Director Nancy Keystone Brings Denver Center Theatre Company’s Next to Normal to the Wolf Theatre

There are many things in life that we want to be normal. Morning commutes. Dental exams. Parents when they first meet our significant others. But there are also certain contexts where we like to be surprised — the theatre being one of them. So when director Nancy Keystone admits that “I honestly don’t know what the hell normal is,” that might be a good thing. Especially when directing the emotional, musical, and pharmacological rollercoaster that is Next to Normal playing the Wolf Theatre April 3-May 3, 2026.

THE STORY

Set in an anonymous American suburb, Next to Normal follows the highs and lows of the Goodman family as they navigate mother Diana’s severe bipolar disorder. For Keystone, who directed an earlier production of the rock musical with the Los Angeles-based East West Players, the story’s volatile mood swings are part of the appeal. “What’s great,” she says, “is there will be a really funny thing, and then it turns on a dime and it’s just devastating…. [It shows how] people in the most dire circumstances find the humor and the absurdity.”

Lianne Marie Dobbs and Andrea Goss in ‘Indecent.’ Photo by Adams VisCom

Next to Normal also marks Keystone’s return to the Denver Center, where in 2019 she directed the Paula Vogel play Indecent in the Kilstrom Theatre. This time, however, she is working with a larger — and as she describes it, a more challenging — canvas. “The Wolf Theatre is a three-quarter thrust,” explains Keystone, in reference to the way the stage extends into the audience. “Which is, I think, the hardest configuration to work in.”

THE THEATRE

Compared to the radial symmetry of the Kilstrom, a three-quarter thrust like the Wolf produces very different sightlines for different parts of the audience. Extra care is required to ensure that every seat affords a good view of the action. “I try to figure it out with the actors,” says Keystone. “With the physical bodies in space.”

But it’s not just its shape that sets the Wolf apart from other Denver Center spaces — it’s also its size. “It’s really big for the actors,” says Keystone. “They have to be in wildly different places on the stage and appear and disappear.”

Adding to the difficulty is Next to Normal’s rapid-fire pacing. “A lot of stuff happens simultaneously,” says Keystone. “The scenes have to flow very quickly. There’s not a lot of transition time.” That means mapping out routes that the actors can follow up, down, behind, and under the stage while saving enough breath to launch back into song.

THE DIRECTOR

Fortunately, Keystone is no stranger to demanding environments. As the founding artistic director of Critical Mass Performance Group, she’s put on shows in bars, basements, and abandoned military barracks. While the Wolf’s large size may pose its own challenges, Keystone has learned to appreciate the little things. “It already has lights,” she says of the Wolf. “It has a sound system. It has ways to fly things in and out — it’s a theatre.”

As Keystone sees it, the physical scale of the Wolf is a natural fit for the emotional scale of Next to Normal. Though the story takes place against the familiar backdrop of American suburbia, the characters’ interior landscapes are far more sweeping and exotic. “The human psyche is very epic,” says Keystone. “The places that the characters go, especially Diana’s character — she has all these kind of delusions and fantasy sequences…. I love the epicness of the characters’ journeys.”

Finding those journeys, what Keystone calls “each path through the play,” is no small task. “I liken it to sculpting,” she says.

“You keep chipping away at detail, and the more you chip the more detail you get. You keep asking questions, and you keep pushing to find a more truthful moment.” — Nancy Keystone, Director

Much like actual sculpting, it can be a time-consuming process. “I tend to push and push and push and not stop until basically an hour before we open. That’s one of the first things I tell people is we’re going to rehearse on opening night and there might even be changes.”

Changes on opening night? “I mean, probably there won’t be,” admits Keystone. “But you never know. It’s a constant process of discovery.”

THE DISCOVERY

Asked what she hopes to discover in her second production of Next to Normal, Keystone points to Diana and the challenges of understanding a character who so often struggles to understand herself. It’s a “psychological, physical, spiritual conundrum,” she says. “She has so many different kinds of moments onstage.”

Ultimately, however, “it’s as much about the family as it is about Diana.” And among the members of the Goodman family, each struggling and striving in their own ways, Keystone observes that there is no single version of what normal looks like. For daughter Natalie, “it’s like, ‘Can we just have dinner where there’s not a major crisis?’ ” Whereas for husband Dan, a normal life is one where his wife is capable of driving herself around town.

As for Nancy Keystone, director and storyteller, normal may simply be another work of fiction. “I’ve never felt normal in my life,” she says. “The longer I live, the more I really wonder if anything is normal or anybody is normal.”

In other words, feelings of abnormality might just be the most normal thing of all.

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