Playwrights Announced for the 19th Annual Colorado New Play Summit

The Denver Center Theatre Company is proud to announce playwrights, dates, and details for the 2025 Colorado New Play Summit (CNPS). The 19th annual festival will take place over one weekend on March 1-2, and feature readings of new plays by jose sebastian alberdi, David Myers, Carey Perloff, and Bianca Sams. The festival will also feature the World […]

A Spanish-language Guide to I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

While audiences don’t need to speak Spanish to fully enjoy the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, understanding the lingo may offer a deeper appreciation of the play. Based on the New York Times Bestselling novel by Erika L. Sánchez and written for the stage by Isaac Gómez, […]

Playwright Isaac Gómez: I Am a Reader Before I Am an Adaptor

The staged production of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter has been seen twice before, making its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, then traveling to Seattle Rep in 2023. Ahead of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s (DCTC) opening on September 27, playwright Isaac Gómez has been in Denver perfecting the script and […]

Shakespearean Mad Lib

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” “Brevity is the soul of wit.” “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” Arguably the most quoted play of all time, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, now playing the Wolf Theatre through Oct 6, is jam-packed with […]

Avaaz: Succeeding Against Enormous Odds

In a workshop on playwriting some years ago, Michael Shayan was instructed by the leader, noted dramatist Luis Alfaro, to put a hand over his heart, to feel the heartbeat of a character – and to “just listen.” The voice he heard was one Shayan had known all his life. It was that of his […]

Death and Madness, Truth and Meaning: The Demands of Destiny in the Story of Hamlet

We humans are very fond of our tender bodies and our clever brains, which explains a lot about our fears of Death and Madness.  And that statement doesn’t apply only to modern humans, coddled by our sanitized lives and our careful culture.  We’ve had those fears since always. Shakespeare’s King Richard II exclaims this, in […]

Finding the Perfect Performer: Casting Locally-Produced Plays

When immersed in a live performance it’s easy to get swept away in the story and characters, forgetting sometimes you’re watching actors on a stage at all. It’s okay to be transported, but on the casting side, it took a lot of work to get there. Every single show produced at the Denver Center for […]

Hamlet Decoded: Your Guide to Shakespeare

Without the benefit of SparkNotes during a Shakespearean play, audience members can understandably struggle to engage with forgotten language. More than 400 years stand between Hamlet’s soliloquies and our modern hearing. Interestingly, in Hamlet, much of the language is very similar to what we use today with the odd exception. Those exceptions are usually solved […]

Behind the Scenes: Sword Fighting in Hamlet

Honor and vengeance take center stage in the final act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet — and there’s no shortage of swashbuckling in the play’s thrilling conclusion. Get a look inside the rehearsal room with these sneak peek photos as Ty Fanning (Hamlet), Ðavid Lee Huýnh (Laertes), and Seth Andrew Bridges (Horatio) learn the fight choreography of Rick […]

Hamlet: A Discussion Guide

The name William Shakespeare is nearly synonymous with that of his greatest play, Hamlet. But did you ever stop to consider that the essence of the story wasn’t really his? Instead, according to the Folger Shakespeare Library, ol’ Will, along with many predecessors, borrowed it from ancient Norse legend. The tale of a son avenging […]