The guys are joined by the Denver Gazette’s John Moore, plus an interview with Legend of Anne Bonny playwright Emy McGuire

In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Alex Miller and Toni Tresca are joined by John Moore from the Denver Gazette. The main topic this week is upcoming fall theatre around Colorado — and there’s plenty of it!

Emy McGuire

Later in the episode, we speak with playwright, actor, novelist and pirate Emy McGuire. Her new musical The Legend of Anne Bonny plays through this weekend at The People’s Building in Aurora — a joint production between Two Center Lion and Shifted Lens theatre companies. Emy talks about how she started writing the musical while still in high school and how some of her experiences sailing influenced her take on the material as she continues to tweak it.

Chapter summary

Opening & Recent Theater Experiences (00:00-10:30)

Hosts: Alex Miller and Toni Tresca
Guest: John Moore, senior arts journalist for the Denver Gazette
Recent Shows Discussed:
- The Legend of Anne Bonny at the People’s Building (Two-Cent Lion & Shifted Lens production)
- Mixed reviews on execution but praised the music, acting, and potential
- Brief mentions of Jaws 50th anniversary screening and Billy Joel documentary

OnStage Colorado 7th Anniversary & News (10:30-25:00)

Milestone Celebration: 7 years of OnStage Colorado
- 900+ reviews published
- 142 podcast episodes
- 300+ newsletters
- Annual OSCA’s awards program (3rd year coming in January)
Denver Center Performing Arts (DCPA) Financial Concerns:
- $5 million budget cuts through layoffs and position eliminations
- Discussion of post-pandemic financial struggles
- Lack of transparency from DCPA regarding details
Federal Theater Reopening: 102-year-old venue relaunching with free shows September 19-20
Arts Hub Lafayette: Broadway rave fundraiser at Bounce Empire
Sweet and Lucky Echo Feedback: Mixed audience and industry reactions to Off Center’s latest production

Fall Theater Preview – Regional Breakdown (25:00-1:09:00)

Boulder Area (Toni)

Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company: The Thin Place (ghostly seance play)
Cold Creek Theater: Time Stands Still
Local Theater: Case for Black Girls: Setting Central Park on Fire
Theatre Company of Lafayette: Sherlock Holmes and the Greek Chorus
Upstart Crow: A Few Good Men

Colorado Springs & Mountains (Alex)

Ent Center Theatreworks: The Importance of Being Earnest
Springs Ensemble Theater: RUR (1920s robot play introducing the word “robot”)
Various mountain venues including Aspen, Breckenridge, Carbondale
Thunder River Theater Company highlights

Denver Metro Area (Toni)

Arvada Center: The Mouse Trap (50th season opener)
Aurora Fox: Lizzie (Lizzie Borden musical)
Curious Theater: Eureka Day (school vaccination crisis comedy)
DCPA: Shucked and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (notable local casting)
Multiple smaller theater companies with diverse offerings

Northern Colorado (Toni)

Boss Blue: Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play
Candlelight Dinner Playhouse: Steel Magnolias
Open Stage: Stephen King’s Misery

Western Slope & Southern Colorado (Alex)

Colorado Mesa University’s new Astaria Theater
Various regional theaters with Halloween and holiday programming

Interview with Emy McGuire (1:09:00-1:34:00)

Background: Playwright, actor, novelist, and literal pirate
The Legend of Anne Bonny:
- Started writing at age 17
- Personal queer coming-of-age story woven into historical pirate tale
- Strong audience response and potential for future productions
Sailing Experience: Crossed Atlantic on sailboat through Seamester program
Publishing Success: Novel No One Aboard coming from Harper Collins in December 2024
Future Plans: Working toward New York production, cast album, and continued development

Closing & Upcoming Content (1:34:00-1:36:00)

Next Week’s Bonus Episode: Guest hosts Matt and Libby Zambrano from King Penny
Third Side Theatre Interview: Team behind Princess and the Goblin
Upcoming Reviews: Multiple fall productions across the state

Transcript

Compiled by a psychotic AI wolverine.

OnStage Colorado Podcast Episode 142 – Fall Theater Preview with John Moore

Hosts: Alex Miller and Toni Tresca
Guest: John Moore, Senior Arts Journalist, Denver Gazette
Date: September 4, 2025

Opening

Alex Miller: Hello and welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast once again. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca: And I’m Toni Tresca and we have got a special guest with us today, the senior arts journalist for the Denver Gazette, John Moore.

Alex Miller: Hey, John.

John Moore: Hi friends, how you doing?

Alex Miller: Great, great, great to have you on. One of the things we were gonna do this episode was talk about some of the shows that are coming up this fall and you just did a kind of a great roundup on the Denver Gazette. So we thought it’d be great to have you on to talk through some of these with us. We’re gonna try and whip around to most of the theaters in the state that we can get to and talk about some of the things we have seen recently. We’ll skip our headliners this week because we’ll be talking about all these shows anyway. And then later in the pod, I’ve got a conversation I had with playwright, actor, novelist and pirate, Emy McGuire, whose show The Legend of Anne Bonny is up at the People’s Building through, I think, one more weekend.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, that’s right. And that musical is where I saw you, John, most recently at the Denver Actors Fund night last Thursday. You gave a very rousing speech beforehand.

John Moore: Thanks, it’s fun. I have two roles in this community. Most of the time I’m spending as a journalist with the Denver Gazette and as you just mentioned I also started the Denver Actors Fund and it’s a pleasure to go to events where especially these small and scrappy theater companies are just doing everything they can to support their fellow artists. It’s really inspiring.

Alex Miller: Great.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, I thought it was interesting. You noted that a lot of the small companies are some of the biggest contributors to these Denver Actors Fund nights like Shifted Lens and Two-Cent, which haven’t been around very long. They’re two of the smaller companies in the area. And yet they pretty consistently have these nights as a part of their run to give back.

John Moore: Yeah, both companies have had nights supporting the Denver Actors Fund since the beginning of their inceptions. And it’s funny because I tell them, you know, as a journalist, I see companies come and go all the time and I say, first, you must survive. And so we don’t have great expectations of our tiniest theater companies to support us, but it’s so inspiring that they do, especially when some of the largest theater companies in the state whose employees have benefited most from the Denver Actors Fund don’t do really anything to give back. So the fact that we have so many small companies helping us out is really inspiring.

Alex Miller: That’s great. Yeah, so for those who may not know the Denver Actors Fund is a nonprofit that John started that helps out actors in need when they’ve got medical bills in this weird country of ours that doesn’t pay, doesn’t like to pay, especially people who don’t have regular jobs. And so they’ve raised over what 1.2, 1.3 million or something like that.

John Moore: We’re closing in on $1.8 million now. Yeah.

Alex Miller: 1.8, whoa. All right. Yeah, so great organization.

John Moore: It’s only because of the goodwill of this theater community to give back that, you know, there’s certain, I just got to shout out certain companies like Town Hall Art Center and Miners Alley Playhouse and Firehouse Theater Company. In addition to those that we already talked about, our companies who commit one show of every single run to give a certain percentage of the proceeds back to the Denver Actors Fund. That includes Vintage as well. And Candlelight Dinner Playhouse does one show per year where they just collect throughout the entire year and it adds up to an astonishing amount of money because it’s going out as quickly as it comes back in and we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without all of them.

Alex Miller: Yeah. All right. Well, let’s talk about what we’ve seen since our last episode. The aforementioned Anne Bonny is really the only show of live theater I’ve gotten out to see. I think we talked about it a little bit, Toni, but I don’t think we talked about it on the pod, did we? So this is an original production, like I said, a joint production of Two-Cent Lion and Shifted Lens and a pirate’s tale. And I have to say, like, I was pretty impressed overall. I thought at the beginning of it, I was like, boy, I’m not sure how this is going to come out. I saw it on opening night. It was a little rough around the edges. The choreography wasn’t the greatest. It’s tough thing. They had a lot of stuff to work around. They didn’t have a ton of space to do much choreography. But overall, I really think it’s a neat show. It’s a lot of fun. And it’s based on this real life character who, she wasn’t a pirate for very long and there’s the debate apparently over how much actual pirating she did, but she’s kind of gained all this legendary status just because she’s almost alone in the list of female pirates from those golden days of pirating in the 1700s.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, and this piece in execution, I got to agree with you. It’s a little bit rough in places, particularly the beginning and as well as the end. But this music and the acting in particular, I thought, were just really pretty strong in this production and really sold the storyline here. I felt like you mentioned it’s in a smaller space, the People’s Building, particularly as they have it kind of blocked, some of the back of it blocked off a little bit to make it even smaller than normal. This show feels like it’s aching for a bigger set and a bigger budget so that it can really lean into the spectacle of the pirate ship. You feel those big group numbers that are just aching for someone to leap up on top of a deck and have a sword fight on there. But because of the nature of the set, which is rather small scale in its ambition, due to the nature of this being a community theater production and them having those resources available to them. But I think even still with this smaller scale production, the potential really shined through for a larger production. So I’ll be very, very curious to see if there are subsequent shows after this. What about you, John? What’d you think? You were also in the audience that night.

John Moore: Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway from that show is a continuation. Two-Cent recently did an adaptation of the tragedy of Medea. Because you have these two, I can’t wait to hear your interview with Emy because I don’t know that much about her identity. I do know that she or they, pronouns are preferred, I don’t know, but is a remarkable new voice. And so was Olivia Bontane who wrote Two-Cent’s adaptation of Medea. And I think when you put those two shows back to back, we’re sort of getting to witness the start of two very remarkable playwrights with unique voices and the confidence to write these big sprawling shows is very, it bodes really well for whatever’s coming next for both of them.

Alex Miller: Yep, for sure. So that was a lot of fun. The only other thing I would just mention, I saw a kind of movie yesterday called Caught Stealing, which is this action kind of action comedy, but it’s pretty dark with Austin Butler that was actually pretty good with my son Andy. And I thought that was a lot of fun. The other thing that I watched sort of over the Labor Day weekend was the new Billy Joel documentary on HBO. It’s in two parts. And if you have any interest in Billy Joel, it’s definitely cool. I grew up on Long Island. So Billy Joel was like, you know, everywhere back in the ’70s when I was growing up. And I was kind of one of these rock snobs, like I was listening to The Who and The Stones and The Dead, you know, we always kind of looked down on the Billy Joels of the world. But as I’ve aged, I look back on some of those and think, you know, they were actually pretty good and Billy Joel was a huge talent and wrote a lot of great songs. So it’s cool because the documentary has people like Sting and Pink and Bruce Springsteen talking about him, but that’s also cutting back to interviews with Billy Joel sitting at his piano in his home on Long Island, talking about those days and cut with all kinds of clips of stuff. So it’s pretty robust documentary if you’re interested in Billy Joel at all.

Toni Tresca: Nice. I can’t say I’m very much of a Billy Joel fan, but I’m glad for all for you and the other Billy Joel heads out there.

Alex Miller: Yeah. But you saw something from the 1970s also, Toni. What was that? Theater, movie theater.

Toni Tresca: That’s right. I saw Jaws 50th anniversary this weekend. I’d never seen it before. So this was my first time. Figured why not see it on the big screen. It was pretty good. I think I saw on Facebook or maybe you wrote about it in your column, John, that you weren’t scared by Jaws. And I can’t say I was particularly spooked either by it. But I thought that the story that it was trying to communicate is surprisingly contemporary, particularly in light of COVID and kind of this denial of scientists and forging ahead for the economic best interest of businesses rather than the betterment of the people. So that was a story that held up remarkably well, even if it’s not the most scary.

Alex Miller: Yeah, we all knew it was a mechanical shark at the time. Although I thought it was pretty realistic, I don’t know how it looks now. Of course, since then, there’s been a million shark and bigger things, Megalodon sharks and whatever they are, eating people all over the place. But this was kind of the first one. And it freaked everybody out. And it really screwed up the resort economies of a lot of beach communities for a couple of years, I think.

Alex Miller: So, all right, well, let’s turn to the news. First, I just wanted to give a quick shout to us, OnStage Colorado, celebrating its seventh birthday this month. It’s just about this time that we launched the website, or we, it was me. Since then, I think we’ve published about 900 reviews. We posted 141 podcast episodes, 142, if you count this one, sent out about 300 newsletters, traveled many thousands of miles to cover as much theater as we can around the state. And we also started our annual awards program, the Oscars, the third running of which will be out this coming January. So just go us.

John Moore: Congratulations to all of you. It’s a badly needed voice and it’s certainly in 2025. So, way to go.

Alex Miller: Yeah, and we also have this calendar that I know John gets a lot of use out of looking to see what’s coming up of all the shows around the state, which is an ongoing project. But yeah, it’s been a lot of fun.

John Moore: I can tell you very selfishly that when I was the theater critic at the Denver Post, routine was Saturday and Sunday mornings, I would be in the office, the only one there from eight o’clock till noon, just updating the website. And I had those listings and it is a time suck in your life. And all of a sudden OnStage Colorado came around and it’s like there’s no reason for all of us to be doing the same work. It’s like, it’s all right there. So in addition to other just theater goers who can find probably the most convenient and best laid out calendar that you’re gonna find, it’s an excellent research tool for other journalists to steal from. So thank you.

Alex Miller: You’re welcome. That’s what it’s there for.

John Moore: You know.

Toni Tresca: I can also say I steal from that when I’m planning my pitches for outlets too, Alex. So I’m also scraping that.

Alex Miller: Yeah, and by the way, if you ever see any mistakes or omissions, please let me know. But yeah, we try and keep, you know, there’s some theaters that are pretty good about sending us their stuff. Most don’t. So there’s like, there’s a lot of hunting to get all the shows in there. So that takes up a lot of time.

John Moore: Yeah, I remember that, I remember Alex is theaters not sending you their listings, but then complaining when they weren’t included. I imagine that’s fairly universal and timeless.

Alex Miller: Yep. All right, Toni, what else? What else we have in the news?

Toni Tresca: Well, I wanted to start with an interesting story I read by John Wenzel for the Denver Post last week about the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theater Tours. So the story kind of digs into how the Denver Center has been used for circuses, basketball games, and boxing matches, as well as kind of unpacks how the space creates shows like The Lion King, Hamilton, and Wicked. It sounds like a really exciting tour. I can’t say I’ve ever done it though. Have either of you guys had a chance to do these DCPA theater tours?

Alex Miller: I’m sure John’s been through every inch of that place.

John Moore: Yeah, I’ve written the story of the backstage tour about as often as I’ve written the story of A Christmas Carol by the Denver Theatre Company. But I do highly recommend it. It’s quite fun.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, it sounds like a cool experience. Yeah, like in John’s, other John’s story, he mentions that this twice weekly public tour has been going on for quite a long time, 2006. But you can get, if people are interested in doing it, tickets for the tour are just under $15, which pretty good deal still.

Alex Miller: Yeah, that’s like the cheapest theater-ish ticket in town.

John Moore: Mm-hmm.

Toni Tresca: Yeah. And while I thought the story was, it was pretty, it was very well written and definitely mostly focused on the tour itself. There was one passage in the middle of this Denver Post story that really stuck out to me. “The DCPA has been forced to cut costs and diversify its revenue amid post pandemic upheaval and lean funding. In June, the company shaved five million in costs from its annual budget through layoffs, reduction in hours and the elimination of several open positions according to a statement. The DCPA did not provide further detail.” I was not aware of this. John, do you have any additional information about what’s going on there?

John Moore: That’s a tough question to answer. Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard, I’ve heard all the names of people who, jobs were eliminated. I don’t know how appropriate it is for me to just like list off names because it hasn’t been officially reported or confirmed, but you’re right. And the larger story there isn’t so much, I think who was let go. I’m very close to this story because you know, five years ago, I was one of those people who worked at the Denver Center and had my job eliminated. It’s the worst feeling in the entire world. And in my case, it was COVID, you know, we had just gone to work at home for a week and just out of the blue, you get a text that says, hey, you’ve got a Zoom call in 15 minutes. And it’s some personnel company in San Antonio, Texas, letting you know that the decision has been made to eliminate your job at a time when you’re already in a dying industry and you’re being cast into a pandemic. And guess what? You know, you’ve got to pay for your own health insurance. It’s traumatizing. And I have nothing but empathy and sadness for the people who are now going through it. I think that you’re onto something. I mean, I think the larger story here is what exactly is the financial situation that caused these cutbacks to be made because frankly after the housing boom, after the housing market crashed and then we kind of had a recovery time. I mean the Denver Center was flush for pretty much all of the 2010s. Every year was better than the last. They also have a massive sort of surplus of funds built up through the bond fees fund, is the money upon which that the entire DCPA was built, but there’s also great restrictions on how that money can be used. So what exactly is going on that has caused the revenue shortfall for them to make these moves? It’s just another cautionary sign that we have not recovered from the pandemic the way I wish everybody wishes that we were and we were on to the next. Also, especially having worked at the Denver Center, the Denver Center is more protective of its information than most, you know, government agencies are. So when the news is good, you know, the information is fairly easy to get to. When the news is bad, as this is, nobody, you know, you can’t just call them up and just say, can you give me the details because they won’t give them to you. You know, we might have to wait until I don’t know the next 990s are filed or what have you to find out what’s what, what the real story is. And I’m, and again, I’m too close to the story. So, am I being remiss in my job because I haven’t reported that story. I haven’t reported it because I don’t know what to report because it’s just, it’s cloaked everybody. Almost everybody who was let go will talk to you, but they were made to sign non-disclosure agreements so that they can’t talk to you on the record. And I understand why the Denver Center doesn’t want to talk on the record. It’s bad news. So yeah, something’s going on there. I wish I used to take pride in knowing, in being able to answer that question, but I only know what I know. And all I know is that it’s bad.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, like you mentioned, their latest 990 is from, is not, their last one that they filed was from June, 2023. So it’s really hard to get a picture of what’s going on present day from that data. And at that time, it did show that revenue was down by 2 million from that, from the prior year while net assets were going up. But it’ll be curious to see what’s changed when it does file that next statement. I think the real next big date that I’m looking for when it comes to data about the local arts economy is November 6th, when the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts releases its 2025 Economic Activity Study of the Denver Metro Cultural Area. That report is really pretty thorough and sometimes contains some pretty big insights into the local arts community. I’m planning to be at that launch event too, just to get the skinny on that.

John Moore: And true, to God bless the CBCA, we need them, but they’re an advocacy organization that their entire purpose is to take all of that data and to spin it into gold. So sometimes it takes a lot of sort of reading between the lines to find out what else that information reveals, but a story for another day.

Toni Tresca: Definitely. Yeah. The executive summary, there’s often quite different than the actual raw data that’s reported in those studies. You’re like, fascinating. Not sure I draw the same comparisons, but it certainly does make for a better headline.

Alex Miller: Yeah. Well, Toni, you had another piece of news that’s a little more positive.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, so the 102 year old Federal Theater is reopening later this month. It’s got two free all ages shows, the September 19th and 20th. I was actually read about this in your story for the Gazette, John. Can you talk a little bit more about the relaunch of the Federal Theater and who’s going to be playing those shows?

John Moore: Sure, the Federal Theater, the last time it was probably used as a theater theater for our local theater community was the Industrial Arts Theater. It’s one of these old movie palaces like the Bluebird, like the Oriental that it’s great that it’s reopening as a concert venue because it was never really good and it’s too cavernous to be a kind of a useful theater for live theater. It’s so perfect that it’s the owners of the Oriental Theater right down the street or 44th who are, who’ve taken a lease out on the Federal, which is at 3850 Federal Boulevard. And they’re rehabbing the indoors. They’re trying to make it look as much as it originally did. But interestingly, the challenge that they’re finding is that there’s surprisingly few, there’s surprisingly few photos of what the interior of the Federal looked like for a hundred years. So they’re actually having to, you know, take a little few liberties there. They’re being very meticulous about restoring the outdoor marquee, which isn’t not exactly true. I mean, it’s the outdoors is pretty much done as of this week and it’s spectacular. The neon is back. It’s so colorful. I think, I mean, I don’t think these are the colors from the past. It’s just a very striking new look. And, I’m doing this totally from memory, but September 19th Mochachetes is the local band. It’s a great little Chicano political funk band. They very, very proudly political band that has become very popular in Denver over the past, especially the last four five years. I think there couldn’t be a more perfect band to choose for the neighborhood, for the moment in Denver history than this band to open it all back up again. And as you mentioned, Toni, they’re doing two days of free shows. Some shows after that will be free too. They want the doors to be wide open. So people will just feel like it’s part of the neighborhood and that they’re welcome there. So they’re doing all ages shows, they’re doing, but it’s interesting too, because just like with the Oriental, a lot of the programming there is not gonna be concerts and it’s not gonna be theater either. It’s gonna be, you know, like Dan Savage of Savage Love touring franchises coming for a night there. And there’s, you know, something that’s based off of a television show that’s coming in there and it’s gonna be a little bit of everything there, which is kind of the way it is at the Oriental right now, too so I hope people go out there because we’ve lost so much of old Denver. We’ve just had one loss after the other and Scott Hapel of the Oriental has delivered us a win and you know, you can’t help but hope for their success because that’s a win for old Denver that can survive in this new iteration.

Alex Miller: Yeah, that’s cool. And if you’re interested in what’s going on at the Federal Theater, it’s thefederaltheater.com to check out what they’ve got coming up. So yeah, I can’t wait to see a show in there.

John Moore: Can I tell you Alex that I asked Scott why the Federal is RE and Oriental is ER? Well, we could do a whole show on ER versus RE. I know if you’ve written about it enough, but I love Scott’s response. Scott said when he took over the Oriental, it was called RE and we took over the Federal, it was called ER and he never gave it a second thought.

Alex Miller: It seems like it should be an ER theater. Yeah.

Toni Tresca: Ha ha ha!

John Moore: So he just kept it the way it is. And that’s the answer to why you have one RE and one ER. I love that.

Alex Miller: Okay, so the Oriental is an RE.

John Moore: Which one of which did I just get them mixed up? Yeah. Yeah. Federal’s RE. Yes. Yes. Right. Federal’s RE, Oriental is ER.

Alex Miller: I thought, I think, Federal, okay, and Oriental’s ER. Oh, that’ll drive them crazy. It drives me crazy. There’s much, on the theater side, there’s only, I would say like three quarters plus theaters, or RE theaters, there’s a handful of ERs. And, you know, it takes a while to remember them off the top of your head. But I’m thinking, I don’t think I’ve screwed one up in a while, but yeah, it takes a while.

John Moore: We could go down that road, but it’ll be a very long podcast.

Alex Miller: Yeah, let’s save that for another day. Let’s, Toni, your next story, Toni, comes from a theater that didn’t have to worry about this because it does not call itself by theater.

Toni Tresca: That’s right, yeah, no theater in the title for the Arts Hub in Lafayette. I thought this was an interesting fundraiser that they’re doing. They’re hosting a Broadway rave on September 13th at Bounce Empire, which is a 360 bounce, like a bounce castle thing over in the Boulder County area. It’s really a lot of fun. I’ve gone over and done it for some reporting that I did as well as just for fun. But this event over there is going to be using the bouncing things that they’ve got present along with Broadway stuff. There’s going to be live DJs there, themed cocktails, costume contests, karaoke, local vendors, silent auction, and more. All this to benefit the Arts Hub’s youth theater, its scholarships, community classes, and outreach initiatives.

Alex Miller: Okay.

Toni Tresca: Kind of a fun way to earn some money for them that goes beyond your kind of traditional theater fundraising event.

Alex Miller: Yeah. So it’s not bounce houses, it’s more like trampolines, right?

Toni Tresca: That’s right, yeah, but it feels like in effect like a big bouncy castle, because there’s all sorts of things there. Like there’s a giant inflatable dinosaur that you can bounce on, yes, but also then slide down, because a lot of the bouncy things also double as slides and things like that.

Alex Miller: Okay. Okay, well, yeah, you definitely want to check that out. All right, one more thing you had on here. Toni, what did you want to talk about with this one show we saw recently?

Toni Tresca: Yeah, I just wanted to briefly talk about some of the feedback that I received for our reviews of Sweet and Lucky Echo. This is the Off Center’s latest immersive production. It’s follow-up to 2016 Sweet and Lucky. And we both had pretty major issues with the experience and wrote about as much in our reviews, yours for OnStage, mine for Westword. And I wanted to kind of start our conversation with a comment you received on your review, which was, “I cannot agree with you more. I’m a stage hand on Sweet and Lucky Echo. And even after running and watching the show many times, I can’t help but feel lost. The show has an amazing story to tell and falls short when trying to tell it.” So I thought that that was really interesting coming from somebody who is actually involved with the show itself. It’s not rare that you get feedback like that.

Alex Miller: Yeah, yeah, and so your review in Westword was pretty scathing, so what did you hear on that side of things?

Toni Tresca: Mostly on my side, I heard just kind of shock that a major newspaper in the area is still publishing critical reviews of local shows. I got a lot of people who were just like, wait, what? That’s still a thing that can happen. Like Mark Reagan reached out to me of Betsy. He was just like, it was crazy to read your review. It was just so well written and blunt about a bad show, just telling it like it is. And thus far, I haven’t actually heard anybody who is saying you’re an idiot, but please, if you have those comments, I’m open to them. Send them my way. My information is all very public. But thus far, it’s been a lot of people who also have had negative experiences at the show as well, writing to be like, yep, I agree. It’s interesting. I’m glad to see this reflected. So that’s what I’ve heard thus far. John, have you attended the show yet? Are you do have plans to? Will we hear your thoughts?

John Moore: I have not seen the show, so I don’t have anything to add. I can tell you if you want a left turn. I mean, you two both know that I’ve been encouraging you along your way to take up the mantle in ways of being tougher and feeling like the community counts on OnStage more and more and more to be a voice that will tell them as much what not to go see as what to go see. So I’m usually telling you off the air that you’re erring on the side of kindness, which I think is appreciated by the theater companies, but not so much by the audiences. I’ve taken note of some changes in direction and ironically, I listened to the podcast and read your reviews about Assassins after I wrote what I wrote about Assassins. And I went, the world has turned upside down because I felt so moved after seeing Assassins at Miners Alley Playhouse to write essentially what was my first review in 12 years to say that the community needs to see this. And then I listened to your podcast and I was like, I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that everybody is going to feel the same way about this because you guys were tough.

Alex Miller: Yeah.

Toni Tresca: Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller: Well, I think we both more or less, yeah.

John Moore: And you know what, I disagree with you, but more power to you because we need diverse, divergent opinions. And not everybody has to love a show, but it’s a lot more interesting when there’s some divergence of opinion.

Alex Miller: Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, Toni and I both liked it well enough. It was our reviewer Alice Ketterlin who had seen it in, I think, a couple of times in other bigger venues and just felt like the material just wasn’t, I don’t know, it wasn’t big enough. The production wasn’t big enough to match the material, which is a little weak Sondheim to start with, but that’s…

John Moore: You, you, you, you might want to check the transcript on that Alex.

Alex Miller: Okay. Well, all right. Well, for now, we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be back to talk about Fall Theater, our Fall Theater preview and my interview with playwright, novelist and pirate, Emy McGuire. So stand by.

Fall Theater Preview

Alex Miller: All right, we are back to kick in with our main topic, the fall theater season. So as we’ve noted on the podcast recently, it’s been a little quiet here at the end of the summer. But now that Labor Day has passed, there’s a bunch of things coming up. So we wanted to whip around the state. Like we said, we were happy to have John join because he wrote a great story about new material that’s popping up this fall specifically.

Toni Tresca: Yeah. And starting this weekend, the fall theater season really begins in earnest and we’ve divided the states up into regions with Alex tackling the mountains, Western Slope and Southern Colorado, as well as Colorado Springs and me handling the Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins area to kind of bring you our fall theater preview.

Alex Miller: Yeah, and John will fill in with color along the way. You’re the color commentator. So yeah, this list is not extensive. We didn’t mention every single show, otherwise it would have been a super long podcast episode. So we’re gonna be trying to stick to sort of one show per company more or less.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, and for that full list of not only shows happening in the fall, but shows happening throughout the entire state’s announced 2025-2026 theater season, you can head over to the Denver Gazette and read John’s story, which I thought that was a pretty ambitious feat you attempted to do, rounding up all of the theater seasons.

John Moore: Well, I think it was important going into the fall this year to at least give a leg up to those companies that are taking the risk of doing new works that are new to Denver. And the list would have been actually a lot longer if I had done new to Colorado, but I had to limit it somehow. But it’s so hard for these companies that are doing new works to get attention. And it’s so hard to make it work economically these days that I think that if we’re going to give a little bit of a leg up to a certain kind of show. I think those companies that are taking the risk of doing a new show deserve it. Also, it’s funny you guys divided your list this year by geographical region, which makes sense. But as we go along, I should tell you that I broke mine up in very different categories that may or may not have been of interest to you because my lists are War Horses, Disney, Big Fault for Disney, the new shows that we already talked about, Halloween, which is coming up, Stuff That Interests Me, which is just, you know. But if you don’t mind, I think one thing that also deserves a shout out this year is that in these politically charged times, these small companies are getting the same message that big corporations are, which is that suddenly we took, you know, what was a sign of great progress over the past six or seven years to do better as individuals and as a community to underrepresented voices. You know, their companies hired DEI managers and people made, you know, issued statements of a commitment to DEI, and then suddenly the political landscape changes and now all of a sudden any company that is hearing the message from Washington that if you have anything at all that has anything to do with rising up underrepresented voices that not only are you going to be running afoul of the government but that it could cost you any chance at federal funding and that kind of thing, which is so annoying. If you look at our fall seasons, there’s a significant amount of productions that are coming up that are sort of almost in just defiance of this national trend of people who are kowtowing to this message and doing shows that are very deliberately the kind of things that we would call DEI shows, which, and I think it’s always funny because when I started covering theater, if you were covering Suoteatro, or if you’re covering family, or if you’re covering any theater company that had a mission, a specific mission to serve an underrepresented community. Susan Liles doing Atonito II, servicing women playwrights. You were filling a niche, you know? And now you’re sort of, if you do that, you’re running afoul of the government. Suddenly it takes so much courage to step out of the norm at a time like this and I frankly was surprised when I went through the list. I was expecting to see a whole lot more sort of pabulum and safe titles. And while there are plenty of those, shout out to those companies that are doing shows that we would now call DEI shows.

Alex Miller: Yeah, it’s a sad state of affairs that we could also have an entire episode or five about. But for now, Toni, I think you want to kick it off with the metro area of Boulder.

Toni Tresca: Sure. I’ll kick us off with a show by the Boulder Ensemble Theater Company. This was on your list. It’s a, I believe, of a new show is in the area, The Thin Place. This is kind of a ghosty comedy. It’s not a comedy, a ghosty play. Hilda thinks that she can communicate, that you can communicate with the dead. So she’s befriended Linda, who is an eccentric but persuasive medium to transport her to this thin place, which is the fragile boundary between the living and the dead. And playwright Lucas Hanath’s play is designed to transform the theater into an intimate seance. So I’m really looking forward to checking this one out. I will be there on its opening night at the Savoy. This one’s running both at the Savoy in Denver, as well as at the Dairy Center in the Boulder area. Really, really excited to check out this one. The script is really, really fun. Very perfect for kind of spooky season. And I’ll be reviewing this one for OnStage Colorado.

Keeping us rolling within the Boulder area, the Cold Creek Theater of Louisville is producing Time Stands Still at the Louisville Center for the Arts this fall 2025, unannounced exactly when the dates are. And this play centers on Sarah and James, a photojournalist and a foreign correspondent who are trying to find happiness in a world that seems to have gone crazy, which might sound familiar to folks. But then this story, when their kind of story takes a sudden turn, this adventurous couple kind of has to confront the prospects of a more conventional life. So I’ve not seen this one, but it sounds like an interesting drama to check out over in Louisville.

Another new play from local theater company, The Case for Black Girls, Setting Central Park on Fire, is taking over the Dairy Arts Center in October. This play was part of Local Lab recently, it was produced there, and it follows a brilliant 12-year-old black girl who runs for her life from Brooklyn to Harlem. It uses poetry, gospel music, and long distance running as an ongoing metaphor throughout the piece. Be curious to see how this piece has developed since its Local Lab, which I believe all of us were in attendance at, is that correct? I know Alex and I were, were you there, John?

John Moore: I believe that this is another play in the same pentology. It’s a series of five plays by this playwright, but I do not believe this was the play that was presented at the Local Lab.

Toni Tresca: That’s my bad.

Alex Miller: Yeah, I don’t remember it either, but…

John Moore: Same playwright, different play.

Toni Tresca: That’s right. Oh, my bad. This was a part of, this was a pop-up lab that it did, not as a part of the main lab. I’m getting my labs confused. A lot of labs indeed, yeah. So it’s not a part of the main lab, part of a pop-up thing it did, but yeah. So this is a cool new local offering there. And then the Theater Company of Lafayette is doing Sherlock Holmes and the Greek Chorus over at the at home in the Arapaho Center in November. This is a murder mystery that follows the cast and crew of Liz Estrada, who is then they have an accident occur and then enter this world famous sleuth to help the frazzled director uncover the truth before the final curtain falls. So Sherlock Holmes, but with the theatrical spin. So Alex, do you think you could stomach that Sherlock?

Alex Miller: Sure, sure maybe.

Toni Tresca: Fair. My final pick in the Boulder area is A Few Good Men being staged by the Upstart Crow at the Dairy Center in December. This is an Aaron Sorkin play about military lawyers who are defending two Marines who are accused of murder at Guantanamo Bay. So if you’re looking for…

Alex Miller: Yeah, of course, made into a film and I was actually in this show. It’s not done that often. We did it at the Backstage Theater back in the ’90s and it has an enormous cast and it’s also written very cinematically with like really short scenes. So it’s not an easy play to do, but you do get to, you know, get a crew cut and wear military uniforms. So that was fun. But yeah, it’s definitely I’d say it’s worth checking out even especially to see, you know, pretty famous playwright and screenwriter at the earth is kind of the play that made him.

Toni Tresca: Absolutely. And then Alex, do you want to take us to a new region or should I continue us?

Alex Miller: Yeah, I can kick off the little bit of the, that’s Colorado Springs and surrounding areas. So the End Center, Theater Works, is doing The Importance of Being Earnest. So I don’t know, does that count as a war horse, John? Or are those just musicals?

John Moore: I think that would be the definition of the warhorse.

Alex Miller: Okay, that’s what I figured. Still, it’s a play, God, it’s been so long since I’ve seen that I’d actually love to see it again. But that’s actually a little later in the fall, it’s not till November, late November. And then another thing they’re just doing at the End Center is that one of the shows from Creed Repertory season, Raquel’s Purple Pineapple Adventures for the kids will be there October 25th through November 2nd. So that’s cool that the Creed shows has made it up north a little bit.

Springs Ensemble Theater Company is doing a really sounds really interesting. This is a 1920s play called RUR, which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel Capek. It’s a sci fi play that introduced the word robot to the world. It depicts, it sounds very like kind of Terminator like, you know, the robots get become conscious and revolt. And there’s, and it talks about, you know, they’re talking about artificial intelligence over 100 years ago in this play, and the consequences of technology and man. So that sounds like a pretty interesting thing for Springs Ensemble Theatre Company to do.

Funky Little Theatre Company, which is mostly performing in Palmer Lake these days, which I’m not even entirely sure what it is. It’s somewhere between Denver and Colorado Springs. But I think they’ve got some sort of a public space there that they’re performing in. Have you ever been to Palmer Lake either of you guys?

Toni Tresca: I haven’t.

John Moore: I’ve only driven through Palmer Lake on my way to Canyon’s journalism class.

Alex Miller: I just don’t know that I’ve ever set foot in that town. I was here about Palmer Divide on this weather forecast because it’s got its own weather system or something. But anyway, Funky’s doing House on Haunted Hill. There aren’t any details on there yet. And then Iron Springs Chateau is doing their usual melodrama lineup, including something called Farther North to Laughter through October 4th and then Trouble in Holly Jolly Valley in November and December. And they are located in, gosh, where is Iron Springs? They’re in the Colorado Springs area, but I can’t remember if they’re in, they might be in Manitou Springs, I’m not sure. And then Millibow Art Theater, which is always doing interesting stuff in the, you know, a lot of times they do a lot of circus-y stuff and a lot of kid stuff, but they don’t have any of they’re doing this season reveal on September 15th, but I did notice an audition notice for Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. A Doll’s House. So it’s interesting that they’re doing that. That’s a that’s a little bit of a departure for them, I’d say.

Toni Tresca: For sure.

Alex Miller: Yeah. All right, Toni, you want to jump back in and do some of the Denver metro area?

Toni Tresca: Sure, yeah, so this has the most entries, lots of different companies doing things in the area. Kick us off with another, this is definitely a warhorse of a show. The Arvada Center is doing The Mouse Trap, the Agatha Christie murder mystery play, famous for being one of the world’s longest, not one of, the world’s longest running play. So this, I’ve, but if you’ve never seen it, I won’t spoil it here, but it’s a big mystery. I know both Alex and I will be in attendance on its opening night. It’s also kicking off the Arvada Center’s 50th season. So it’s got to run from September 5th through October 12th. Looking forward to checking this one out. Go ahead, yeah, John.

John Moore: You know how a show qualifies as a warhorse is when it’s on the schedule to be done by two different theater companies in the same time. So if you don’t, I mean, if you don’t, I understand the version at the Arvada Center will be done to the highest professional standards. I’m sure it will be awesome. It’s also being done at Open Stage in January too. Just throwing that in.

Alex Miller: Yep.

Toni Tresca: Absolutely. That’s a good way to know a warhorse too. I like that. This one is, I would say, not a warhorse. More on the interesting side, the Aurora Fox Art Center is staging Lizzie. This is set in 1892 when Andrew Borden and his wife are found murdered in their homes. And the prime suspect is Andrew’s youngest daughter from a previous marriage, Lizzie Borden. It’s based on historical records and explores the heated days leading up to the murders and the trial’s controversial outcome. So I am quite curious to see this one. It sounds very dark.

Alex Miller: Is that a musical or just a play?

John Moore: It’s a musical. Yeah. It was, I think it was Ignite Theater that did it first in Denver three or four years ago. I think of it as the play that introduced Genesee Pierce to Denver audiences. She’s been on fire ever since.

Alex Miller: Okay, of course.

Toni Tresca: That’s a very, very true. Yeah. My next pick is over at Curious Theater Company, kicking off its season, Eureka Day. This is set at a seemingly utopian progressive private school in Berkeley, California, until a health crisis hits. When a mumps outbreak sweeps through the community, the school’s idealistic commitment to accommodating every viewpoint is put to the test. That sounds very, very much like a Curious Theater show and a little too much like our real world for comfort.

So over at the DCPA as part of its Broadway division, keep your eye out on Shucked. This is a musical from Broadway about corn. It will be swinging through the Buell Theater in October and seems like a lot of fun. Also by the Denver Center, not far from original, but has a really stacked cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This is a Tennessee Williams play. It’s being directed by the artistic director, Chris Coleman, and features familiar faces like Noelia Antweiler, Gem Hunt, and Lawrence Hecht. That’ll be opening in October. So I’ll definitely be there looking forward to seeing that.

Alex Miller: Yeah, definitely noticed that the local cast was pretty impressive because, you know, we’ve been critical of the Denver Center’s not casting as many locals, and not just us, I think a lot of people do, so maybe they were trying to remedy some here, but you wrote about this one too, didn’t you, John?

John Moore: I did, yeah, these things tend to go very cyclically. The conversation was fired up about a month ago on social about Denver Center’s casting. And I felt the need at that time to sort of jump in and defend the Denver Center in a way because it has always been such a passion for local employment for things like their theater-feeling audiences and for the musicals that are at the Galleria. Shakespeare in the parking lot, like Off Center, things like Sweet and Lucky Echo. However, there are times when there are big breakthroughs with the theater company season. Last year was not one of those. So for them to come back out with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I mean, you could just feel the joy that the local theater community felt on behalf of Gem Hunt this week when the announcement was made that after 50 years in the local theater community, he’s going to be appearing in a Denver Center show for the first time. You know, you love it when it all works out where the best person for the job happens to be right here in our backyard. And I think audiences appreciate it too. I think a lot of people are going to go to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof specifically to see a guy like Gem Hunt perform. And it’s in everybody’s best interest when that happens.

Alex Miller: For sure, yeah. Great for him.

Toni Tresca: Another cool show, not by the Denver Center in a totally different vein and scale, but being produced by Emancipation Theater Company is Jebediah Blackstone, Origin Story of an Alter Ego and the Untold Tales from the Dark Side of the West. This is being produced by Jeff Campbell and it’s a narrative of self exploration and cultural enlightenment about a cowboy poet and his journey through the frontier. I don’t know a ton more about it beyond that. I know it’s also incorporates elements of hip hop, spoken word, and other kinds of art forms to tell this story, but it sounds like a really exciting new piece of work.

John Moore: I’d go see it just because anything Jeff Campbell has to say is going to be interesting and incendiary and relevant and topical. But the live music component for this is going to be spectacular. Just the fact that, just almost as an aside, they listed that among the featured singers is going to be Erica Brown and if you look at the local blues scene over the past 30 years in Denver, they don’t get much bigger than the Erica Brown band and the fact that she’s gonna be doing a theater production. Just because she believes so much in the story and in Jeff Campbell, I just think it’s gonna be on fire.

Toni Tresca: The Evergreen Players are doing A Dark and Stormy Night in the Center Stage space out there. This is two different productions called Two Eerie Plays by Scott Gibson and Strange and Spooky Tales by Everscream’s Eric and Leanne Ritter. It’s gonna be taking place at the end of October. So some new spooky stories to add to the repertoire, hopefully.

Firehouse Theater is also doing some interesting work this season, including The Alabama Story, which kicks off at the end of September. It’s set during the civil rights movement and centers on a controversial children’s book about a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit and the controversy that ensued. And this is a play that is inspired by true events.

Flamboyant Theater is premiering the world premiere of You’ll Be Made of Ashes II in its new space in Lakewood, Three Leaches Theater, in September. This play centers on a character whose mom dies under mysterious circumstances. And so a strange sisters, Evelyn and Li Nan, must confront their old wounds and rivalries, which are exacerbated by this increasingly aggressive spirit who has taken over their mom’s house. It sounds like a kind of a spooky tale there.

Give Five Productions is bringing back its Hedwig and the Angry Inch that premiered last year won Clark Destiny Jones a Henry Award recently at Ballyhoo Table and Stage in November. So if you didn’t get a chance to check out that production last year, here is another chance to check out that show.

Over in Lone Tree, they are doing Nice Work If You Can Get It, in October. This is a screwball comedy that’s poking fun at the prohibition era, set to the glorious songs of George and Ira Gershwin.

Over at Miners Alley, they’re doing Diva Royale, which is this a play written by Jeff Daniels, and it’s being directed by Warren Sherrill, who is kind of on a hot streak lately, directing a shit ton this year. And this play tells the story of three stay-at-home moms from the Midwest who share a deep obsession for Celine Dion. And on a whim, they decide to take a spontaneous trip to New York City to see her in a one night only concert. So now it sounds like a lot of fun. That’s a regional premiere.

Alex Miller: Yeah, that’s cool. And I think that Miners Alley has a little bit of a relationship going on with the Purple Rose, Jeff Daniels’ theater through the playwright who did Jukebox at the Algonquin. So that’s a cool relationship. Maybe we can get Jeff on the pod.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, we should hit Paul Strolly up see if he can make that connection for us. You’re both fellow New Yorkers Alex maybe you make that connection you guys hit it off on the podcast together. Another show to keep your eye out on this fall. This is a warhorse for being done supposedly in a new way by Ovation West: Annie Get Your Gun. This is the musical about sharpshooter Annie Oakley and her rise to fame, it’s being produced Center Stage in September.

Performance Now is doing The Little Mermaid over at the Lakewood Cultural Center also in September. They’re not claiming to do it in a new way, just a very big lavish production of this Disney war horse.

Physically Disabled Theater Company is doing something pretty experimental and exciting, Dance Nation over at the People’s Building in Aurora in October. This is a Pulitzer Prize nominated play about ambition, identity, and adolescence as a pre-teen dance team navigates growing up and chasing glory at the national finals. And this piece is being directed by Jeree Henshaw. So I definitely star that one to get your tickets to.

John Moore: Yeah.

Alex Miller: Still, for sure.

Toni Tresca: Su Teatro is doing a pretty exciting production, Yankee Bajan. Am I saying that right? Bajan? I, yeah, let me take that again. Yeah. This is being presented by the Paris Bailey Arts Group, September 19th and 20th. And it’s a play with music that explores the experiences of the African American people who are returning to the lands of their family origin. And it’s kind of unpacking how one can return home to a place that’s never been home and what cultural and colonial baggage does one bring to that experience. So it sounds like a pretty heady piece, but definitely issues worth unpacking.

Alex Miller: Mm-hmm.

Toni Tresca: On a totally different note, Town Hall Art Center is doing the jukebox musical, Buddy, the Buddy Holly Story, September 12th. I’ll be reviewing this one for OnStage Colorado. I like this kind of this era of music. So I’ll be very curious to check out this production. And John, do you have a, do you have a special history with this show? I think I saw on Facebook this was your first show, right? Broadway show.

Alex Miller: Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask him about that. First Broadway show.

John Moore: Yeah, I did a little Facebook post where I just asked people what their first Broadway show was, if they’ve gone to see one just because mine happens to have been Buddy, the Buddy Holly Story in 1990, starting me on my journey of Broadway shows. So I have a sentimental spot in my heart for that show.

Alex Miller: It’s funny, I think mine was maybe Grease or Pippin when I was pretty young because we used to, I grew up on Long Island and so we got to go on field trips into the city to see shows when we were pretty young. Also Buddy Holly is also, my wife works for Texas Tech University, which is based in Lubbock, which is where Buddy is from and where the Buddy Holly Museum is from. And she’s always like, come down sometime. I’m like, the only reason I would go to Lubbock is to maybe go to the Buddy Holly Museum. But other than that, I don’t know.

John Moore: What about you, Toni?

Toni Tresca: My first Broadway show was Wicked. Newer show, but still on Broadway. That’s definitely a war horse now.

Alex Miller: Yeah.

Toni Tresca: Continuing in the Denver area, the Unleashed Theater is staging Sister Seance at the Bug Theater. This is a newer troupe to the area. This play follows three sisters who are taking a camping trip to honor the passing of their late mother when they stumble across a lost camp counselor who can speak with the spirits. Continuing this kind of seancey theme that is happening across shows around the state.

Veritas Productions is doing Jerry’s Girls at the JCC in Denver. And this is a celebration of Broadway’s golden age featuring the beloved music of legendary composer Jerry Herman. And rounding out the Denver metro area, Vintage Theater is presenting Steven Sondheim, which is Alex’s favorite composer, as we all know. Steven Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. It’s a part of its 25th anniversary season, kicking that off over there in Aurora. So I’ll be reviewing that show for OnStage next week. So keep your eye out on the site for that review.

Alex Miller: Great. So John, did we hit all the shows that you talked about on your piece in the Denver metro area? Is any news that you want to mention?

John Moore: Of shows that are new to Denver. Let me think, there were a couple. I would throw in a shout out for Miss Manhattan, which is Graham and Christina Fuller. They’re a married couple from Longmont who did that parenting musical at this time. Well, they worked on it for seven years and they realized the dream. Very few people do. They went all the way from Center Stage in Louisville to Town Hall Art Center to off-Broadway where they ran for several months last year and they’re back with a new musical called Miss Manhattan and it’s very different for people who saw that parenting musical but it also will come with a primo cast to introduce the story of Miss Manhattan who a hundred years ago was considered America’s first supermodel. They didn’t have that term then but this is a model who whose face still appears in many sculptures around New York City, artists of the time, we’re always going to this woman Audrey Munson, and her story takes a very dark turn. But she’s been largely forgotten from history. And so you can go and see this. I believe they’re doing it at the Dairy Arts Center, September 19 through the 28th. And some of the, some pretty big names, Megan Van De He and Turkish Wars is playing Audrey Munson. Sophia Dotson is back in town and in it along with a lot of other great talented people. I think the only other one on my list was the one called The Princess and the Goblins, which is by the relatively new Third Side Theater, which is just this wonderfully inventive company that combines devised work telling big sort of folklore kinds of stories and adding in their own live music and puppetry and telling some very imaginative stories in a new kind of creative way. This keeping with Halloween theme sort of goes subterranean on us with goblins and there’s a magical grandmother involved, so it’s kind of a fairy tale thing, but also a very dark kind of fairy tale. So I’m looking forward to that. There’s some, you know…

Alex Miller: Yeah, and we’re going to have a couple of the writers from and the director of that one on the podcast next week to talk about the goblins and the princess.

John Moore: Great, right? You know, we get to this point in the podcast, there’s 40 more shows we can talk about. Isn’t that one, isn’t that a wonderful problem to have that so much great theater is going on to talk about? So, so yeah, and I’m sure if you keep listening to your podcast, you’ll get to them all eventually.

Alex Miller: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, well, it’s gonna hit some of the shows that are going on in the mountains. Now, sometimes the term or region mountains can mean someplace that’s actually also in southern Colorado or on the western slope or Toni, you put in the conifer and evergreen shows and part of the Denver Metro, is fair, but they also kind of sometimes fall under mountains too. So with a grain of salt, Aspen Community Theater is doing Neil Simon’s Rumors, November 13th through 16th at the Wheeler Opera House is another show that I was in long ago and directed by Wendy Tennes, who was in Rumors with me all those many years ago. So they’ve been kind of quiet, Aspen Community Theater, so it’s good to see them coming back. I’m not sure what’s going on with them.

And then Bailey Theater Company, which is a little closer to the Denver area, but they’re doing Same Time Next Year, a really well-known show about a couple of adulterers who meet each year at the same place, that’s October 9th through 19th.

And then up in Breckenridge, they don’t have any strict plays going on in the fall, I think until their Christmas show, but they always do this thing called the Haunting of Breck Theater. This will be going on October 10th through 26th, which is a real Halloweeny spooky thing with this haunted interactive haunted house and activities and spooky cocktails and all that kind of stuff.

Carbondale, Thunder River Theater Company, True West is up there now. I am gonna try and get up to see that. Our friend Brian Lannis-Folkins is in that, directed by another friend of the pod, Missy Moore. But they’re also doing The Secretary in October, October 3rd through 19th. So this is about a woman who runs a small town gun company that aims to protect women by helping them defend themselves. So that’s pretty fraught political kind of story. So be interested to check that out as well.

Just real quick Creed Repertory is wrapping up their summer season. It runs through September 20th, so still have time to go down there and see Xanadu, The 39 Steps or The Fantastic but winter is coming to that town where it gets cleared out and there’s very few people there all winter long.

In Cripple Creek, they’re doing something this sounds kind of cool at the Butte Theatre on October 3rd through November 2nd. They’re doing The Vampire of Cripple Creek an adaptation of Dracula set in an abandoned Colorado hotel.

And then also the Glenwood Springs, the Vaudeville Review runs through October 12th with basically the summer show, but then they’ve got a holiday show starting November 14th running into January. So they’re kind of doing that Vaudeville thing, which is fun to check out. It’s also sort of a dinner theater. You can grab some food while you’re checking it out.

In Grand Lake, they are running the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater, which was a big winner at the Henry’s this year. They have their final show this season, Nonsense, running this week through October 4th.

And then in Urey, Upstart is doing, they’re doing an Iliad, which is actually a Thunder River theater company show in early October. So TRTC is sending that show up there for a little while.

And then in Silverthorne, Theatre Silco is doing their improv comedy show, Reply All, once a month through November, and then they’re doing a holiday edition of Murder for Two, which I didn’t know existed, December 5th through 21st.

And then I think finally Telluride Theater, they’re doing, along with most other theaters, anybody with seats in the house is doing some sort of a Rocky Horror thing on October 24th, but then they’re doing a, later in the year, they’re doing Cassidy the Musical, which is the story of Butch and Sundance, and the great Telluride bank robbery of 1889. So that’s the mountain regions.

John Moore: Okay, Alex, before you move to the Southern region, I have to throw two quick things in. You can edit them out later if you want. But speaking of Thunder River, did you notice that last weekend they had a surprise drop-in guest in William H. Macy dropped in to speak to He was in the Broadway studio though. He obviously has a long history with Sam Shepard and with True West. So was quite a thrill for the cast to have him show up.

Alex Miller: huh. Okay. Yes, yeah, so DLF had a picture.

John Moore: A lot of people don’t realize this, he and his wife, Felicity Huffman, both live right outside of Aspen. And so it was kind of nice to see them. But I feel like if we’re going to talk about Thunder River, and it’s not the fall, but I feel like based on what you said earlier, we should all put this on our calendar in May to get up there to see for Peter Pan on her 70th birthday, because I know how much you love Peter Pan stuff.

Alex Miller: All right, well, we’ll maybe check it out. Excellent. All right, Toni, you want to do, what do we got next? The Northern Colorado, Fort Collins area?

John Moore: Doing my part.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, I just got a couple up here. Kick us off with Boss Blue, which is doing Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play in September. This is a very avant-garde retelling of an episode from The Simpsons that set during the apocalypse that gradually gets more and more insane over time as it’s retold and reenacted by this group who is existing in the apocalypse. Really interesting play. Really curious to see what this group does with that up in the Fort Collins area. Have either of you guys seen this one before?

Alex Miller: No, no, it sounds interesting.

John Moore: I saw it when Catamounts was the first company in Denver to do that show. I don’t know, maybe six or seven years ago. I mean, it’s kind of cool, you know, because as you say, it’s a dark comedy. People get confused when they hear The Simpsons stuff, but it’s really, as you say, a play about a futuristic society after a global catastrophe. But a few people have survived and they’re gathering together to support each other. And they basically act out this one episode of the show out of boredom and a way of like entertaining each other.

Toni Tresca: Nice. Okay, that makes sense. This is pretty, they’re up in Fort Collins. It’s a different group than the Catamounts. Did the Catamounts do this outside or was this in the Dairy Arts Center?

John Moore: It was indoors for sure.

Toni Tresca: Okay, cool. Also up in the Northern Colorado area, but on a very different note, Candlelight Dinner Playhouse is doing Steel Magnolias. Hardly a new title. Lots of different companies are doing this. This year even have done it already. But Candlelight is, they do always do a really good job up there. Yeah, it is, and it is a rare non-musical, which, so I thought that might as well flag that here.

Alex Miller: The rare, rare non-musical.

Toni Tresca: And then finally, Open Stage Theatre & Company is doing Stephen King’s Misery at the Lincoln Center in November. So just after spooky season, but it’ll always fun time to do Misery. It’s a great show and kicking off their season.

Alex Miller: All right, well going all the way down the other end of the state, you can also see Misery in Westcliffe. The Westcliffe Play-Os are doing it October 3rd through 12th. And a good spooky season show, like you said. Also down south in Durango, they’re doing a Rocky Horror. I think they’re doing the Richard O’Brien thing, which is like the musical, not like the shadow cast thing in late October. And then they’re doing the 24 hour theater festival, November 22nd, which is, you know, Curious has been doing that a couple of years now where they just write new plays in the 24 hour period and present them. It’s a lot of fun. And then in La Junta, which I believe is how you pronounce it, they’re doing A Walk in the Woods. The Pick and Wire players are doing Lee Blessing’s Cold War play, A Walk in the Woods, September 25th through 28th. And I’ll just wrap up by doing the Western Slope. You know, the Western Slope is another thing that Most Coloradans think of it as the largely uninhabited part of the state that includes Grand Junction and Montrose, but not necessarily the mountain towns or the southern part of the state. But according to most of the things I could find, Colorado, History Colorado’s Colorado Encyclopedia, they basically said it’s one third of the state, west of the continental divide is considered the western slope. I don’t think that’s normally how people think of it, but the way we have it on our calendar is that region is just mostly the few population centers that are, I don’t know, say west of Aspen or something like that. But anyway, also includes some mountain places as well. So the big news here is I think it’s the first full season for Colorado Mesa University’s Astoria Theater. So they’re going to be doing Tartuffe in September, but they also have this spotlight series. So sort of similar to like Lone Tree Arts Center or Pace, they’re having some touring shows coming through. They have Garrison Keillor. There’s a production of Mrs. Doubtfire in December. And then in 2026, they’ve got things like The Book of Mormon, Richard Thomas doing Mark Twain and stuff. So I would love to see that play sometime. It looks like a beautiful new facility there in the Grand Junction area. And then also in Montrose, the Magic Circle players are doing something called What a Spot. So this is got some sort of a thing about an amorous gorilla named Lolita and some, I don’t know, shipwrecked society, castaways on stupid islands. So anyway, sounds like it’s like an all-ages show, but sounds like one that can take the kids to as well. So, all right, I think that’s it for our fall preview. I know it’s a long list, but it’s nice to hear a long list of new stuff coming up in all these theaters that are productions.

Toni Tresca: Yep. Better to take the time and go through all these and have all of these options than not for sure. What were you going to say, John?

John Moore: My parting advice to anyone who might still be listening to this is go see a show that the government does not want you to see.

Alex Miller: Yeah, and also one you haven’t seen before. All right, well, that’s it for our fall preview. John Moore, thanks so much for coming on to talk theater with us. It’s always great to have you on. You know more about Colorado theater than any person alive. So we’re…

John Moore: I’m not sure anymore. I’ve learned a lot, but you guys have sort of taken the mantle and I’m happy about that. I learned a lot by listening to you guys. Thanks for the platform. I’d be remiss if I didn’t part by saying, speaking of going to see a show, there are plenty of these companies that do shows that are to the benefit of the Denver Actors Fund, which means they’re to the benefit of all Colorado theater artists on stage and off. And if you ever find yourself trying to figure out your theater going calendar and you don’t know where to go. A secondary source that you can look at is denveractorsfund.com slash events because we have an online calendar that is just those theater shows that will be donating part of their proceeds to the Denver Actors Fund. We get a lot of industry nights, a lot of Thursday nights, a lot of Monday nights. So if you want to see a show on a kind of what’s considered to be an off day, just by going to see show and buying a ticket, you might be supporting the Denver Actors Fund. So I encourage you to check that your on your way.

Alex Miller: Great, and you can always just go on the website and donate directly.

John Moore: And thanks for having me. And as always, I’m narrowing my mind trying to recount how many different ways I got myself in trouble on this podcast. And I think I might have set a new record. So we’ve got that going for us.

Alex Miller: Ha ha ha ha. All right, well, hang in there. We’ve still got more to come. My conversation with Emy McGuire is coming up here. Thanks again, John.

Toni Tresca: Yeah. Nice talking to you, John. Have a good rest of your day.

John Moore: See you Toni.

Interview with Emy McGuire

Alex Miller: All right, we are here with Emy McGuire, the playwright of The Legend of Anne Bonny. Welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast, Emy.

Emy McGuire: Thank you, thanks for having me.

Alex Miller: Yeah, you are right in the thick of it. So you’ve got one more weekend of Anne Bonny, where you not only the playwright of this musical, but also you are one of the lead characters in it. So are you feeling a little tired?

Emy McGuire: Yes, but tired and kind of a jittery sense. I have a lot of energy. I can’t even sleep, but exhausted. Yeah.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. You definitely have a lot of energy because I was looking at your website and all the things that you’re up to. You’ve written like 700 novels and 40 plays and you’ve been on a thousand shows and you’re only like in your 20s. So I was like, man, I wish I had that kind of energy. I used to, I used to. But anyway, well, so let’s talk a little bit about the legend of Anne Bonny. So this is a joint production right now with Two-Cent Lion and Shifted Lens. And it’s how’s it going? Are you guys packing them in?

Emy McGuire: It’s, yeah, it’s been amazing, way beyond my expectations of what the production could be. We’ve had so many nights sold out. I think we’re a couple tickets away from selling out this final weekend. And the response, the enthusiasm from people has just absolutely blown me away. I’ve been so honored to meet all these people who were touched by the story and people who were surprised by the story, people who knew that they would like it but didn’t know they would like it this much, people who want to see it in a bigger context. It’s been incredible.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh, that’s great. So Anne Bonny is such an interesting character because I actually knew her from watching the Black Sails thing on Netflix, which is a really kind of a corny pirate series, but it’s fun to watch. So I was familiar with it there, but when I was reading a little bit about her, when I was writing the review of your show, I was like, well, there’s, she’s kind of a blank canvas that we don’t know much about her. So you can kind of put whatever you want on her. You made her much more swashbuckling, you know, of course, you know, you’re not going to have her just sitting around being a powder, you know, bringing up powder from the hold or something. But you also have this queer element to it, which is also kind of historic. There was this other woman on the ship. So how did you go down that sort of that side of things with the romance at the heart of it?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, it did not start that way. It definitely began as just Anne’s story. And from the beginning, it’s been called The Legend of Anne Bonny because it’s not historical. It’s very much a historical fan fiction or a what if, a look behind the scenes of just my own imagination more than actual history, but with a historical backdrop. And the romance started happening because I started writing this when I was 17. And during the end of high school, early college, I started figuring out my own journey as a queer person. And that started just slowly seeping in to the art I was making. And the character of Mar, who is the character that I play, was initially based on someone that I was falling in love with at the time. So it very much became a personal story. I think there’s a lot of self-inserts with Anne and her level of ambition and her quick temper and her hotheadedness. And then with Mar as the love interest, the person who balanced me out, who was able to make me complete in that sense.

Alex Miller: Yeah, I feel like maybe you could write a follow up that’s, you know, where she doesn’t die and Mar and Anne go off on more adventures or something like that. Yeah, because they really, you know, was like so much of their origin or, you know, the story of their relationship that builds through the show and then it kind of ends abruptly for obvious reasons. So did you feel do you feel like there’s more of that to tell?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, they deserve it. Yeah. I would love there to be more, but obviously in real life, Mary Read is the one who died in prison. We have that on record that she died of a fever. People are speculating that she died because she was pregnant. And I knew from the beginning that I wanted there to be that plot twist of, in my version, it’s Anne who dies because Anne’s the one who wants so badly to live. And I think in a storytelling context that you need to make what happens to your character the thing they’re most afraid of. And the thing she’s most afraid of isn’t dying, it’s dying in a kind of in a lackluster way. And that’s what makes and what Mar is most afraid of is being the center of attention, being the person, the room that everyone’s staring at, she wants to melt into the background. So they make sacrifices for each other in that final scene.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. Yeah, well, it’s really impactful. As you know, in my review, I really kind of appreciated what you brought to the stage. And I really do think this thing could have legs. You know, do you have any plans to take it elsewhere? Anybody other theaters interested in it or anything like that?

Emy McGuire: I’ve had a few people just from TikTok, TikTok’s been blowing up and people keep messaging me and asking about certain things. There’s nothing concrete happening, but we’re in talks right now with a very important director who might be able to get it somewhere in New York. And that would be the end goal is getting it New York. I would move there. I would do anything to make it happen. Or the West End or anything. Yeah. So we’ll see what happens next.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I wanted to ask about you had another play up this summer. Was it did I see it was in Alaska?

Emy McGuire: Yes, yeah, I wrote a play called, it’s a burlesque 1950s nature versus civilization show called Leaving for a Moon. And I wrote it specifically for this really cool company in Valdez, Alaska. They’re called the Far North Follies. And that went up and that was running this whole summer. It just ended a few weeks ago. And I think they’re producing it again, the same play next year.

Alex Miller: Okay. And so have you ever been to Valdez? Okay.

Emy McGuire: Yes, that I went to Valdez a year and a half ago and that’s where I got inspired to write the play. Then I wrote the play and I was showing it to my friends who lived in Valdez and they decided they wanted that to be their next show for the summer. So then I went to Valdez earlier a few months ago and it’s just a really magical place. It’s like this little fairy tale kingdom that no one really knows about because it’s tiny. There’s only 3,000 people there and it’s just on the very edge of everything, but it’s a really stunning place, very inspirational.

Alex Miller: Okay. Yeah. Of course, it’s known for an unfortunate incident a while ago with a giant oil spill. Yeah, all of it. I’ve never been to Alaska, but I’ve heard that it’s just a beautiful area. Well, speaking of, well, that’s cold. You’ve been in a lot of warm weather activities. So another thing that’s interesting about you list in your bio that you’re a novelist, playwright, actor, pirate. And you actually have pretty good claim to that because not only have you playing one at Anne Bonny, but you had this all this experience on the sea. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, this was life-changing for me. I was in college and I had just gotten into this study abroad program in Dublin for acting. So I was all set to go to Ireland and then I was feeling incredibly burnt out from writing, from theatre. I was having a really difficult time with some professors at my school and just kind of in a really dark period of my life. And I kept having these dreams about the water and the ocean and so I ended up googling study abroad programs by the ocean. And the first thing that popped up was Seamester, which is a, not to be confused with Semester at Sea. Semester at Sea is a cruise ship program. Seamester is a sailboat. So you board a sailboat with 20 something other young people and you pick your destinations and then you just set off and you don’t know anybody. You’re not allowed to speak to anybody before you arrive. So I flew to Rome in the fall of 2022 and boarded this ship with 32 other people. And we went from Rome, we went down through the Med, we went to France and Monaco and Spain, down to the Canary Islands, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and then we crossed the Atlantic and ended up in Dominica and ended in Antigua. And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not as hard as writing the musical, but it was hugely inspiring and terrifying. And I It’s hard to describe. It’s the reason that I learned how to deal with panic attacks. It’s the reason that I got my book idea and so many other countless things.

Alex Miller: Wow, what an experience. So did it make you a lifelong sailor? Like you want to get out there again or maybe never go back or somewhere in between.

Emy McGuire: Well, I’m going back. It’s going to happen. I keep almost going and then a show will happen. Like I was going to go to the Caribbean and then I got cast in Romeo and Juliet. So I was like, okay, I’ll stay here. And then I was going to go at the end of this month and now there’s all this other stuff happening. So someday I will go back to sea.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. Okay. So you got your, studied theater, dance and performance and also creative writing at the New College of Florida. Did you take any playwriting courses there that gave you some basis or, you know, to write some of your plays, musicals?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, I took one playwriting course at the very end, so I had already written Anne Bonny at the time, but it was through this amazing professor, Glenn Shaddell, and he really helped rework my vision from being like I’m just writing this one single musical to maybe I’m a playwright maybe I can write other shows and it doesn’t have to be this one random story so that that was a great class that was during my last semester at college.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. And when you, at that point, did you go back and rewrite your script, your book for Anne Bonny or?

Emy McGuire: Yes, that was because it was during the last semester that was the semester where we were putting on Anne Bonny for the first time and so I did a ton of edits afterwards. Once Anne Bonny had gone up in November then I graduated December and then afterwards I was just editing it and workshopping it and taking it to Shifted Lens which was the second workshop we did.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. But yet you’re from Colorado originally, right? Where did you grow up?

Emy McGuire: Yes. Yeah, I grew up in Littleton and then I moved to Florida for college. And then I went to sea and then I moved back to Colorado and I moved back to Florida to do some Renaissance fairs. And then I went on tour for this national performance company and then, and now I’m back here. So.

Alex Miller: Okay. Okay. All right. Well, let me talk a little bit about your novelist side. So you have a you’ve written several already. Is that correct? And you have them, you get them published, or you just throw them up on Kindle or what?

Emy McGuire: Yes. No, they, so one of them is about to be published. I got actually a year ago yesterday, I got the call from Harper Collins that they wanted to publish my novel and that’s coming out this December. It’s called No One Aboard. It’s about this wealthy family that goes missing from their yacht. And it’s an idea I had while I was crossing the Atlantic. I woke up from a boat dream and just had this lightning bolt idea.

Alex Miller: Wow, that is super exciting. Now how did they know to call it? I mean, that’s unheard of. Usually you have to go and try and find an agent or you already had an agent. Okay.

Emy McGuire: Yeah, I got my agent in 2018 when I was in high school and we wrote a lot of books. I wrote a lot of books with her and they never really went anywhere. They never sold and then suddenly I got back from the boat. I wrote the boat book and then that one finally sold last year. It’s been a long time. Yeah.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is so exciting. That sounds like something that could also be like, I don’t know, a Netflix series or a film or something too, right? Could be next. Can you can you tell a little bit more just about the characters that are in? I’m sorry, what’s the name of the novel again?

Emy McGuire: Oh my god. Yeah. It’s called No One Aboard.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. And who are these people?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, so it’s seven people aboard this sailboat yacht and four of them are the Kamerans. They’re the Cameron family. The father of the family is a business tycoon, a self-made, pulled up by his bootstraps kind of man. And his wife is this television actress. She was very famous in the nineties and they have two twin children who just graduated high school. So the trip is to celebrate the children’s graduation. And then they have three crew members who are attending them. They’re chef, a sailor, and a captain, who’s also a scuba diving instructor. And the seven of them go out to sea, and they’re meant to return in a couple of weeks. And then the story begins with a local fisherman finding their boat floating off the shores of Florida, and it’s empty.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. I feel like there was something in the news recently about some people disappearing off a yacht. Yeah.

Emy McGuire: It happens a lot. It happens a lot and we don’t really hear about it. Like it happened a couple years ago. This Japanese boat completely just all of their crew members gone and they still don’t know where they went. And there’s theories and happened a lot in the 1800s 1700s as well but it’s still happening today. Ghost ships still happen.

Alex Miller: Yeah, that’s crazy. Well, I’m looking forward to reading No One Aboard. So that comes out, it looks like the publishes December 2nd. So you got a little bit to wait, but that’s so exciting that you’ve got a like a Harper Collins behind it. So best of luck with that. Then I know, so you’ll be done with Anne Bonny after this weekend. What’s next?

Emy McGuire: Yeah, so we actually have a big announcement today. We’re going to offer an online show. We’re going to show one of the recordings for all the people who couldn’t make it. And that’ll be, those tickets will be available on OnStage. And once that, that’ll happen in late October. Once that’s over, I want to work on putting together a cast album to stream places and then obviously I’ll be submitting to more festivals and trying to get some something to happen on the east coast or something to happen in Europe or whatever it takes to get bigger and get to the next step.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh, great. So from this run that you just, that you’re almost completed here, are you going back in? Have you learned more things that you, or seen more things you want to tweak? Never ending.

Emy McGuire: It’s never ending and it’s so hard because I come from a book background where at some point you’re like, alright, the book is done, I can step away. But a musical’s never done. It’s never done. And even when I think a line is perfect, I’ll suddenly have a brilliant actor come in and do something that is even more perfect and then I’ll change it because of them. But then that won’t work for a different actor who plays that character and then they’ll do something and And then story-wise, you can endlessly tweak a story because of where you want the focus to be and there’s so much I want to do to iron out act one and make it as strong as act two and to just clear up some of the muddier parts and make some parts hit harder and all those kinds of things.

Alex Miller: Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing about theater. It’s never, never quite finished until, you know, the playwright is maybe gone from this earth, people can do. But you’re going to be around for a long time cranking stuff out. I, for one, I’m very excited to see what you do next. I think it’s super exciting to see a young Colorado playwright, actor, theater, artists like yourself, just killing it out there. And really, just wish you the best. Broken legs all around and all that. So thanks so much for coming on and talking to the OnStage Colorado podcast about some of this amazing career that you’ve got going here.

Emy McGuire: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Alex. I really appreciate it.

Alex Miller: All right.

Closing

Toni Tresca: Well, that was a great conversation with Emy. It’s really cool to hear a little bit more about how that musical came together.

Alex Miller: Yeah, she’s great. I mean, she is the kind of artist performer just with so much energy and passion and youth that I think of like as I get older. I’m like, oh, man, I should put that in a bottle and have used some of it. But yeah, she’s great. So it’s a lot of fun. So all right. Well, next week, we’re going to our bonus episode. We’re not sure what all we’re going to be talking about, but I know we’re going to have another cool guest host couple this time, Matt and Libby Zambrano from King Penny radio show you know, they’re busy with their the King Penny thing, but Matt has also been on fire with, you know, being in other shows. So he was at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival on a couple of shows this year. And I think he’s got some other cool stuff coming up. So definitely come check that out. And then we’ll also have an interview with Third Side Theater, I mentioned earlier, whose production of Princess and the Goblin opened September 12 at the People’s Building. So we’ve got the writing team of Kelly Fox, Brian Dellen, and director Aaron Vega on the show. Also coming up, reviews to look out for on the site include The Mouse Trap at Arvada, Eureka Day at Curious, Buddy at Town Hall, The Thin Place at BETC, and Merrily We Roll Along at Vintage. So Toni, you’re going to be busy writing some reviews for us. I’m really excited about that.

Toni Tresca: Yeah, me too. I kind of have been taking it a little bit easy these past, this past like two weeks not seeing a ton of shows because I’ll be out at the theater almost every, every night of the weekend in September, just seeing stuff, writing reviews, which I’m excited about. Like we talked about in the fall theater preview, there is a lot to see this fall and I’m excited to tackle some of it. And if you want to stay up to date on what is going on in theaters across the state, the best way to do that is subscribe to the OnStage Colorado newsletter, which comes out pretty much every Thursday, and then rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast to ensure that this keeps coming to you every week.

Alex Miller: Absolutely. All right. Well, that’s all for this week. Thanks so much for listening. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca: And I’m Toni Tresca and we’ll see you at the show.

Alex Miller

Editor & Publisher at OnStage Colorado | + 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 County 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.

Toni Tresca

+ 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.

2 Comments

Abby Boes September 5, 2025 at 10:42 am - Reply
Loved this podcast. I also love that Onstage is becoming more critical in their reviews. While I did not agree with Alice K’s Assassins review, I thought it was well written and showed an intelligent, critical viewpoint of her experience of the show. It was her honest opinion, without fear of offending. I thought it was brave and very well written. We need that. Keep that honest, critical reporting coming our way. Nice work, Onstage.
- Alex Miller September 5, 2025 at 11:06 am - Reply
  Thanks Abby!

Podcast: A hot fall theatre lineup and a chat with a writer/pirate

The guys are joined by the Denver Gazette’s John Moore, plus an interview with Legend of Anne Bonny playwright Emy McGuire

Transcript

OnStage Colorado Podcast Episode 142 – Fall Theater Preview with John Moore

Opening

Sponsors

Fall Theater Preview

Interview with Emy McGuire

Closing

Alex Miller

Toni Tresca

2 Comments

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Podcast: A hot fall theatre lineup and a chat with a writer/pirate

The guys are joined by the Denver Gazette’s John Moore, plus an interview with Legend of Anne Bonny playwright Emy McGuire

Transcript

OnStage Colorado Podcast Episode 142 – Fall Theater Preview with John Moore

Opening

Sponsors

Fall Theater Preview

Interview with Emy McGuire

Closing

Alex Miller

Toni Tresca

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