Under the watchful eye of director Geoffrey Kent, a rehearsal for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream gets under way at the Charlotte York Irey Dance Studios on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. Shakespeare’s “rude mechanicals,” the working stiffs hired to put on a performance…
God of Carnage. Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful — chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped, with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Even if you…
The farmers at the Boulder Farmers’ Market, which returns today from 4 to 8 p.m., take root in unexpected places. Although some come from generations of farmers, others were blown onto the land by the high hippie winds of the 1960s or the current foodie mantras of local and organic…
God of Carnage. Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful — chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped, with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Even if you…
At the end of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the audience members at Germinal Stage did something I’ve never seen at that theater: They stood up and applauded. It’s not that Germinal hasn’t staged excellent works in the past — works worthy of a standing ovation. It’s just that audiences…
Dividing the Estate. Dividing the Estate is a quietly incisive play about a large and contentious family. Stella Gordon, the 85-year-old matriarch, rules over a grand old house in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas. She is strong-willed and authoritative but essentially kind — and she’s determined that the family…
The power of mothers — for good and ill — is a theater trope that never quite loses its potency. In Shelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water, three daughters convene for the funeral of their mother, Vi, who has, in different ways, ruined all their lives. Mary was the repository…
Dividing the Estate is a quietly incisive play about a large and contentious family. Stella Gordon, the 85-year-old matriarch, rules over a grand old house in Harrison, Texas — the fictional small town where author Horton Foote set most of his sixty plays. Stella is strong-willed and authoritative, but essentially…
Tim Brod of Highland Honey Bees sells creamed honey and herb-infused honey intended to promote health, as well as queen bees and bee packages to would-be apiarists and pollination services for local organic farms. And — as I learn on my Saturday morning visit to the Boulder Farmers’ Market –…
A recent Facebook thread carried a passionate argument about whether childbirth was ecstatic or hideously painful. “Painful” voters found the ecstatic folk smug; the ecstatics hinted that the painful contingent were insufficiently maternal. Apparently Motherhood Out Loud, an evening of linked monologues on the theme of motherhood, comes down on…
If I were as intensely clever as playwright Itamar Moses, author of Bach at Leipzig, and as fond of intellectual games, I would write this review first as a review, then as an analysis of the forms of the review and the ways in which my piece of writing does…
The big news at the Boulder Farmers’ Market Saturday: Randy and Regan of 2 Rs Farm have strawberries. I restrain myself from doing a celebratory dance around their stand — which is also heaped with cucumbers and luscious greenhouse-grown tomatoes — and snatch up three little boxes. Within fifteen minutes,…
The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company has just announced its upcoming season, the eighth for this troupe, and it’s an intriguing one that includes three regional premieres and one significant capture: And the Sun Stood Still, a play about Copernicus and his struggle to publish On the Revolutions of the Heavenly…
When it was published in 1985, Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple was a groundbreaker — illuminating places that had been in shadow and, like most groundbreakers, intensely controversial. It described the plight of many poor, black rural women through the unforgettable voice of the protagonist, Celie, a voice that…
Let’s start with the setting, so pristine, white, minimal and tasteful: chairs with gracefully curving legs, a glass table on which art books are meticulously arranged, a vase of white tulips, nicely grouped with just one flower swaying slightly out to the side. Tall panels of white brick form a…
We’ve had a few theatrical art lessons around here recently. And not so recently. Red, at Curious Theatre Company last year, revealed Mark Rothko’s genius, insecurity and narcissism as he bullied his assistant and gave urgent instructions about how he wanted his work viewed. Then there was the Miners Alley…
Buntport Theater Company put several peculiar messages on Facebook before A Knight to Remember opened. These implied that the theater group — known for the creative synergy of its members — was divided on this piece about Brian Colonna’s childhood fantasies of knighthood. Erik Edborg would not be involved, the…
The Boulder Farmers’ Market on Saturday, April 13, is one of those variable Colorado days when you’re not sure whether to wear a coat, a jacket or a heavy sweater — and you find yourself peeling off layers as the morning advances. JJ in his wheelchair and Raelene wearing her…
Herbert Siguenza has worked for 26 years with the theater group Culture Clash in Los Angeles — we saw the company’s rich and joyous piece about immigrants in American Night at the Denver Center a year ago. His years of experience and the passion he feels for his own work…
Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney is a miraculous and unlikely talent. He grew up in Miami housing projects, the son of a crack-addicted mother, found theater through a youth program, made his way to Yale Drama School and served as writer-in-residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. He is currently…
Based on the seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha was an award-gobbling sensation when it first appeared in 1965 — but after decades of professional and community productions, the musical has less impact. Still, the Arvada Center has mounted a big, sumptuous show, filled…
From the early scenes of Other Desert Cities, you’d think it was going to be one of those family dramas in which everyone sits around and talks about their problems and feelings — all of which are supposed to interest you. Then you start thinking that the play’s about politics…
