
Vintage Theatre cabaret stage, March (dates TBD)
In his heart of hearts, Harvey Fierstein is something of an old-school broad. So, it’s hardly a surprise that he took on one of New York’s finest in the solo show — Bella Abzug. Bella Bella unfurls in a Midtown bathroom, as the political maverick awaits news of election results. In 1976, the then-Dem representative ran in the primary for the Senate seat.

APRIL 2026

White
Firehouse Theater Company, April 4-May 2
“Make’m laugh. Make’m cry. Make’m call their senator,” Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames has said. “But by any means necessary. Make’m do something. Can’t change anybody’s mind if they’re asleep.” Little chance there will be any nappers in this comedy about an artist who hires an actor to portray an invented character so he can get into a museum show celebrating diverse artists. What could go wrong?

Local Lab 15
Local Theater Company at the Nomad Playhouse in Boulder, April 17-19
Local Theater Company has been committed to finding, nurturing and sharing great American plays for 15 years now. Arguably, the biggest step in their ongoing adventure takes place when the Boulder-based company puts on its Lab, a weekend of staged readings of in-development works.

Furlough’s Paradise
Curious Theatre Company, April 30-31
To our mind, cousinship is one of the coolest of interpersonal inventions. One gets the sense that playwright a.k. payne might agree. In their drama, first cousins Sade and Mina reunite for the funeral of Sade’s mother (Mina’s dad’s twin). Mina lives in Los Angeles; Sade is incarcerated but has been furloughed for her mother’s service. Sometimes you know a play is something special by the fine writing it inspires in a critic. So read Charlie McNulty’s review for the L.A. Times.

MAY 2026

Mary Jane
BETC @ the Dairy Arts Center, May 1-24
Amy Herzog’s play about a mother with a profoundly ill child garnered raves both as a work and for Rachel McAdams who played the mother of the title and was nominated for a Tony. It’s a plumb, demanding role. It’ll be exciting to see, which actor the folks at BETC tap.

The Cake
Firehouse Theater Company, May 30-June 28
Good hearted, devout Della faces a dilemma when her niece returns home and asks her to make her wedding cake. Only, she’s marrying a woman. “If I’d knew you were coming, I’d have… hidden,” might be Della’s tune. But playwright Bekah Brunstetter takes seriously Della’s clash of robust affection and fidelity to doctrine.

SUMMER 2026

No Se Paga. We Won’t Pay.
Su Teatro, June 11-29
Who knew the Italian Nobel Prize-winner would find such champions in Latino theater community? Well, the folks at Su Teatro for one. Indeed, Fo’s political farces, centering on the working class, have found a home in the barrio. So, get set for the raucous romp — the translation of the Italian title: “Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!” —about rising prices and fed-up consumers.

The Book Club Play
Vintage Theatre, June 12-July 19
The second Karen Zacharias play of the 2025/26 season, this comedy teases a set up familiar to watchers of some very successful sitcoms: a documentary filmmaker trains his gaze on the phenomenon of U.S. book clubs. Although we don’t see the filmmaker, we do witness the six members of the club as well as several characters who comment on them.