Meet Denver’s legendary ‘Phantom Phan’
Octogenerian is nearing 200 performances of Webber’s masterpiece over 31 years
Alicia Keyes’ Celebration of Place
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 […]
From Basketball to Broadway: Denver’s Buell Theatre Celebrates 35 Years
35 years after being the first Broadway show to christen the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre, The Phantom of the Opera returns It started out as an addition to the 1908 Denver Municipal Auditorium and became the highest grossing theatre of its size in the nation. The former Denver Auditorium Arena (1940-1989) was added adjacent […]
Local Legends of the Pit: Jim Harvey and Art Bouton on Returning to The Phantom of the Opera
Local musicians are tapped to step into the orchestra pits of Broadway shows as they tour across the country. A Denver Orchestra With Deep Roots Most national Broadway tours travel with only a small core of musicians; the remaining artists are hired locally. It is a model built on trust — trust that a city will […]
5 Tips to Bring Improv-inspired Mindfulness into Your Daily Life
Mindfulness can feel intimidating. But what if presence didn’t require stillness? What if you could use improvisation to return to yourself? For Denver Center for the Performing Arts teaching artist Heather Curran, improv and mindfulness are inseparable. “Improv is the practice of presence through play,” she says. “Mindfulness and meditation can be really daunting, but […]
The (Emergent) Play’s Still the Thing
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 […]
Denver Center Theatre Company Announces Full Cast and Creative Team for Rock Musical, Next to Normal
DCTC announces cast and creative team for the Tony Award-winning rock musical, Next to Normal, opening in Spring 2026. OFFICIAL TICKETS: Visit the Next to Normal show detail page for verified tickets, seat maps, and pricing. “What moves me most about Next to Normal is its unflinching honesty. This musical invites us to confront the complexities of mental […]
The Best Ways to Relax Before an Audition or Interview
From deep breaths and nutrient-dense food to arriving on time, these five tips can make that next audition or interview go smoothly. It’s completely normal to be nervous before an audition or interview, but you don’t have to let that control the situation. In fact, calming the nerves before the big event helps tremendously, […]
Denver Mental Health Resources for Teens and Families
The article was originally published in 2022 and updated in 2026. Nearly 1.2 million adults in Colorado have a mental health condition and many don’t have access to help in their communities. Here are some local and national mental health resources. In March 2025, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Colorado reported that 1,186,000 […]
Refreshed Legacy: The Phantom of the Opera
35 Years After Opening Denver’s Buell Theatre, The Phantom of the Opera Returns in an All-New Production Maybe you saw the original performance on Broadway. Maybe you heard the music on a cassette or CD or through streaming — ripped a track to a mixtape or playlist to sing along to in your car. Or […]