While the names Thalia and Melpomene might mean nothing to you, you would certainly recognize their faces. Also known as Sock and Buskin, the iconic representation of theatre features two masks with familiar laughing and crying faces. Thalia is one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, the patron of Comedy, represented with the laughing […]
If clothes make the man, does it stand to reason that costumes make the villain? That’s the question we posed to DCPA Costume Crafts Director Kevin Copenhaver, who has been tasked with designing 1930s-era costumes for Much Ado About Nothing. Not necessarily, was his answer. “I don’t think costumes make the hero or the villain. […]
Director Chris Coleman will set his version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in the Sicilian port town of Messina. A minor but integral character is Dogberry, the incompetent constable, who unwittingly (and comically) discovers a plot to thwart true love. When Costume Crafts Director Kevin Copenhaver took on the charge to design the show, […]
It just doesn’t sound the same in the Denver Center’s costume shop these days. “It’s very quiet now,” Director of Costumes Jan MacLeod said as her team continues to process the July 19 passing of stitcher Cathie Gagnon, an open and outgoing fixture in the DCPA Theatre Company family for the past 30 seasons. They […]
The year is 1834 and 14-year-old Afong Moy is the first Chinese woman mainland America has ever seen. Intriguing and powerful, The Chinese Lady is a play unlike anything you’ve seen before. Take a look at some of the production photos below.
If you have seen any DCPA Theatre Company production over the past 17 years, you have seen the work of retiring Properties Director Robin Lu Payne. The candy-dispensing skull in You Can’t Take it With You. The hilarious plaster casting of actor Kathleen M. Brady as Domina in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way […]
There’s something very modern about Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The rapid-fire zings, the flirty aggression — If Beatrice and Benedick met today, they would badmouth and ghost each other on a dating app. Fortunately, the play is respectfully presented in its original form, only stylistically updated to the 1930s in the DCPA Theatre Company’s […]
Most Americans have had Chinese food all their lives. Chinese food arrived with the first immigrants in the 1840s, looking to strike it rich panning for treasure in “Gold Mountain” — what America was called in China. The cuisine was first cooked up by and for the immigrants themselves, but despite racism against the wave […]
On Saturday, April 16, 2022, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock gave an official apology — for something that happened in 1880. He apologized for the anti-Chinese race riot of October 31, 1880 known as The Chinatown Riot. The event destroyed much of what had been a thriving Chinatown district in what is today the thriving entertainment […]
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) Theatre Company and Education departments are proud to announce the full casting and creative teams for the 2022/23 fall productions of The Chinese Lady, Much Ado About Nothing, LITTLE RED, and A Christmas Carol. “The DCPA is bustling with excitement this fall! From the world premiere immersive […]