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A deep dive into Denver Fringe featuring an interview with Ann Sabbah, plus our weekly Top 10 Colorado Headliners

In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Alex Miller and Toni Tresca go big on Denver Fringe Festival — coming up June 4-6. We take a look at 20 of the dozens of shows coming up and chat with Denver Fringe founder and director Ann Sabbah along with performers Soleil Kohl, True Smith and Megan Dille.

Later in the episode, we run down our Top 10 Colorado Headliners — upcoming shows around the state that might be of interest.

Chapter Breakdown

Opening & Recent Theater Experiences (00:00 – 12:00)

  • Welcome and catch-up after previous week’s hiatus
  • Discussion of John Moore’s guest appearance on previous episode
  • Alex’s experience at The Narrators at Buntport Theater – monthly storytelling event celebrating its 15th anniversary
  • Toni’s coverage of The Narrators for Westword
  • TV/Film discussion: Mission Impossible Final Reckoning and Netflix’s The Four Seasons

Recent Productions & Reviews (12:00 – 19:00)

  • Toni’s review of Exhibit at Curious Theatre – one-woman show by Regina Taylor
  • Discussion of Hundreds of Beavers film screening at Sie Film Center with actress Olivia Graves in attendance
  • Preview of Oracle immersive art installation at Union Hall

Theatre News & Industry Updates (19:00 – 26:00)

  • Bobby G Awards coverage (Denver Center’s high school theatre competition)
  • Sundance Film Festival’s $34 million incentive package to move to Boulder
  • OpenStage Theater’s cancellation of Agnes of God production mid-run
  • Discussion of funding challenges for local arts organizations

Denver Fringe Festival Main Coverage (26:00 – 39:00)

  • Overview of the sixth annual Denver Fringe Festival (June 4-8)
  • Festival statistics: 200+ performances, 75 shows, 20 venues
  • Ticket pricing and artist revenue sharing (70% to performers)
  • Toni’s curated show selections across three days
  • Alex’s anticipated picks including family-friendly and experimental works

Featured Show Highlights Include:

  • Nuptial Nightmare (horror comedy)
  • Mouse City Podcast (mice starting a podcast)
  • Arkham Ass-Sylum (Batman villain burlesque)
  • Rocky Mountain Puppet Slam
  • Dichotomize Me (immersive absurdist play)
  • Various experimental, comedy, and performance art pieces

Colorado Theatre Headliners (40:00 – 53:00)

Top 10 Upcoming Shows:

Transcript

Created by AI echidnas; there may be errors.

Alex Miller (00:00)
All right, well, welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast. Once again, I’m Alex Miller and I’m joined as usual by Tony Trasko. Hey, Tony.

Toni Tresca (00:08)
Hey Alex, it’s great to be with you. It’s been a little while.

Alex Miller (00:11)
It has, yeah. We took off last week and the week before John Moore was our special guest to come on and that was a lot of fun to have John on. He knows lots about Colorado theater, of course, and we had a fun episode if you a chance to listen to that one.

Toni Tresca (00:28)
Yeah, he’s very knowledgeable and he came on, he was very feisty in the conversation. You guys had a lot of good back and forths. And John, I don’t think you said anything on the episode that’ll get you in too much trouble.

Alex Miller (00:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, and don’t worry about it if you do. What the heck? That’s, you’re supposed to get in trouble if you’re generally supposed to say stuff. So anyway, well, as usual, we’re going to talk through some of the shows that we’ve seen lately, news, some news from around the state. We’ll share our top 10 Colorado headliners list. And then for our main event, we’re going to dig into the sixth annual Denver Fringe Festival, including an interview with the executive director or president, think she might be, Anne Sabah, and a couple of fringe artists. ⁓

Toni Tresca (00:42)
Yeah!

Alex Miller (01:06)
So, but first let’s go around and around the horn and talk about what we’ve seen on stage in the past week or so, as we were just talking before we went live. ⁓ It was kind of a quiet May. It’s really things sort of dropped dead. know, there were some shows that had been running for a while and so we didn’t have a ton to see. I did get out and see the narrators at Buntport, which, you know, is an ongoing, like almost monthly-ish show that they do where they just have come.

people come on and basically just read stories and it was a lot of fun. They had a really nice turn around, I think it was their 15th anniversary. And Tony, you just did a story about that for Westward. What can you tell people about the narrators?

Toni Tresca (01:39)
That’s right.

Yeah, so it was started by a comedian who’s one third of the Grawlux team. And it was just, he kind of wanted a place to work out storytelling and kind of do a, it didn’t necessarily have to be comic pieces, but he just wanted to do something with no expectations. You could do it memorized or you could bring up note cards. You could have a presentation. You can dress up. can not. The point was it was just a casual night for telling stories and

It eventually just kind of grew into something much bigger. There are people who have been attending the narrator show since it was in its space on Platte, Platte on the Park, I believe, was. It’s now defunct, but that was where they got its start. And then it moved, bounced around a little bit until it eventually found its home at Buntport Theater, where it’s been going strong for a number of years now, surviving the pandemic. ⁓

Alex Miller (02:23)
huh.

Toni Tresca (02:39)
to produce those stories. if you’re not in Denver, but want to get a kind of a sense of what the narrators are like, they do have an accompanying podcast. ⁓ Although it has not been updated since July, 2023. So you will eventually get to a point where ⁓ you won’t be able to hear any more stories. But the team tells me they’ve recorded everything that they, every single story that has been shared. So they have that back catalog. So theoretically they could bust out hundreds of.

Alex Miller (02:51)
Ha

Toni Tresca (03:07)
actually literally thousands of podcast episodes if they really wanted to.

Alex Miller (03:09)
Well,

believe me, we’re sympathetic to the hassle it is putting a podcast out and getting it all done. But Aaron Rohlman, but Port Stalwart Aaron Rohlman was the host when I was there the other night. it was fun. had, so was Janai Burris, who’s a well-known actor and comedian in the Denver area came on and told a story while her, I think, four or five year old son.

Toni Tresca (03:17)
100%.

Alex Miller (03:36)
Ezra was running all over the place. And then Josh Blue, who’s a really well-known ⁓ Colorado comedian, ⁓ he has cerebral palsy. ⁓ And so he’s one of the few kind of development and disabled stand-up comedians who’s made an impact on the national level. And somehow or another, he came on and had a really kind of weird story about being in a car with someone with a terrible skin disease.

Toni Tresca (03:42)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (04:00)
⁓ And so and of course he was having a he was he was riffing off ⁓ Ezra running around as well and it was ⁓ a Retired vet who came on and told some read from one of his books So yes, it was a funny as his catch, you know, they had the home baked cookies And of course, they’ve got the you know, the honor bar you can go grab a beer or wine and and so fun event pay which can so I definitely recommend checking out the narrators ⁓ and then on the absolutely complete other side of the entertainment universe

From that, I Mission Impossible, ⁓ Final Reckoning.

Toni Tresca (04:33)
Ooh, no

spoilers Alex, I have not seen it yet. I’m currently doing my rewatch of the Mission Impossible franchise. I’ve watched the first five already. I’ve got a couple more to go before I catch up, but thumbs up, thumbs down.

Alex Miller (04:37)
Ha ha ha.

wow. Wow.

thumbs up, yeah. these are all fun movies. know, they deliver exactly what you expect. There’s surprises in there, but they’re not surprises. The one thing I would say about it is that, and I find this criticism about a lot of action movies, is that the big final set piece thing goes on forever. It’s like, for God sakes, you could have 20 minutes out of that scene with the two planes. And that’s not a spoiler, because it’s like the main image.

in the poster, I think. ⁓ But yeah, you know, it’s neat. There’s one particular scene where he’s in this wrecked submarine trying to get to the thing that will end the world that’s really unbelievably impressive. I don’t know how they did it, you know. ⁓ So that was really cool. And then I’ll just mention that Jen and I also watched The Four Seasons, which is this ⁓ Netflix show based on, know, riffing off an old Alan Alda film.

Toni Tresca (05:21)
That’s right.

Alex Miller (05:48)
and he has a cameo in the front of it. you know, it’s about people whose marriages are fairly mature marriages and they’re working stuff out after many years. And it really resonated for, you know, Jen and I have been married for 26 years. And so we found a lot to like about it. It’s pretty funny. It was really well done. That kind of thing can be schlocky, but it’s funny. know, Tina Fey’s in it and Will Forte kind of drives me crazy. yeah, lots of good performances in it. Did you check it out too?

Toni Tresca (06:17)
I did. I started watching it one evening thinking I would just like watch the first episode or something and then jump cut to me staying up until like 3am in the morning having watched all eight episodes in rapid succession and then being left in tears by the final episode. I went on, I really enjoyed it. It caught me. I guess, I don’t know what it has to say about relationships. It’s not where I am, but it felt very

Alex Miller (06:28)
Ha ha ha ha

wow.

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (06:46)
in my point in life, but it felt very real, painfully so oftentimes. ⁓ And it’s a lot of very comic actors, like you mentioned Tina Fey, Will Forte, Steve Carell’s also there. It’s very funny people, but they are asked to do a lot more of dramatic beats, interestingly enough. And I think they really excel at those. And it’s only eight episodes. I thought it was really well paced. It’s all in different vacation settings. So you know it’s gorgeous to look at too.

Alex Miller (06:57)
Yeah.

huh. Yeah,

all in kind of the New England ⁓ area. And yeah, there’s shorter ones too. It’s nice to have shows that aren’t, I mean, they doesn’t have to be an hour, you know. ⁓ But yeah, it was kind of therapeutic. And yeah, Teeny Faye really shows her dramatic chops in that film, really impressed by her performance. And Steve Carell is really a great dramatic actor too. And also interestingly, there’s a character who’s, this is the second big show that he, this person dies in a car accident.

Toni Tresca (07:25)
Yeah.

Alex Miller (07:43)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Toni Tresca (07:44)
That is true! ⁓ That

might be slightly spoilery. I guess. But, ⁓ people can… whatever.

Alex Miller (07:48)
Yeah, well, I don’t know. Anyway, yeah, so

we’re having to talk about some film and TV just because there hasn’t been as much live theater that we’ve seen. But you did get out to Curious’s new show exhibit.

Toni Tresca (08:00)
I did. This was the one woman show that was written by and starring Regina Taylor. It’s about, it’s semi-autobiographical because it’s about her experience integrating a school during the height of the civil rights movement. But it’s also fictionalized because the main character is Iris, who is this visual artist whose work is being removed from museums, which is

very relevant to this moment in time that we find ourselves in right now when museums are literally changing what they’re programming in order to appease the current administration. So a lot of those themes I think hit really strongly, but the production was a little bit less put together than I think I was expecting. ⁓ The actress, the central actress, Regina was actually reading from a script the whole time and

which was, created a really a distancing effect. It created, it felt a lot more like a staged reading than it did a fully produced production. And then there were these some interesting elements that I wasn’t quite sure what to make with because she would have conversations with herself sometimes via a screen that had like images of a mouth sometimes that would move. And sometimes Regina, the actress on stage would be voicing that. And sometimes it was a voice overhead.

that would come in and speak those lines back to her so they could have an actual conversation. And so I just found while the themes were really interesting, the kind of way it was performed and the kind of stage reading vibe, I couldn’t quite get my hands around. I couldn’t understand what the piece was trying to say. I know, I’m sure it was, but I just couldn’t connect to it.

Alex Miller (09:45)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, you also were turning to some things on television. So you saw Hundreds of Beavers, which is the most amazing film of all time, just about.

Toni Tresca (09:56)
It’s an

incredible film. So this was a ⁓ showing of the film Hundreds of Beavers, which is exactly that. It’s a film about a man who goes to battle against hundreds of beavers out in the wilderness. It’s a winter landscape. It’s black and white. It’s mostly silent film. ⁓ And this was a showing that was being done of the 35 millimeter ⁓ film print version over at the Sea Film Center in Denver. I…

Alex Miller (10:04)
you

I wish I had known that I would have gone because I only saw it on the

TV

Toni Tresca (10:24)
I

should have hit you up. One of my friends texted me last minute and was like, listen, hundreds of beavers is happening this week. And they were like, the cool thing too is not only is this film print that the distributors put out, because it actually wasn’t shot on film, it was shot digitally. So this was specially created for this experience. But they also had the lead actress, Olivia Graves, who plays the furrier. ⁓

Alex Miller (10:30)
you

Mm-hmm.

You

Toni Tresca (10:52)
She was in there in person to introduce the film because she actually lives in Denver. Yeah, isn’t that she knows these people because they used to work together back when they lived. She lived in California and she’s actually a poll instructor here in Denver. And she’s not an actress. She doesn’t really have any desire to do any acting, as she said in the Q &A with Keith Garcia before the screening at the C Film Center. But she did say she would be down to do hundreds of beavers, too.

Alex Miller (10:57)
wow, man.

top it down.

Toni Tresca (11:22)
They even rift, maybe it could be called thousands of beavers or millions of beavers?

Alex Miller (11:26)
And will there be such a thing?

Toni Tresca (11:28)
I, no

confirmation of if a sequel was happening. She just said if the creative team wanted to do it, she’s always game cause she really had a great time making it. Even though she said she had no idea what the fuck it was going to be as she was shooting it. But then when she got to go to the, the opening, she was like, yeah, this is actually pretty funny. These guys did, this is actually really good. They did a really good job. And it is great. I love that. Yeah.

Alex Miller (11:41)
Ha ha ha!

All right, well, ⁓ it’s

on Netflix if you want to check it out. It’s like nothing. I kind of like reminiscent of like an old Buster Keaton film or something like it’s very physical. It’s very silly, but it’s also shot in a really interesting way. I mean, like you said, it’s black and white. It’s mostly silent ⁓ and it’s just hilarious. mean.

Toni Tresca (12:11)
Yeah, it’s like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin meets Looney Tunes almost because it’s very cartoony and over the top in a way that even though it is live action, ⁓ it feels animated in its spirit because there’s lots of different backdrops that are augmented in it. It’s it’s larger than life and it must be seen to be believed.

Alex Miller (12:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes.

Yes,

yes. All right. And then what you said that you had on here, Oracle, what’s that?

Toni Tresca (12:39)
So I am going to this after we record. This is an immersive art installation that’s being produced at Union Hall in Denver. So the experience that I’m going to, sometimes you can just go and view the pieces themselves that are on display in Union Hall for a couple of months, or you can go to the immersive guided experience in which you will be blindfolded.

and led around the installation and then dropped in front of different things to kind of then experience the piece in that way. I am intrigued to see if that is effective in viewing the art or if it just feels more gimmicky. ⁓ I’m writing a review about that experience for Westward, so folks can check out that review next week.

Alex Miller (13:28)
Great, that sounds really interesting. All right, anything else in the news that we want to talk about?

Toni Tresca (13:34)
Yeah, I wanted to say a quick congratulations to everybody who participated in the Denver Center’s 12th annual Bobby G Awards on Friday, May 16th. This was, this is an annual celebration of achievements in Colorado High School Theater, which considered a field of 53 musicals staged during the 2024-2025 school year.

Alex Miller (13:57)
wow, yeah, John Moore and I were chatting about that on the last podcast. ⁓ But that was before the winners were announced and he was just talking about what a special event it is.

Toni Tresca (14:06)
Yeah, John was out there covering it for the Denver Gazette. He did a really great feature and got some incredible photos. So if anybody wants to see what the event is like or hear a little bit more about the participants, I definitely recommend folks go read John’s story in the Gazette. But we’ll run through some of the highlights, including the winner for Outstanding Musical, which was Newsies at Lutheran High School. And the winners for Lead Actor were Grayson Graham as Jack Kelly in that production of Newsies.

and Hannah Schnorr as Carrie White in Carrie the Musical at Fossil Ridge High School. And while everybody is obviously a winner for just showing up, Grayson and Hannah have won the experience of a lifetime as they are now going to go on to represent Colorado at the 16th Annual Jemmy Awards in New York.

Alex Miller (14:55)
Yeah, that is an amazing opportunity. yeah, John and I were talking about that last time about so this is winners from 55 regions gather for a week of intensive training and master classes auditioning, auditioning bonding activities before they take the stage at Broadway’s Minskoff Theater on June 23 to crown the national winner and award scholarships. So pretty, pretty cool stuff for high school contest.

Toni Tresca (14:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you can definitely say that again. So congrats to everybody. And like I mentioned, if you want to read more, including the full winners list and hear from both ⁓ Grayson ⁓ as well as Hannah, John talked with both of them and that’s included in his piece in the Gazette. Now in completely different news, ⁓ Sundance, the little known indie film fest that

Alex Miller (15:37)
All right, cool.

Toni Tresca (15:45)
Dared to Dream just scored another

Alex Miller (15:47)
Yes.

Toni Tresca (15:48)
big win here in Colorado. It got a new $34 million incentive package from a coalition of Boulder’s biggest civic and cultural boosters, which will help sustain the film festival over the next 10 years, according to Visit Boulder. ⁓ Sundance is currently over in Park City, Utah and is moving to Boulder in 2027.

It was already set to receive $34 million in tax credits that were passed by the state lawmakers last month. So this new incentive brings the total support for this film festival up to nearly $70 million.

Alex Miller (16:24)
Wow, wow, that is a lot of money. So, torn here, love to see that kind of green going to the arts, you know, with so much other arts funding drying up, it sucks that more local arts organizations aren’t getting a little cut of something like that.

Toni Tresca (16:41)
Yeah, that was my kind of immediate reaction to this as well, because part of the pitch from advocates was that Sundance is a very lucrative festival that will bring, that is an economic driver in and of itself. And yet then now, even after Colorado has already won the bid, local lawmakers are bending over backwards to give them more money rather than giving it to local organizations who, I don’t know, maybe just lost funding from the NEA. ⁓

Alex Miller (17:10)
And they’re here all year long, ⁓ you know, providing entertainment for Colorado audiences. But I don’t know, you know, these things, it’s, can’t always figure how, which way money is going to flow ⁓ in this world. And right now it seems to be flowing up. So ⁓ anyway, well, up in Fort Collins, we learned on Wednesday that Open Stage ⁓ Theater and Company made the decision to cancel its production of Agnes of God, which was supposed to run through the end of May.

Toni Tresca (17:13)
Exactly.

Alex Miller (17:39)
And so the website was saying, you know, do it in surmountable circumstances or unable to continue the run. And it’s, it’s kind of weird. Our reviewer, Leela was there on, I don’t know if it was opening night or she was there to review the show and it was the night it all blew up and the cast, she was telling me the cast adjourned to discuss whether to go on with the show and they chose not to. So pretty crazy, but I don’t know any more particulars. So we’ll leave it at that. I really just hope.

which open stage the best and putting things back together up there, whatever went on, but that’s a pretty crazy situation to have a cast just stop in the middle of show and say, we’re done.

Toni Tresca (18:16)
Yeah, and the show had already been delayed a weekend by the time that our reviewer had gone out to see it. And so then to have opening night be paused and then ultimately canceled was definitely a bit strange. It sucks to hear that whatever is good, that some situation was going on that affected the art that was being made. ⁓ You never want to hear that. And like you mentioned, I hope that Open Stage is able to.

Just move forward from this. know they’ve got another production coming soon. They’ve got their opening Pride and Prejudice, Kate Hamill’s adaptation in just a couple of weeks. So hopefully things are a little bit more under control for that

Alex Miller (18:53)
Yeah, yeah, hope so.

Alex Miller (18:56)
Onstage Colorado is brought to you in part by Miners Alley Performing Arts Center, whose production of Ring of Fire runs May 9th through June 29th.

Ring Fire is a high-energy jukebox musical that brings the legendary songs of Johnny Cash on stage, weaving his iconic hits into a story of love, resilience, and the American spirit. Tickets at minersally.com.

Also supporting OnStage Colorado is Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater in Grand Lake. Their 2025 summer season runs from June 6th all the way to September 5th and includes Disney’s Frozen, Guys and Dolls, Footloose, and Nonsense. Find tickets at RockyMountainRep.com.

Onstage Colorado is brought to you by Colorado Candlelight featuring Bright Star from April 10th to June 8th. Inspired by a true story and featuring the Tony nominated score by Steve Martin and Edie Burkell,

Broadway’s bright start tells a sweeping tale of love and redemption set against the rich backdrop of the American South in the 1920s and 40s.

Tickets at coloradocandlelight.com.

Alex Miller (19:52)
The Onstage Colorado podcast is sponsored by Town Hall Art Center in Littleton, presenting the musical On Your Feet, May 23rd through June 22nd. It’s the story of Gloria and Emilio

a young couple from Cuba who took the entire world by storm with their unique, entirely creative fusion of Latin rhythms and Billboard top 100 pop songs. Tickets at townhallartcenter.org.

Alex Miller (20:13)
Yeah, yeah, hope so. All right, well, let’s move on to our main topic, Tony. You want to kick it off?

Toni Tresca (20:20)
Absolutely, yeah, we’re gonna get into the good stuff now. Our main topic today, the Denver Fringe Festival 2025. We’re just about a week and a half away from one of the most chaotic, creative, and straight up weird weekends on Denver’s cultural calendar.

Alex Miller (20:39)
Yeah, that’s right. So from June 4th through 8th, the Fringe is back and bigger than ever. So with over 200 performances, 75 self-produced original shows across 20 venues. Man, this thing is getting big. It’s exploding with options.

Toni Tresca (20:54)
Yeah, it’s really wild to think about this being in its sixth year now and just how much the festival has grown because if you’ve never been to Fringe before, it’s a really interesting vibe. There’s no velvet ropes, no gatekeeping. It’s all unjured, uncensored, and wildly unpredictable. You might see a solo comedy show in the back of a bookstore or a full-blown burlesque cabaret in a dance theater, which I’m going to do, and we’ll dig into that a little bit later.

Alex Miller (21:22)
Yeah.

Toni Tresca (21:23)
So,

but that is the range of options, both in terms of the form as well as the performers is just vast.

Alex Miller (21:31)
Yeah, and that’s what fringe is all about. know, mean, there’s fringe festivals all around the world that give independent artists a platform to test all kinds of weird ideas. And you may see some crap, no doubt. You may see some real great stuff. There’s theater, clown, cabaret, drag, puppetry, dance, circus, sometimes all at once.

Toni Tresca (21:50)
Yeah, and speaking to that crap you mentioned, I’m excited for that because that’s how you know real experimental chances are being taken. If you see something, the thing that pains me most to see, about any kind of art or theater is just when you see something that feels paint by numbers. It’s so generic and boring, and fringe is not that at all. You have people actually taking really big risks. So like you said,

Alex Miller (21:55)
Ha ha ha!

Right.

Toni Tresca (22:16)
I’m, if I sit in the audience and I see something awful, I’m going to be grinning the whole time. Hopefully. I say that now. We’ll debrief, obviously, and maybe I’ll have different comments then.

Alex Miller (22:24)
Yeah, sometimes it’s

crap in a good way. And maybe that’s not the right word, but yeah, you definitely, you are most certainly gonna see things that you just walk out of there going, whoa, boy, I’m not sure what that was all about, but I’m kind of glad I saw it.

Toni Tresca (22:38)
Absolutely. And Fringe is also expanding in some other ways. It’s not just the kind of the shows that they’re producing. They’ve got two Fringe art visual exhibits, as well as the two-day kids Fringe and the Fringe free for all, which is basically a whole bunch of street performances and pop-up activations that are happening that include even more performers than were then submitted and were accepted to participate in the actual main Fringe festival itself. So

Really, just over these couple of days, you are just gonna have so many options of ways to engage in not just theater or comedy or performance, but visual arts, as well as kid shows and circus acts and things like that.

Alex Miller (23:22)
Yep. Yeah. And it’s also, it’s pretty affordable. I mean, you can get a pass for $95 for the whole festival to see everything. And then, but I think you can walk into individual shows for, for a lot less than that, if you just want to kind of, know, ⁓ so yeah. So tickets are for an individual show about $20, right?

Toni Tresca (23:39)
That’s right. Yeah, they’re about $20 each and 70 % of the proceeds go straight to the artists themselves, which is that’s a really remarkable split. That’s a lot of money going back into the pocket of artists. And that makes this festival one of the best ways to support local and touring creators who, as we’ve mentioned before, are daring to create art in a time that is saying, we don’t really want to support that.

Alex Miller (23:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So it can be a little tricky to figure out how to navigate this thing. And in my interview with ⁓ Anne here in just a little bit, she talks about that and gives some suggestions, you know, because, you know, there’s, there’s individual venues that might have three or four shows in a row. So you can just stay at one of them, you know, for an evening or move around, of course. And it’s, you know, there’s the shows all, many of them will have multiple staging. So if you didn’t, if you missed it on Saturday, you can see it on Sunday or something like that. So.

Toni Tresca (24:22)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (24:33)
But I know we wanted to go through and just, there’s so many of shows. it’s, you know, I think we both picked 10 and we wanted to try and just kind of talk about kind of what your, what sort of things are on the menu. So ⁓ let’s kick it off. What were some of the ones that stuck out to you?

Toni Tresca (24:50)
Yeah, I really approached my schedule. So I knew I was only able to fringe for three days. So I’m able to attend fringe ⁓ Thursday, June 5th, Friday, June 6th, and Saturday, June 7th. So I’m not able to do the final day of fringe on Sunday because I’ll be going to the opening of the Tempest by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival that day. I’m booked and busy that day already. But

I kind of focused on how could I see the most wide variety of shows slash in places that were close together and or just at one single venue. I was like as much as there were some shows that I was like, that sounds really interesting or that’s by a cool creator who I want to check out, but it just didn’t fit into my schedule. And so I wasn’t able to include it. Did you find yourself making those kind of Sophie’s choices, Alex?

Alex Miller (25:43)
Well, I haven’t advanced as far into like actually working out a schedule. Plus I’m going to be out of, I can’t go Thursday or Friday because I’m doing the 24 hour plays at Curious and also in Juliet at the Denver Center. So, but I will get to as much as I can on Saturday and Sunday. So, but yeah, it’s so much fun walking through this. I will say before we get into it, it’s like, when I think about like all of the things that make us kind of sad about these days in the United States, I look at this kind of stuff and people getting out there and getting on stage.

Toni Tresca (25:54)
That’s right.

Alex Miller (26:11)
and just pouring their hearts out in these creative endeavors just makes me, that’s like, that’s the best part of, you know, of America. that’s just fringes everywhere, but you know, it’s just like, I think about people doing this kind of stuff as opposed to rich people sitting at the top fucking with everybody. is the antidote to that, I think.

Toni Tresca (26:29)
I think that’s a really beautiful way to put it. Yeah. When I look, cause these shows are feel, and if you’re like me and you can sometimes get saddened by the state of the kind of corporate Broadway and like everything is just IP being beaten to death or a revival of a revival that you, it just, this is so refreshing cause you just see so many different new titles done by creators who,

Alex Miller (26:42)
Right.

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (26:59)
you maybe haven’t seen getting to take the spotlight in this way before, which I think is just cool. And and in some really unexpected venues, too. That’s another thing I’m kind of excited about about Fringe is I’m going to be checking out some really some venues that I’ve actually never been to before, like Hope Tank in Denver that I literally never even heard of that one before. I’ll be going to the Savoy’s Flex Space, which I did not realize they had a flex space. ⁓

Alex Miller (27:13)
Yeah, that’s something I’ve never heard of. Yeah.

Toni Tresca (27:27)
because this is actually the downstairs part of the Denver Savoy where Theater Artabas does a lot of their shows, but I’m to be seeing a thing in that kind of interesting kooky space over there. and at the shops at Matter, which I had also never heard of in Denver.

Alex Miller (27:37)
okay.

Alright, well, why don’t we hit some of your picks and I’ve got a few I wanted to mention.

Toni Tresca (27:47)
Yeah, sounds good. So I’m starting my weekend off with Nuptial Nightmare. This is a show by a bunch of local people, actually a lot of family theater company actors. And it’s a comedic horror piece about love and ghostly visions. ⁓ As a big horror guy, I was like, I feel like this seems like right up my alley.

Alex Miller (28:08)
Great.

Toni Tresca (28:11)
And then that same day I’m be all, I’m heading over, because I started the Savoy Flex and then I go over to the Hope Tank to catch a show called Mouse City Podcast, which is, it’s a show about mice who get together to start a podcast for humans. And I was like, that, as somebody who does have a podcast for humans, I’m curious in seeing what a mouse is,

Alex Miller (28:28)
You

Toni Tresca (28:39)
A mice’s? A mouse’s take on podcasts might be.

Alex Miller (28:44)
Wow, yeah, that’s interesting. And also, you we’re having a little bit of a problem with mice in my house. So it’d interesting to hear a podcast about their side of the story. So I they touch on that.

Toni Tresca (28:49)
⁓

Yeah, hopefully. And

then I am ending my Thursday ⁓ over at the shop at Matter for a play called Transduction, which is by a local creator and it’s billed as a chaotic journey through trans indoctrination that’s interrupted by the FBI.

Alex Miller (29:14)
Whoa, okay. Sounds pretty heavy.

Toni Tresca (29:17)
Yeah, the description made it sound pretty fun and entertaining and kind of riffing on this. It’s like riffing on the idea that trans people are indoctrinating you and indoctrinating the youth and that the government might actually maybe it will be heavy now that I’m saying all the words out loud.

Alex Miller (29:21)
OK.

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (29:35)
and then the next on Friday, I’ve got four shows. So I’m starting over at the Savoy’s Space with Learning to Human, which is a true story about personal growth and breakdown. This is a show that’s done the fringe circuit already. It’s gotten a lot of awards at other fringe festivals. And so I was kind of curious to see

what that looks like and what a piece that does well at other fringe festivals around the world looks like. ⁓ And then I’m gonna be spending the rest of my night over at Rise Comedy for three shows back to back. I’m starting with Jett in Anastasia, which is clown meets classical theater hybrid that sounds really unhinged in the best way. I know that Kevin Douglas ⁓ wrote a review for Onstage Colorado.

Alex Miller (30:05)
Yeah, that sounds great.

huh.

Toni Tresca (30:26)
about this and he just raved about the production. And so this is their fringe version of that show. I’m curious to check it out. Then I’m going to be watching Ben Franklin’s Sex Party, which is about the time traveling founding father who fights fascism through sex positivity. Count me in. That sounds amazing. This is

Alex Miller (30:28)
Last year,

I gotta say, even if

you don’t go to any Fringe episodes, go to denverfringe.org and just read through the shows. It’ll be entertaining just for that.

Toni Tresca (30:57)
That’s true, I’ve got another good title for you. ⁓ Then I’m ending my evening with Fat and Horny and Incredibly Anxious. This is a show about navigating sex and fatphobia when you’re also neurotic. So I think that sounds like a lot of fun. And then, yeah, my Saturday starts off with a bang. I’m gonna be going over to Cleo Parker Robinson. ⁓

Alex Miller (31:01)
Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, this next one sounds great.

Uh-huh.

Toni Tresca (31:27)
to

see Arkham Ass-Sylum, which is a queer burlesque cabaret about the villains of Batman putting him on trial. And I just think that’s, I’m like, first of all, the fact that this is being done at Cleo Parker Robinson Space, which is this very, it’s this beautiful theater, and then they’re doing this like absurd campy Batman-inspired cabaret.

Alex Miller (31:37)
Uh-huh.

Toni Tresca (31:54)
I have to see this. a huge Batman person and so I’m like, I am curious to see this take on it. I guarantee we will not be getting a DC film, anything like this. So I gotta see this in person.

Alex Miller (31:57)
Yeah.

Right.

Well, when you think about it, know, Batman, all the villains are these really colorful, creative weirdos. And Batman’s kind of like the, you know, I don’t know, the cop that puts all puts them all, you know, shuts them all down. So I can see how, you know, you want to put them on trial and say, hey, you’re stifling our creativity.

Toni Tresca (32:25)
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s it. I wonder if that’s gonna be the kind of the theme of the underlying theme of the show, Alex. I’ll report back. I like that. And then I’ve got two shows over at the space that formerly known as the Mercury Cafe, now the Pearl. ⁓ I’m seeing Enzo’s State of the Union Follies, which is a politically charged cabaret in which a cast of.

Alex Miller (32:29)
I’m a bit curious. Yeah, officer buzzkill.

Toni Tresca (32:52)
performers are going to be lampooning national and local politics. So a lot of material to work with there. And then I am ending my fringe experience with what I’ve been told by Anne is perhaps one of the most quintessential parts of the Denver Fringe. And that’s the Rocky Mountain Puppet Slam. And this is just five minute sets in which people bring up puppets and it’s an hour and a half and people just

Alex Miller (32:57)
Okay.

Right, yes, absolutely.

Toni Tresca (33:20)
perform. It’s wacky. It’s wild. It’s late at night. So people are going crazy. ⁓ I’ve never been to this one before and so I felt like I needed to experience it.

Alex Miller (33:32)
Okay, wow, that sounds great too, yeah. All right, well, I don’t have mine quite as categorized in terms of which ones I’m going to see on which day, but these are the ones that I’m going to try and hit. So the first two are from the interview that we have coming up, so I had to shout those out. Dichotomize Me, this is from Colorado’s that call themselves the Moot Point Project. These are two UNC college roomies, Drew Smith and Megan Dill. So this is an immersive absurdist play.

where women split into two, karaoke machines descend and everything becomes string, literal string, they’re explaining to me. So like if you go to the show, you may wind up with some string around yourself. ⁓ And so stick around, they’ll tell us more about that show coming up.

Toni Tresca (34:13)
And I noticed from the schedule and from when I was working in the space the other day, it’s going to be in a coffee shop. It’s in Hooked on Colfax, which is this really cute ⁓ venue on East Colfax. And I am curious. I’m not going to be able to see it. You just heard my weekend is already booked, but I would be curious to see how that space is turned into performance setting.

Alex Miller (34:22)
Yeah.

Yeah,

absolutely. And then I also spoke on the pod with Soleil Cole, who has a show called blah, blah, blah. Soleil is a clown performer. she right now she is over in England. She’s at the six week like clown intensive. And she talks a lot about in our interview about the type of clown. There’s a French type called Buffon. There’s avant clowning. she’s like, you know, she was comparing that to like the red nose clown, the stereotypical this kind of stuff is very different.

And so this is her show is satire all about talking, blabbing and not shutting up. ⁓ So stick around for an interview to hear a little bit more what she has to say about that. ⁓ This next one really, really appealed to me because I love words. I also particularly love letters with diacritical marks over them, especially umlauts and things like that. So this one is called Slurt with an umlaut U. ⁓ And this is about a performer named Emily Maverick.

Toni Tresca (35:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (35:33)
who dreams in a language only she can speak. She was born completely alone in Antarctica, feels the pull for human connection and begins a long journey across the icy pond. Will anybody understand her? So it compares Slurt to Bjork and Peewee’s Playhouse. So that sounds really interesting. ⁓ There’s a fair amount of stuff for the kids. So I’ll mention one of them, the swashbuckling adventures of pirate Zeb. So this is a legendary pirate.

Squirrel Captain Zeb on a wild treasure hunt through the halls of the Savoy with live music by Laura Goldhammer. This is created by Starry Night Productions in collaboration with Theater Otter Bus. We saw one of their shows last year. They have a great team there, so that should be a lot of fun. Some of the shows are even outside. So this one’s called Sweatin’ Wild, an outdoor show for the family at the Bird Lot, which we recall from last year was the home of the infamous Hot Box Experience last summer.

Toni Tresca (36:28)
⁓ that’s right.

That was the Darkfield ⁓ off-center controversy. Because it was so hot when they did the media day for it.

Alex Miller (36:30)
What was that one called again? I can’t remember. The Dark Field, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

yeah, well, we won’t get into that, but just to remind me of the bird lot. this is Colorado’s own Circus Foundry. It’s an all new ensemble circus show that mashes up high energy craze of 1980s aerobics with jaw dropping circus artistry in a glitter soak to celebration of movement, madness and mayhem.

On the theatrical side, there’s a show called Real. So this is a show about a woman named Kate who discovers that her online boyfriend was actually a woman named Rachel. Now she’s demanding answers with unconventional tactics.

Toni Tresca (37:12)
That one sounded really interesting to me. I was trying to see if I could fit that one into my schedule, but I just could not. So if anyone out there is listening, go see it and then send me a DM. Let me know how it is.

Alex Miller (37:25)
Yeah. All right. There’s another, here’s a one woman comedy cabaret called The Greatest Garage Sale Ever with catchy original songs and hilarious characters created by Danielle Anderson of the folk music sensation, Danielle Ate the Sandwich. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of them. I don’t know how much of a sensation they are, but that’s an interactive show with bizarre and endearing characters. Here’s one that’s definitely on the adult side. Some of that.

BBC, and it’s not talking about the British broadcasting company, it’s the other BBC. Genre-bending solo performance, blending drag, spectacle, comedy, and ritual into a biting critique of sex, racial politics, and survival in the queer marketplace of desire. And talks about a porn trope that if you ever played Cards Against Humanity, you might be familiar with. ⁓ So anyway, so that one’s for the adults in the room. And here’s one I don’t want to see. It’s called Colostomy Bag Buddies.

So the description on the site is, new to Denver, thinking to myself, what if the worst thing is the best thing with puppets? That’s the description of colostomy bagbites. And I’m just kidding. sure there’s something interesting to see there. And then I don’t know if I might have done more than 10 here. Total modeling. So this is an absurd avant-clown show. There’s that avant-clown thing showing up again about cybernetics on a boat. So.

whatever. That sounds very interesting. And yeah, and then there’s another

Toni Tresca (38:53)
It sometimes

feels like with these friend shows it’s often like a game of Mad Libs, they’ve just like put different words together.

Alex Miller (38:57)
Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of this next, this last one, was called fever dream and what defines a sketch show? Is it punchlines? Is it blackouts? A rotating celebrity host? Memoriam development breaks all these so-called rules with fever dream. The anti-sketch sketch show where we’re getting experience that will leave you asking what the fuck did I just watch? Which, which is definitely a, I don’t know. You can make t-shirts for fringe that say that on it.

Toni Tresca (39:24)
Yeah, maybe they should for next year. What the fuck did I just watch? I Love that and if so we just called out about 21 of the shows that they have there are dozens more that you can peruse on the Denver fringe website the best way to do that in my experience is just see is honestly see the full festival program rather than going through and kind of reading by shows because

Alex Miller (39:27)
Yeah. Yes.

Hahaha.

Toni Tresca (39:53)
That gives you a sense of when these are actually happening in relationship with the other ones, as well as the venues, because it’s spread out in like all across Denver, as well as Aurora. So you kind of have to know, you can’t really do a show that’s in Aurora and then in like North Denver, that are back to back. So just keeping all those things in mind are super helpful. if you can’t find something that interests you, I would say you’re probably not looking hard enough because…

Alex Miller (40:21)
Hahaha.

Toni Tresca (40:22)
There is just, there is a shit ton of stuff that is for all kinds of people.

Alex Miller (40:27)
Onstage Colorado is brought to you by the Aurora Fox, whose production of Little Miss Sunshine runs June 6th through 29th. It’s a heartwarming and hilarious musical adaptation of the beloved Academy Award winning film. Little Miss Sunshine celebrates the power of love, determination, and the joy of following your dreams, no matter the obstacles. Tickets at aurorafoxartcenter.org. Also supporting Onstage Colorado is the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, presenting The Tempest, June 7th through August 10th, and Richard II, July 5th through August 10th.

Shows take place in the Roe Green Theater on the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder. Tickets at cupresents.org. Onstage Colorado is also sponsored by the Denver Fringe Festival, taking place June 4th through 8th at multiple venues in the Denver area. From clowns and kids shows to hard-hitting dramas and out there solo shows, Denver Fringe is the place to see all kinds of wildly creative performances from local and national artists. Tickets.

at DenverFringe.org. We’re also supported by the Boulder Ensemble Theater Company, whose new season starts in August and includes Cry It Out, Elizabeth the First in Her Own Words, The Thin Place, Every Brilliant Thing, Brooklyn Laundry and Mary Jane, as well as Mad Librarians for the kids. Get tickets at BETC.org.

Toni Tresca (41:42)
All right, well, let’s keep that fringe freak flag flying and go to your interview with the founder and president of Denver Fringe and Sabat, along with some of those special guests, actual Fringe performers.

Alex Miller (41:58)
We are here with a gang of fringe people. So we have Anne Sabah, ⁓ the founder of Denver Fringe. what’s, do you call yourself president or guru or Lord of Fringe or anything like that? Director. Okay, all right. And so we also have on here Soleil Cole, who’s calling in from England. Hi Soleil.

Ann Sabbah (42:11)
Director. Director should cover all the hats. Yeah.

Soleil Kohl (42:22)
Hi.

Alex Miller (42:23)
And then on the other line, have True Smith and Megan Dill, ⁓ who are here in the Denver area to talk about their projects. ⁓ before we jump into some of these individual ones, I just wanted to ask Anne a couple of kind of overview questions about this year’s Fringe. So I think this is the seventh Fringe Festival in Denver, is that correct? Sixth, okay. All right, so how does this compare to previous years? Is this bigger, better, same?

Ann Sabbah (42:42)
It’s a six.

It is bigger. have more applicants and we have more productions that we’re supporting as part of our lineup. Over 70. We also added some new venues this year, which is really exciting. we’ve got performances taking place at 20 venues. And then we have built on and

Alex Miller (43:08)
I noticed that,

Ann Sabbah (43:16)
and expanded our free for all program, which is free pop-up performances. Those are going to be taking place at, ⁓ we’re still booking, we’re still building those in. So at least 10 different locations in addition to our 20 performance venues.

Alex Miller (43:31)
Okay. And then, so now that you’ve done six of these, how much do you tweak the lineup based on audience feedback over the years? Are there certain kinds of shows that you just want to bring back more of them because people really like them or things like that?

Ann Sabbah (43:44)
Well, it’s a very organic process. It’s really about who comes to us. It’s an open access application. We use a combination of lottery and strategy to figure out how many shows, how many productions we can support. And amazingly, we end up with an incredible variety every year. And I think that is what audiences love the most.

is the range of things that they can see at the fringe.

Alex Miller (44:16)
yeah.

It’s amazing. mean, if you look at the schedule ⁓ on the fringe website, I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you organize all of these venues and acts and it must just be, it’s an enormous puzzle that you put together. What’s your secret, Dan?

Ann Sabbah (44:34)
I think it’s just all the good people that like to participate in Fringe. It is the community, the community of people who work with us, who help out in the weeks leading up to the Fringe, and all the staff, venue managers, and stage managers during the Fringe, the volunteers. And really, it’s an incredibly collaborative model. That’s the thing that I think is the most special about the Fringe model. Everyone works for the success of the festival.

Every single one of the performers is working to promote the festival and promote their own show, bring people into the community. It’s just, and we’ve got so many great community partners and venue partners. That’s what’s truly unique about The Fringe.

Alex Miller (45:20)
That’s great. so, you know, so there’s 20 venues, but there’s also the Fringe Hub. Can you talk a little bit about that, where it is and what it is?

Ann Sabbah (45:29)
Yeah, so we partner with Ray Show Beer Works at 29th and Larimer and they give us a little home for our ticketing hub and a place where you can stop by, ask questions, pick up a program, buy a t-shirt, buy some tickets to a show. ⁓ It’s a really wonderful fringe hub during the days of the festival.

Alex Miller (45:34)
Great Prairie.

That’s great. And then I’ll get to the other guests here in just a sec. But I want to ask for advice on how to fringe. So you look at this thing and you’re like, oh my God. And you that you can’t just walk to all these venues. There’s a fair amount of driving and parking, which is not always fun in Denver. So do you have any kind of suggestions for people on how to maximize their fringe pass?

Ann Sabbah (46:15)
Well, there’s a couple of things. You can approach it as just simply going to the website and looking at all the different free events, because there are a lot of them. And you can kind of plunge in that way to see some things and then stop by the Fringe Hub, pick up a program and really start to, but early on in the festival, really start to kind of look at what are the different locations. Maybe there’s a venue that you particularly love and you want to see shows at that.

venue. That’s a great way to start. Maybe you’re really interested in immersive shows or dance and aerial. You can actually use the filters on the homepage of our website to find the shows that are, you know, exemplary of those particular things. You can ⁓ jump on our Instagram at Den Fringe and we’re going to be publishing tracks. So if you want like a really great

Clown track for example that’s coming up or we just published a piece with queer Denver living For pride month if you’re really really interested in seeing queer performers and their creative pieces That’s out there, So there’s just a lot of different ways to access it and I just want to quickly mention also if you’re a visual art lover We have the fringe art show this year at two different venues at the people’s building and at the trust house in Rhino And we also have our

kids’ fringe, which is free to families and kids on Saturday and Sunday, both at the Savoy Denver and at the People’s Building in Aurora.

Alex Miller (47:52)
All right, yeah, there’s lots of great stuff for kids. ⁓ And there’s some crossover as well between performers that kind of, know, just great stuff for kids and ⁓ as well as adults. so, Soleil, you’re involved in a clown production, is that correct?

Soleil Kohl (48:10)
Yes, I’m working on my own solo show. I’m sorry, there’s some feedback. Is that coming from me?

Alex Miller (48:19)
I’m not sure. Drew and Megan,

would you mind just muting yourselves just for a sec, just to make sure that’s not from you.

Soleil Kohl (48:25)
Yeah, okay, okay. think it’s maybe, okay. Yeah, I’m producing a new solo show this year called Blah Blah Blah, which is a clown show, but in a sort of different style. The world of clown and the world of fringe are very intertwined and interconnected. And here in Colorado, our clown scene is still pretty new and kind of learning to define itself. So clown can mean a lot of different things.

You may think of the red nose and jugglers or people, you know, pie in the face, things like that. But the world of clown has been expanding in a bunch of different cities as they’ve been defining their own communities of clowns. Some of them are more avant-garde, performance art, sometimes called avant-clown. And in other cities, it’s more about audience participation and kind of pushing the limits of what interactive theater can be, like in LA.

It’s really known for very interactive, high risk sorts of shows. And Everyplace has its own version of clown and it can mean a lot of different things. And the show I’m bringing this year is what is based in the traditional style of bouffant, which is a sort of satirical style of clown that instead of the audience laughing at a clown being silly.

the bouffant laughs at the audience. So it’s a more provoking sort of poking at the audience ⁓ than what you may think of as a clown.

Alex Miller (50:01)
Interesting. Wow, that sounds really cool. Buffon says, does that come out of France? that kind of when I’m getting in there?

Soleil Kohl (50:07)
Yeah,

and there are, again, so many different theories and styles and histories when it comes to all of this. And we’re seeing this whole clown renaissance really happening right now in so many different cities where I’m right now in London studying with Spy Monkey. They have their own version and definition of clown and their own version and definition of Buffon. And the two are kind of blurring together when we think of shows that are more experimental.

Clown is also associated with alt-comedy. You may be hearing that term or alt-clown, avant-clown. All of these terms are going to invite you into a show that is usually highly interactive. There’s no fourth wall. So there’s not, I’m playing this thing. everything is with the audience, making eye contact and sometimes physical contact with the audience. And it’s usually,

meta in some sense that, hey, I’m playing for you. I’m playing this game or doing this situation for you. And the heart of the clown comes from the performer will somehow shine through whether they’re playing a character or they’re playing some exaggerated version, the goal of the clown and why people are so drawn to it right now in this sort of clown renaissance is because I think people are seeking that authenticity. And to be a clown on stage, you have to be

authentic and responsive to the audience.

Alex Miller (51:38)
All right, great. Well, Tru and Megan, let’s switch to you real quick if you can unmute yourselves and maybe say, yeah, this is, announce yourself so we can tell whose voice is who on the podcast. So tell us about the Moot Point project, which is your deal. ⁓

True Smith and Megan Dille (51:56)
Yeah, so I’m true. talking now and then I’m Megan. Cool. And the Moodpoint project is our baby and but also a fever dream nightmare that we created for ourselves that ⁓ we came. We left the University of Northern Colorado in twenty twenty four. So right out of college, we were searching for weird alternative theater and we were

Alex Miller (52:01)
Got it.

True Smith and Megan Dille (52:26)
coming up with that we weren’t finding exactly what we thrive off of in Denver yet. So that’s what came out of us was the Moodpoint Project, which is just to show that the bounds of theater are a mood point. And if you have something you want to express or something you want to share, that you can just do it because that’s a part of being human. So yeah, the Moodpoint Project is our experimental theater company.

that lives out of our apartments and our brains.

Alex Miller (52:57)
Okay, and so what’s the name of the show that we’ll see at Fringe?

True Smith and Megan Dille (53:01)
The name of our show is called Dichotomize Me. It’s a new immersive ⁓ play based in idea of theater of cruelty that True here wrote starting last October and we’ve been kind of workshopping it since then.

Alex Miller (53:15)
Okay, and so what kind of, I don’t know, what can people expect to see if they go see the dichotomized means that we said? Okay, that’s great.

True Smith and Megan Dille (53:21)
Yeah, that caught on to me.

Lots of string. You’d expect to see lots of string. So it’s about the place about this woman who splits into two and as a way to cope with the death of her mother, she turns to doing this art piece revolving around string theory. But the way that we’re trying to make it immersive, Megan will talk about that.

Yeah, so essentially this woman loses her mother and she splits into two, so it’s a woman split in half. Half of her is an artist, half of her is trying to keep herself alive. The artist half of her delves into the idea of string theory and that everything at its very base base particle is a tiny vibrating string. And she becomes obsessed with the idea of visualizing string theory and starts to create this interactive art piece in her living room with string and suddenly her room or her other half, her roommate sort of is becoming

part of the string exhibit and so is the audience and so are each other until everything slowly devolves more and more into string and they start to examine that if we are all string we are all connected and the way you treat yourself is the way you treat other people and sometimes you have to let go parts of yourself in order to treat yourself better and treat other people better.

Alex Miller (54:39)
⁓ So is the audience going to wind up being kind of wrapped in string through all this?

True Smith and Megan Dille (54:44)
yeah, there’s a lot of string. We’ve

been collecting a lot of string from moms and friends and Facebook. So it’s gonna be, it’s gonna hopefully fun, a fun sensory experience where like not only are we all connected through the story but like physically connected through the string.

Alex Miller (54:49)
Uh-huh.

⁓ huh. Well, it sounds like a good message for this day and time. ⁓ But you know, immersive can mean so many things and Soleil, ⁓ you’re certainly living in that world with the clown overlap. So I just want to ask you, like, how did you get involved in this particular kind of theater?

True Smith and Megan Dille (55:15)
Sorry, was that for Soleil or the two of us? Incredible.

Alex Miller (55:18)
I’m sorry for Soley.

Soleil Kohl (55:20)
⁓ Are you asking how I got involved in immersive?

Oh, yeah, I ended up in some clown dance class in a park in Boulder. And I was like, what is this? This is so interesting and strange. And then studied physical theater, was doing playback theater and more abstracted versions of performing after a long history of doing improv comedy.

Alex Miller (55:34)
Sounds possible.

Soleil Kohl (55:53)
And then after studying more physical theater, the mask that you play with in a lot of physical theater is then connected to the red nose. And so I sort of found that path there. And then there is an amazing performer and teacher, Nick Trotter, who lives in Denver, who was teaching clown for some time. And I took a class with him to learn more. And I was just like, wow, I really love this. Like, I want to know more about this. And then

going to Edinburgh Fringe, which I’ve been to twice. The fringes just love clown because when you’re going to fringe, you want to see something you’ve never seen before. You usually don’t want to see Romeo and Juliet or some play that has already been done. You want to see, what’s the new thing? What’s something creative and inventive? And clown is usually something you’ve never seen before. A lot of times you walk into a show and during the show you’re like,

I have no idea what’s happening and I don’t know what’s gonna happen next and people really like that. So I saw a bunch of clowns when I was in Edinburgh in 2019 and in 2023 and I was just like, man, this is such a weird and interesting world. And ever since have been starting to take more workshops, taking classes in different places and helping to form the community that we now have here in Denver.

Alex Miller (57:18)
Okay, that’s great. So you’re over in England and you’re studying ⁓ some with a program over there and how long is that going on? What kind of things are you learning?

Soleil Kohl (57:27)
Yeah, so I’m taking a three week, it’s called the Theater of the Funny Clown Creation School. So it’s a three week intensive where we’re focused on creating clown material for the stage. And so what that looks like in the day to day is we will go on to stage with some kind of goal, like we’re gonna play some kind of game and inevitably there will be a failure. Either the audience doesn’t like you or you play the game wrong or something happens.

And the interesting part comes in, what do you do when you fail? Do you, ah, show must go on, okay, I’m just gonna keep going. Ha ha ha ha. But it turns out that the people in the audience really like when you fail and you accept that you have failed and you take a moment and say, you know what, I failed, okay. And you take that pause and then keep going. So a lot of the clown work that we do ends up being very personal.

very revealing of yourself, whether you’re a very competitive person, which a lot of us are, especially here in the US, we thrive on competition and battling each other all the time. So it can be a really personal and kind of growing process when you’re working with clown to, ⁓ I have to fail and you will fail and people won’t laugh and you will do a funny thing that you think is so brilliant and clever and people don’t laugh and they laugh when you fail at it.

Alex Miller (58:35)
Right.

Soleil Kohl (58:54)
or they laugh when you do something that is inherently you. And so what we’re looking for in this class is how do you find parts of yourself and show them on stage? And it’s about being vulnerable and letting the audience really see you, not seeing a mask or not seeing some kind of thing we’re putting up, but really seeing you and your vulnerability.

Alex Miller (59:14)
Wow, wow, that sounds like a really cool opportunity to be over there studying that kind of.

True and Megan, wanted to ask back to you, so Soleil’s doing the solo thing and you guys, how many people are involved in the dichotomy performance?

True Smith and Megan Dille (59:28)
Yeah, there’s a total of seven people involved. There’s the two of us. We have a dramaturg who’s been helping with new play script development. We’ve got two actors, a sound designer and like assistant sound designer bored off.

Alex Miller (59:42)
Okay, that’s a huge show for fringe right in.

True Smith and Megan Dille (59:44)
Yeah, yeah, we,

yeah, we. It’s grown a lot. It’s grown a lot. And one thing about me and Megan is that we will be very ambitious to the point of no return. So when people, our friends and stuff are like, this is cool, we’re like, my gosh, thank you for thinking it’s cool. Do you want to be a part of the team? Or they would be asking to join. So it’s become a really nice collaborative process. But it’s been super cool to see like.

how everyone is interpreting the piece differently and how like working together is really making something so much more special than it would be if it was just coming out of like me and Megan’s brain and we just said, okay. It’s especially wonderful to like also give J.C. Stint and Felice Martinez, people we went to school with at UNC, ⁓ an opportunity to be like, please come to Denver because…

Greeley is not really known for its theater scenes, so we are really happy to bring people to do this performance.

Alex Miller (1:00:46)
Great, well, so, Anne, can you just tell us just a little bit about, like, you know, what’s the ticket situation like? You can buy, like, day passes or you can go to individual shows, that kind of thing.

Ann Sabbah (1:00:56)
Yes, individual show tickets are available on our website for every show. For the most part, they’re all $20. And then we are selling a full festival pass, which is $95. And you can take that pass and get into any show space available.

And so that’s a way to just really kind of like take advantage of where you happen to be at the time. my gosh, I’m walking past the Savoy. Let’s see what’s happening there in the next hour. Maybe we can just go see something there. So both of those options are on the website, denverfringe.org through the festival.

Alex Miller (1:01:35)
All right, and so this is all coming up June 6th through 8th. There’s a great, I’m sorry, 5th. Right.

Ann Sabbah (1:01:40)
actually the fifth. So it starts on Thursday, Thursday,

Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And we really take a lot of joy out of bringing these shows to very creative venues, not what you would expect, not traditional theater. In fact, ⁓ both, both of the shows we’ve just been hearing about are taking place in pretty non-traditional spaces. ⁓ We think that

makes it even more exciting and fun.

Alex Miller (1:02:12)
All right. Yeah, so there’s on the dendrofringe.org website, there’s the full calendar and all the information, but there’s also a downloadable sort of like a PDF that kind of got everything on it that is a great resource when you’re trying to plan out your fringe journey. So check that out. So, Lake Cole, thanks so much for dialing in from England. We’re walking back to Colorado here pretty soon.

Also, True Smith and Megindale, thanks so much for being on the OnStage Colorado podcast. Look forward to seeing all of you out at Denver Fringe coming up here soon.

Ann Sabbah (1:02:47)
Thank you for.

True Smith and Megan Dille (1:02:47)
Thank you.

Soleil Kohl (1:02:47)
Thanks,

Alex Miller (1:02:49)
All right, we are back. Well, that was a lot of fun to hear from Anne, Soleil, True, and Megan. ⁓ yeah, what really, really pleasure talking to all of them. And I guess that rounds out our fringe coverage for now, because we are going to try and get into, ⁓ you know, how we’re going to going to have some coverage of the shows as they come up. It’ll be tricky, you know, because they come and go really quickly. And it’s just a few days, but we’ll do the best we can to get some information about these, what these shows are all about.

Toni Tresca (1:03:13)
100 % yeah, I’m going to be attending the opening party that happens on that Wednesday and which they’re going to be demonstrating a lot of different segments from the acts and I’ll try to write. I’m planning to write something that evening so that maybe people who are trying to still trying to plan their schedules the day that fringe actually starts can get a sense of what the actual performances look like up on their feet and then be writing like short reviews of these things to post to the site as we see them so.

Performers if you happen to be listening if you could get visual assets to us a ASAP that would be awesome Otherwise, it’s gonna be crappy photos from my phone

Alex Miller (1:03:50)
Yep, so it’s just send a bit to info at onstagecolorado.com. All right, well now we’re ready to move on to the theater side of things in this with this week’s Colorado Headliner. these are some of the upcoming shows we think you should know about and in no particular order. Tony, what do you have to start?

Toni Tresca (1:04:07)
I’m kicking us off with On Your Feet over at Town Hall Art Center in Littleton. This is the conclusion to its 42nd season and it is a high energy love story about Gloria and Emilio Esteban, who are a young couple from Cuba who took the world by storm with their fusion of Latin rhythms and pop songs. ⁓ I’ve never seen this show before and…

I, you know, I’m always hesitant about these kind of musical biopics, but I’ve spoken with a couple people who were at opening night last night and they were just raving about this production. It’s directed by Matt Zambroni, who just directed a Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville ⁓ over at Lone Tree. So he’s kind of on a roll right now because that production I thought was impeccably done. And it sounds like this is another banger from Matt and the team over at Town Hall Art Center.

Alex Miller (1:04:42)
Really?

Right.

All right, are you gonna get out to see that one?

Toni Tresca (1:05:02)
I hadn’t planned on it, but now I feel like I have to. The Actors Fund night is… I may look for when that one is and try to attend on that so I can support the Actors Fund as well.

Alex Miller (1:05:13)
Okay, yeah, I’m curious about it too, although I have to say the glory, the music of Gloria Estefan is pretty far from the thing that I’m interested in. But, you know, sometimes the story is great, no matter what. So my first headliner is one for the fam, one for the kids, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. This is at Miners Alley in Golden, runs through June 28th. So, you know, this is the best known story of the 1001 Arabian Nights, you know, Miners Alley does a great job at their kids show, so a lot of fun. you know, there’s not…

that much kids theater going on out there. So this is a great place to see one if you’re in the Boulder Golden Area.

Toni Tresca (1:05:48)
Definitely. My next headliner is in Creed. It’s Xanadu, which has a nice long run from May 24th through September 7th. And this is kicking off Creed’s 60th anniversary season, which is just incredible. Our hats off to you guys there. And this is the familiar tale, if you’ve been paying attention to Colorado theater for the past like 10, 15 years. It’s about.

Alex Miller (1:06:06)
Yeah.

You

Toni Tresca (1:06:16)
Kira, who is a magical Greek muse who descends from the heavens of Mount Olympus to Venus Beach in 1980 on a quest to inspire struggling artist Sonny Malone to achieve the greatest artistic creation of all time, creating the first roller disco.

Alex Miller (1:06:33)
And is it a bunch of ABBA music or what is it?

Toni Tresca (1:06:37)
It’s Olivia Newton John and GM Music. So, well, let me turn around. I have the record on my wall behind me.

Alex Miller (1:06:44)
Oh my gosh,

I’ve seen it. It’s been a few years and I can’t remember. thought it was ELO. wow. You know, when I was in junior high school, I was a big fan of ELO and I actually had an ELO belt buckle. Yes, I did. No, I don’t. I wish I did. I had all kinds of different belt buckles when I was a kid. But anyway.

Toni Tresca (1:06:47)
Electric Light Orchestra.

Whoa! Do you still have that? no!

Alex Miller (1:07:08)
So my next one, this is one we puzzled over when we did our season preview earlier this year, ⁓ A Tuna Christmas at Bailey Theater Company. So this is at the funny little Glen Island Resort in Bailey. And we were theorizing that they did it because it’s easier to get the rights in the summertime for a tuna Christmas. Of course, so this runs through June 8th and this is, you know, it’s the second part of the tuna.

Toni Tresca (1:07:21)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (1:07:34)
The Tuna Texas about these two radio DJs and ⁓ it’s coming from the third smallest town in Texas. So it’s a lot of fun. I think there’s a lot of costume changing and running about and things like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tuna Christmas. I’ve seen Greater Tuna, which is the original. So that one’s in Bailey if you want to go check that out. And they do nice job with stuff out there.

Toni Tresca (1:07:55)
For sure. I guess it’s even a little early for Christmas in July, but I know there are some folks who celebrate Christmas all year round, so I guess this is for them. You’re what? That’s right, Jen. Of course.

Alex Miller (1:08:00)
Yeah.

Yes, my wife. mean, oh my God,

and her musical mix will occasionally pop up like, know, White Christmas will be playing in the middle of the summer. It’s like, okay. What do you even got next?

Toni Tresca (1:08:17)
My next pick is one that both you and I actually are going to be at later this week. It is Forbidden Broadway, Merrily We Stole a Song at the Garner Galleria Theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. This is a musical cabaret that parodies everything from Frozen to Phantom to Wicked. ⁓ And if this sounds familiar, that’s because Forbidden Broadway has been doing this kind of thing for decades at this point.

but this is a new version that includes spoofs of Hamilton, Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret, the film version of Wicked, and Steven Sondheim’s Old Friends. So, you and I are gonna check this out. This is actually gonna be our bonus episode for the podcast that will be in your feeds next week, as well as accompanied by a review on the site. So we’re gonna share our thoughts. Last time Forbidden Broadway was here, I was…

It was in 2022 when I last saw it and I was less than impressed, but it was not this current version, I would say. It was a much older version of the show.

Alex Miller (1:09:23)
Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll look forward to doing that one. You know, there’s one of those shows that, you know, there’s always those shows out there that everybody is seeing except for you, despite how much theater we see. And one of mine is something rotten. I’ve never seen this show and I want to see it so badly. So this summer I’ll have to go down to Pagosa Springs, which is a really far…

Toni Tresca (1:09:35)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (1:09:45)
drive but it’s a thingamajig theater company at the Bogosa Springs Arts Center and it runs all the way through August 30th so there’s plenty of time if you happen to be in southern Colorado to check this out. So it’s about a couple of brothers who cook up a plan to do some kind of a stage, some sort of a Shakespearean something or other, you know, and I just, it’s just everybody always says this is just the most fun musical.

Toni Tresca (1:10:08)
It’s got tap dancing eggs, Alex. What else do you want?

Alex Miller (1:10:11)
All right. All

right.

Toni Tresca (1:10:15)
My next headliner is Torch Song, and it’s being produced by Vintage Theatre in Aurora. This was the winner of Vintage’s Director’s Choice competition in which ⁓ directors got to submit their pitch for a show that they wanted to see produced in Vintage’s season. And Torch Song is the two act revival of Harvey Fierstein’s award winning Torch Song trilogy, which follows the life of Arnold, who is a Jewish drag queen living in New York City in the late 70s and 80s.

and it follows his obsession to find happiness. I’ve never seen this one before, but it seems like it assembled a pretty strong cast advantage, ⁓ but yeah, could be something fun.

Alex Miller (1:10:49)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Zooming up to Fort Collins at Bob Blue, they are doing a show called Another Medea through June 15th. So this is a provocative mono thriller. I don’t know what a mono thriller is. It uses grand guñal, which I don’t know what that is either, but I have some information about that horror style to tell the story of Marcus Sharp, an enigmatic actor who recounts in gruesome detail how his obsessions with a wealthy doctor and the myth of Medea lead to horrific unspeakable events. So.

Grand Guignol is a French theatrical style known for its extreme horror often involving gruesome and explicit violence and shock and terror. So wow, that’s going up at Bob Blue. And I’m sure Leela will get over to see that one and give us her review.

Toni Tresca (1:11:40)
Yeah, I’m still trying to find out what monothriller is or if they just made that phrase up. I’m not finding anything on the on the old Google, but that doesn’t mean anything in this day and age in which AI has broken the web.

Alex Miller (1:11:44)
Mono Thriller. It’s a thriller about people with mono.

Yeah, I don’t see it on the first page either, so I guess we’ll have to find out.

Toni Tresca (1:12:01)
Anyways, back to the theater. My final headliner for this week is title of the show, which is kicking off UNC’s Little Theater of the Rockies 91st season, ⁓ which ⁓ fun fact, it makes this company the oldest professional summer stock theater west of the Mississippi and the oldest professional theater company in Colorado.

Alex Miller (1:12:13)
Wow.

Toni Tresca (1:12:26)
not the oldest opera, not the oldest performance in general, because Central City Opera actually predates Little Theater of the Rockies, but technically the oldest professional theater company in Colorado. And they’re producing this musical, which is about two self-confessed nobodies who live in New York, and they want to write an original musical to submit to a festival, kind of like the French festival that we were talking about earlier. But the only catch is they only have three weeks to write it.

So you get to go behind the scenes and watch them frantically try to piece together the musical ⁓ on stage in front of your eyes. It’s very metatheatrical, very funny, very tongue in cheek.

Alex Miller (1:13:07)
That sounds great. Well, I didn’t see it on the first page of Google, but I asked my friend Claude, AI, to define monothriller. He says, a monothriller is a theatrical performance featuring a single actor who tells a suspenseful, tension-filled story entirely through monologue, typically plays multiple characters, takes on different voices and personas, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s what a monothriller is, to Claude.

Toni Tresca (1:13:31)
Interesting.

Alex Miller (1:13:32)
Yeah. My last headliner is Ripcord at Firehouse Theatre Company at the John Hand Theatre in Denver. This runs through June 29th. This is another senior living facility story featuring the cantankerous Abby, who’s forced to share her quarters with new arrival Marilyn and has no choice but to get rid of the infuriatingly chipper woman by any means necessary. you were going to get to this, weren’t No, okay.

Toni Tresca (1:14:00)
I don’t have plans to at the moment, but it sounds fun. it’s ⁓ curious. There has just been like a boom in these kind of like retirement comedy or dramedy plays, it seems. ⁓ They always get produced.

Alex Miller (1:14:13)
Yeah, well, if you look

at the typical theater audience and all the gray hair there, it’s like, well, I would definitely be doing more shows to cater to that crowd. I was talking to Mark Reagan the other day, he’s maybe a year too older than me, and he’s in our early 60s, and he’s like, a lot of times, I’m the youngest one in the audience. It’s like, yeah, that’s an issue that I think all theaters are hoping to, would love to know how to address, but I don’t think anybody’s quite cracked the code yet.

Toni Tresca (1:14:42)
Yeah. Although I, know, Two-cent Lion Theater Company in Denver seems to be doing a pretty good job of attracting young people. maybe producing shows by young people is a way to attract young people.

Alex Miller (1:14:49)
Yeah, that’s true.

Yeah. All right. Well, that’s the headliners for this week. Like we said, it was a little bit of a slow week, so we didn’t have a lot of new stuff on the site. But I did have a little story about Betsy’s new mini home. I was just talking to Mark Reagan, like I said. So they have this new thing called the new local annex on Pearl Street that are going to be kicking off in early June with some kids shows. And they’re going to be using this small space for readings and other small, small things. So that’s kind of a cool thing they’ve got going.

Toni Tresca (1:15:25)
Yeah, that’s a partnership with the new local, which is a art organization that exists up kind of in the North Boulder area. It’s a female-focused, it’s a really great organization. They’ve been really, ⁓ that whole team over there has been really fighting for greater funding for the arts and kind of, they created the 2A letter that was seen around the world at this point.

Alex Miller (1:15:51)
Okay,

Toni Tresca (1:15:52)
But

Alex Miller (1:15:53)
yep.

Toni Tresca (1:15:53)
so great organization doing lots of cool work and this is a cool community partnership that’s actualizing the space that pretty much has just been sitting empty

If you want to stay up to date on what’s going on in theaters and comedy venues all across the state, subscribe to the OnStage Colorado newsletter, which comes out every Thursday.

Alex Miller (1:16:12)
Yep. All right. Well, like we said, next week for our bonus pot, we’ll be doing our review of the aforementioned Forbidden Broadway at the Garner Galleria. That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for listening. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca (1:16:25)
I’m Tony Tresca and we’ll see you at the show!

Editor & Publisher at  |  + posts

Alex Miller is editor and publisher of OnStage Colorado. He has a long background in journalism, including stints as the top editor at the Vail Daily, Summit Daily News, Summit Country Journal, Vail Trail and others. He’s also been an actor, director, playwright, artistic director and theatre board member and has been covering theatre in Colorado since 1995.

+ posts

A Colorado-based arts reporter originally from Mineola, Texas, who writes about the evolving world of theater and culture—with a focus on the financial realities of making art, emerging forms and leadership in the arts. He’s the Managing Editor of Bucket List Community Cafe, a contributor to Boulder Weekly, Denver Westword and co-host of the OnStage Colorado Podcast. He holds an MBA and an MA in Theatre & Performance Studies from CU Boulder, and his reporting and reviews combine business and artistic expertise.