Hell’s Kitchen shares a very different west side story A city. A neighborhood. A building. These are the geographies that feed 17-year-old Ali, our guide in Alicia Keyes’ Hell’s Kitchen, book by Kristoffer Diaz. Hell’s Kitchen is the piquant —and for decades, the rightly earned — name of the West Side Manhattan neighborhood where Ali […]
The Colorado New Play Summit at 20 What follows is an anecdote — “as told to” but hardly apocryphal. During the recently concluded Colorado New Play Summit, a group of theater-fond women, who had walked from their towering apartment building on 15th street to the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, expressed their concern about the annual […]
When Lisa Orzolek first began working as the second scenic assistant at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in 1992, the Theatre Company was producing The Grapes of Wrath based on John Steinbeck’s novel about the Joads of Oklahoma, forced to migrate west by a convergence of Depression Era economics and environmentally wrought disaster. […]
“I always loved westerns as a kid — the showdowns, the gunfights, all that,” playwright Terence Anthony said during a video conversation. His own contribution to the genre, Godspeed — a rousing saga about a formerly enslaved woman on a mission in post-Civil War Texas — is having its world premiere at the Denver Center […]
Sentimentality is often scrutinized. Rightly so — let the teary among us admit. Yet, in the hands of people who appreciate its power but also believe it has integrity, the sentimental can be more than merely moving or easily nostalgic. Enter singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and writer Bekah Brunstetter, the tag team responsible for the musical […]
A large glass bowl with what could be mistaken for paper confetti sits atop a table where Charlie Miller, John Ekeberg and Chris Coleman have gathered in the Wolf Theatre in the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex. Not a stooge among them, the three gents of the Denver Center’s Off-Center, Broadway and Theatre Company divisions respectively […]
Ever wonder how the heads of the Denver Center’s three branches — Broadway, the Theatre Company, and Off-Center — chart their seasons? When does Artistic Director Chris Coleman, start puzzling out the Theatre Company’s intricate season? What goes into the immersive offerings of Off-Center, helmed by Executive Director and Curator Charlie Miller? When […]
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 15th anniversary — who has been doing some marveling about how its early years feel like yesterday and […]
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 […]
Dim the lights. Unwrap that piece of candy. Cue the overture. Yes, fellow aisle-anders (okay, we’re working on that), the 2025/26 season is upon us with no shortage of musicals and plays that aim to please or perturb — sometimes both — and all the other feels. And as is the way with art […]