By Chris Coleman, Denver Center Theatre Company Artistic Director Whether it’s Hamilton or Hamlet, every play started as a new work. Someone was excited by a story and brought together a group of collaborators to carve out a path toward opening night. It’s always a risky venture. Ask anyone in our industry and you’ll find that […]
Enrich your experience at the Denver Center Theatre Company’s world premiere production, Cowboys and East Indians, by Nina McConigley and Matthew Spangler. Share these pre- and post-show discussion questions with your group and enjoy the show. Pre-Show Questions How does the place or culture we grew up in inform the way we see […]
Staging the world premiere of Cowboys and East Indians required not only American and Western wear, but a great number of saris and other traditional Indian garments. Most saris sold in Colorado are for formal occasions, such as weddings, so Costume Design Associate Meghan Anderson Doyle looked to India, ordering saris and other traditional garments […]
The main character and narrator, Lucky, is the daughter of immigrants from India who first moved to Toronto before settling in Casper, Wyoming, a town in which they found no connections to their culture of origin. Even today, Casper’s Indian community is just 0.073 percent of the city’s population. As of 2023, only 2 percent […]
Denver Public Library resources to enhance your experience at Cowboys and East Indians READ Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang Similar to Cowboys and East Indians, readers are introduced to a collection of stories centered on the families of immigrants, like the overbearing mother that gives up her artistic aspirations to come to America and […]
Now receiving its world premiere at the Denver Center Theatre Company, Cowboys and East Indians was developed in the DCPA’s Colorado New Play Summit. Co-adapters Nina McConigley and Matthew Spangler spoke about their play with the DCPA before their Summit reading in 2024. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. View the original […]
“Sari” (or saree) is Sanskrit for “strip of cloth.” First worn as far back as 2800-1800 BCE during the Indus Valley Civilization, saris are typical garments worn in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India, among other countries. They range from the mundane to the sublime, serving as a practical garment in extremely hot […]
Plays like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Angels in America don’t go from obscurity to Pulitzer Prize winner overnight. Instead, new plays and musicals take time, effort, investment, and dedication. Sure, there are some stories that practically “write themselves,” but that is generally more fiction than fact. Instead, a playwright goes through drafts and […]
“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 […]
When her play, Cowboys and East Indians, has its world premiere, playwright Nina McConigley thinks it’s going to be mind-blowing for her mother, who was born in India and lives in Wyoming, to see actors wearing saris onstage at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Growing up in Casper, as “the other […]