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 nonetheless make an amusing trio. This morning, they embraced the notion that play is the thing and field anonymous questions about their work.

So, allow us to mix a metaphor as we pull back the curtain on, ahem, a fishbowl.

Chris Coleman: Should we sing? Do we sing?

John Ekeberg: No, we don’t.

[Coleman hums the “Jeopardy!” theme]

Coleman: Do you know who wrote that song? Merv Griffin. Do you know how much he earned off it? 70 million! I just heard that on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” this morning.

[Selecting the first question from the fishbowl]

Ekeberg: Okay, so what’s the most surprising reaction you’ve seen from an audience? Can we say vomit?

Miller: Oh, that’s a good one. Wow.

Ekeberg: It was a reaction.

Coleman: I think it was a final preview of a Little Shop of Horrors. I was sitting next to a group of students. There were two young women. Every song they would lose their minds with glee. At intermission. I asked, why did you decide to come? They said, this is the honors engineering program at CU Boulder. They looked 12. So, I was surprised by that. But the I just started talking to them about the engineering involved in making the whole show. And they were geeking out on the mechanics of how we made the set happen. They stayed after the show. I got to introduce them to the set and the lighting designers.

Miller: I was talking to an audience member at Sweet & Lucky: Echo who came to the first Sweet & Lucky. He said that moment when he walked out on the lake (that was actually a mirror) and could see the reflection of the stars in [that 2015 show] was one of the most memorable moments of his entire life.

To be able to hear that from an audience member and feel like we created something that they will never forget is awesome. …John, you’re gonna stick with vomit?

Coleman: What’s your theatre superpower and what’s your theatre kryptonite?

Ekeberg: Well, I would say kryptonite for any of us is communication. Maybe that’s not the right use of kryptonite, but it’s such an important thing for all of us. When communication breakdown happens, that’s when we experience problems.

Coleman: What about your superpower?

Ekeberg: Wearing a belt with sneakers.

Coleman: Kryptonite? I think I’ve been doing this a long time, but I still can get very, very invested in the projects that I care most about. And when the budget doesn’t seem to be able to accommodate something, I can get spikier than is desirable. Superpower? I think it’s feeling what may resonate for an audience, having an instinct about that.

Miller: What may resonate from the page? It’s hard to see what’s on the page and know.

Ekeberg: What about you, Charlie?

Miller: One kryptonite is — how do I phrase this? — assuming it will be simpler than it is. Thinking Oh, yeah. That won’t take that much time or that much money. Because this immersive work is big and complicated, even in the smallest versions, even if it’s a one-on-one experience. So that’s been a challenge estimating what it’s actually going to take.

Ekeberg: You remind me of the use of the word just. People hate just.

Coleman: I think that’s artistic director kryptonite in general. “It will just take a week to rehearse that.”

Miller: I think one of my superpowers might be sensing what’s coming and driving towards. At Off-Center, we were talking about immersive before immersive was really a thing back in 2010, and we were talking about a sense of belonging.

Ekeberg: Okay, this is fun. I like this part.

Miller: What’s one show or experience from another department that made you jealous — in a good way?

Coleman: I’ll mention two, The tour of Moulin Rouge. When I saw that I didn’t have any expectations. I loved it so much. It made me want to sing all the songs. I thought the performers were fantastic. Yeah, that was a total gas for me. I also really, really loved Remote Denver, which was a show that Off-Center did my first summer here, where you went to different places around the city and you had kind of an audio experience with it. I’d never done anything like it. It was a great way to experience the city afresh.

Ekeberg: I love The Color Purple. That was a good jealousy moment. Sitting in this space, same space we’re sitting in right now. Incredibly powerful. It so fit the space, and everything about it was just wonderful. The work, Charlie, that you have done out at Stanley Marketplace — The Wild Party — I have really enjoyed.

Miller: I’m always jealous of Hamilton. A lot of the big Broadway shows, so many people know about them and so many people come. It’s so cool. My kids are 8 and 10 now, and I’m starting to bring them more to the theatre and they love it. We all went to Little Shop, and I was so proud to share that show with them. They’re like, “Dad did you work on this at all?” And I’m like, not really, but I know everyone who did. It’s cool to start to see it through my kids’ eyes, because I grew up coming to the Denver Center. We were Broadway subscribers, and I was friends with [former theatre company actor] Jamie Horton’s daughter, so went to a bunch of Theatre Company shows with her in high school.

Coleman: What’s a moment in your career when you thought, only in theatre would this happen?

Ekeberg: I think back to one of the first public previews of Frozen. We added, very last minute, an additional preview performance because the show was ready to have an audience. So, we had to sell tickets, as many as we could in 10 days for that preview. And we sold about 2,000, a good amount. The night of the show came and we were all down at the theatre. An hour before the show, the Will Call line just sort of started to grow. We thought, Wow, there’s a lot of people out for Will Call. Why are there, like 300 people? And we realized that we had a process in place that 10 days out, if someone ordered a ticket, it would automatically go to Will Call. So, since we sold all our tickets 10 days out, we had approximately 2,000 tickets at Will Call. The line wrapped around the Complex. But it was a great example of theatre people doing their thing because Disney management jumped in, Executive management jumped in, worked the line, got tickets for everyone. We held the curtain for 20 minutes and went up only 20 minutes late.

Miller: Are there any other questions you guys want to ask each other?

Coleman: What’s for lunch?