In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Alex Miller and Toni Tresca welcome Colorado theatre power couple Matt and Libby Zambrano. The conversation covers recent productions including The Mousetrap at the Arvada Center, plus season announcements from Phamaly Theatre Company, Aurora Fox Arts Center and Central City Opera.

King Penny Radio Show The Zambranos discuss their unique 1940s improvised radio show, King Penny, which combines audience suggestions with live foley effects and period costumes. After nearly a decade in New York’s theatre scene, the couple returned to Colorado where Matt continues his acting and directing work while Libby serves as HR manager at the Arvada Center.

Third Side Theatre Later in the episode, we speak with the creative team behind Third Side Theater’s world premiere of The Princess and the Goblins – writers Kellie Fox and Brian Dowling, along with director Aaron Vega. This collaborative theatre company adapts George MacDonald’s 1872 fairy tale using minimal sets, shadow puppetry and live musical underscoring. The production runs September 12-20 at The People’s Building in Aurora and promises to appeal to audiences of all ages with its blend of adventure, humor and theatrical magic.

Chapter 1: Show Reviews and Recent Theater Experiences

Hosts: Alex Miller and Toni Tresca
Guests: Matt and Libby Zambrano

The episode opens with technical difficulties but quickly moves into discussing recent theater experiences. All four participants had seen The Mousetrap at the Arvada Center, praising director Lynne Collins’ balance of comedy and mystery. The cast included Annie Barbour, Jacob Dresch (who brought significant comedic elements to his role), and Garethe Saxe as Major Metcalfe.

Other shows discussed:

• Toni saw The Phantom of the Opera with live orchestra at the Mayan Theater.
• Matt and Libby attended Assassins at Miners Alley and multiple shows at Creede Repertory Theatre during their annual Headwaters Play Festival.
• Libby saw The Legend of Anne Bonny at People’s Theater, which she described as original, devised theater

Chapter 2: Industry News and Season Announcements

Performance Now Theatre Company announced Kelly Van Osbree as their new artistic director, taking over from Alisa Inahara after her 20-year tenure. Van Osbree previously led Brighton’s Platte Valley Theatre Arts.

Season announcements covered:

• Phamaly Theater Company’s 2026 season (5 shows themed “We are here”):
  • Little Women adaptation at Northglenn Arts
  • Violet (co-production with Aurora Fox)
  • World premiere of 504 the Musical at DCPA
  • Tiny Beautiful Things as one-woman show with 85 video participants
  • Pericles adaptive performance at Lone Tree Art Center
• Aurora Fox Art Center’s 2026 season (5 shows):
  • Waiting for Godot
  • Fat Ham (Colorado premiere)
  • Violet (co-production)
  • Feeding Beatrice
  • Hank Williams Lost Highway
• Central City Opera’s 94th season (June-August 2026):
  • The Marriage of Figaro
  • The Ballad of Baby Doe (marking Colorado’s 150th anniversary)
  • Master Class

Matt Zambrano as the Bishop of Carlisle in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production of ‘Richard II’ this summer. | Photo: Jennifer Koskinen

Chapter 3: King Penny Radio Show – Interview with Matt and Libby Zambrano

Matt and Libby discuss their 1940s improvised radio show, King Penny, which they’ve been performing since 2022. The show features:

• Full 1940s costumes and vintage radio microphones
• Live Foley artist and pianist
• Audience-suggested genres, titles, and fake products to advertise
• Format that challenges traditional improv by requiring performers to “tell, not show”

Background: The couple met doing improv in 2004 at Denver’s Impulse Theater, spent nine and a half years in New York (living in Astoria), and returned to Colorado during the pandemic. Matt now works as an actor and director, while Libby serves as HR manager at the Arvada Center.

Chapter 4: Third Side Theatre – The Princess and the Goblins

Guests: Kellie Fox, Brian Dowling (writers), and Aaron Vega (director)

The Third Side Theatre, founded in 2022 by nine co-founding members, focuses on original and rarely-done works with highly collaborative creation processes. Their adaptation of George MacDonald’s 1872 fairy tale The Princess and the Goblins features:

Production elements:

• Minimal set design with two boxes, puppets, shadow puppetry, and handheld lights
• Live musical underscoring (not a full musical)
• Viewpoints staging technique for collaborative physical storytelling
• Family-friendly content with spooky elements (compared to Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal)

Story: Princess Irene, locked away by her father, befriends a minor boy and discovers a goblin plot to take over the sun realm, with guidance from her magical great-great-grandmother.

Performance details: September 12-20 at the People’s Building in Aurora

Upcoming Content Preview

The episode concludes with announcements of upcoming podcast interviews and reviews, including Tim Kennedy from Ovation West and multiple show reviews by Toni Tresca.

Transcript

Compiled by AI weasels.

OnStage Colorado Podcast – Episode Transcript

Alex Miller (00:00) It’s like when the director says, that was perfect, let’s do it again. Rehearsal. So, all right, well, hello and welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca (00:11) And I’m Toni Tresca, and today on the show we’ve got two very special guests with us, Matt and Libby Zambrano. How’s it going, guys?

Matt & Libby (00:19) Hey, happy to be here. Hello. Thank you for having us today.

Alex Miller (00:22) Yeah, thanks for coming on. Hopefully it sticks. We’ve had a little in and out with our tech here. So you’ll be here for the first part of the show and in a minute we’ll get to what you have been up to. And then later in the episode, I’ll share a conversation I had with some of the team behind Third Side Theater’s new show, The Princess and the Goblin, which is starting maybe today or tomorrow.

Toni Tresca (00:44) Yeah, definitely coming up soon. It’s a whimsical fairy tale story that’s being done over at the People’s Building in Aurora, directed by Aaron Vega, who normally does a lot of the behind the scenes stuff for that building. So it’ll be very cool to see his work played out on stage and that world premiere brought to life.

Alex Miller (00:58) Right. Yeah, it sounds really cool. So I’m gonna try and get out and see that.

Toni Tresca (01:07) Definitely. But we’ll hear more of that conversation a little bit later in the episode. But first, let’s turn to what we have seen on stage since we last recorded. I know that I saw you both, Matt and Libby, over at The Mousetrap at the Arvada Center. So let’s begin our conversation there since I know everybody on this podcast recording session has seen that show.

Matt (01:29) Yeah, I absolutely loved it. I thought that Lynn Collins did a fantastic job of discovering the comedy within the mystery and the mystery within the comedy and sort of honoring both of those worlds. And I thought it was incredibly well performed.

Alex Miller (01:44) It was, it really was.

Libby (01:45) Agreed, I had such a great time. Yeah, so proud to be a part of the Arvada Center. Be there for that special night.

Alex Miller (01:51) Yeah, what was your take Toni?

Toni Tresca (01:52) Well, it was my first time seeing The Mousetrap as I was finding, I was talking with a lot of folks in the lobby, theater folks even, like Jeff Newman playwright, chatting in the lobby a little bit before the show. And we were both just like, yeah, we’ve never seen this play before. I know it’s a war horse. I know it gets done all the time, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t new audience members who haven’t seen it.

And I was finding a lot of new people along the way. So I was definitely trying to piece together the mystery. It was super fun to watch this colorful cast of characters. I definitely see a lot of inspirations for things like Clue and like Knives Out in this show now seeing this play and seeing the story. I’m like, oh my gosh, I get these, all of these other references are unlocked for me. And I did, of course, absolutely.

Alex Miller (02:39) The Play That Goes Wrong of course.

Toni Tresca (02:44) And I gotta say, I did not guess the murderer at all. I won’t give any spoilers away here on the podcast. That is the reason to see it. Even though it’s the longest running show in the world, they still try to keep that secret, which I think is really fun and magical. So I will not spoil, but I didn’t guess it.

Alex Miller (03:05) Yeah, yeah, I would, you know, it’s, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it, but it was such a long time ago that I, you know, of course I knew the basics, but yeah, great. So we had Annie Barber, Jacob Dresh was playing the character who probably had the most funny added to his character by the director. And really more than I thought that the script had in it.

Matt (03:25) That role in particular, yeah. Yeah, I think that… Exactly, yeah. When you have somebody with the comic chops like Jacob Dresh. And I think that role might function as a little bit of a red herring. You put him out there to sort of get the audience thinking, okay, well, this is obviously one of the first characters you meet. This has to be it. But then you meet several other characters who all then sort of start to play in as well.

Toni Tresca (03:26) That’s what you get when you cast a clown.

Matt (03:51) It really does become a game of guessing from the audience point of view.

Alex Miller (03:55) Yeah. Yeah. And also Gareth Sachs, who is one of the favorite people to see on stage as Major Metcalfe was great. And, you know, Rodney Lascano as Mr. Paravaccini. So a lot of fun stuff. I have to say that when I seeing it, I didn’t find myself like on the edge of my seat like I thought that that play was. It’s a little bit of a slow burn in places. So it’s not like a real action thriller, like, you know, Wait Until Dark or something like that.

Matt (04:22) I would agree with that. I found myself sitting much more comfortably in the comedy of the production so therefore it kept me sort of distracted from the actual scariness of the situation that like, I don’t know who’s gonna be killed off next. But then it made those murders to be that much more exciting when they did happen.

Alex Miller (04:47) Yeah. And of course, great production values. I mean, we talked to Brian Melgrave on the pod a couple of weeks ago about this particular set. And it was like, you know, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful set. Not like anything, you know, off the wall, of course, it’s just supposed to look like an English manor, but it was beautifully done.

Toni Tresca (05:06) Although I will say on opening night, our crowd did quite literally applaud when the snow started to fall in that window from the back. That was a pretty impressive spectacle and it was fairly convincing, I thought, through that frosty window. Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Miller (05:24) And the duration of it, it snowed for quite a while. Most of the first act.

Matt (05:27) Yeah.

Alex Miller (05:28) So, all right. Well, so that’s The Mousetrap, which has got a good long run. I think they’re doing a ton of shows. So there’s plenty of opportunity to get out to that through October. What else did you get to see this weekend?

Toni Tresca (05:41) I also went out to see The Phantom of the Opera with the live Corchestra Orchestra. This was their encore performance. I went to see this when they did it at the Mayan Theater in August, at the beginning of August, and I just had to see it again, because this group plays an original live rock score that they’ve composed underneath the 1925 silent film, The Phantom of the Opera.

Alex Miller (05:48) Nice.

Toni Tresca (06:09) at the Mayan Theater. It’s a really impressive spectacle that they’ve done. When I went in August, they recorded it live. So you guys will be able to listen to their recording and play it against The Phantom of the Opera, the silent film, if you want at home, because they’re gonna make their recordings accessible. They’ve done this quite a few times with silent films like Nosferatu and Metropolis. So those scores are already available, but.

But this one hasn’t been released yet. So to experience it, you had to go to this encore screening, which was also sold out like the previous event. Again, we talked about it on this show a number of times. Even though movie theaters we hear all the time are in this very dire state, it is really impressive when under the right circumstances, you see all these people showing up for. And it was a lot of young people showing up to see this film from 100 years ago.

Alex Miller (06:59) That’s great. That’s great. That sounds really interesting. What about you, Matt and Libby? Have you guys seen anything in the last couple of weeks that stood out for you?

Matt (07:09) Well, we had the opportunity to go see Assassins a couple weeks ago, which was absolutely fantastic. I thought an incredible production, incredibly acted and designed. And that was my first time at the new Miners Alley space as well, which was really cool to see. And just amazing the work they’re doing over there in making that building. I was also in Creed last weekend and got to see all of the shows down there. So Xanadu, The Fantasticks, Silent Sky, and The 39 Steps.

Alex Miller (07:14) Oh.

Alex Miller (07:39) Wow.

Matt (07:39) And there’s something magical about that town. And when you’re there and you’re seeing shows, it really is just, there’s nothing like it. And they did a really great job on all of those productions as well. Yes, and what was the show that you saw at the People’s Theater? The Legend of Anne Bonny, yes. I saw that, which blew my mind. And that is the kind of theater that I absolutely love and wish that there was more of in this town, which is original, devised, unique.

Alex Miller (07:54) Yeah.

Toni Tresca (07:55) Yeah.

Matt (08:05) actors who are giving it their all, believe in what they’re doing 100% and you just get so drawn into that play, like from the moment it starts and I really hope it has a larger future here and abroad.

Alex Miller (08:16) Yeah, we spoke with Emy McGuire on the podcast last week about it and yeah, we hope that one. We’re hoping it goes all the way someday because it really looks like it’s got legs, you know, could go somewhere. So yeah, that’s great. So Matt, you were down in Creed for the Headwaters Play Festival, right? What were you doing there as part of that?

Matt (08:35) That’s correct. I was directing a reading of a new play by a group called Dragon CEO Puppet Troupe, and they are a bilingual theater company that creates mostly shadow puppet theater. And as part of the new Headwaters Play Festival, Creed had commissioned them to write a new play. So they wrote a play about Federico Garcia Lorca and two of his associates on a night where, similar to One Night in Miami, if you’re familiar with that play, where Hermana Hilda Hollans and Falla, a famous composer, all three of them got together on Three Kings’ Night, which is the celebration of the three wise men in Spain. This is a true story, at Federico Garcia Lorca’s home, and they put on an evening of three puppet shows for his family and his friends. And so this play was sort of about that night, but also about Lorca’s legacy and the Spanish Civil War. It was really beautiful and really cool to watch. And I’d actually never seen anything like their kind of puppetry before. So it was really neat to be a part of that whole weekend.

Alex Miller (09:34) That’s great. And anything else, Toni? Kibbles and bits. What was that?

Toni Tresca (09:37) Yeah, I went to this comedy show slash fundraiser for animal rescues that’s being done by comedian BK Sherad. It’ll be happening pretty regularly on the first Saturday of every month at 4 p.m. at the Denver Comedy Underground. And each show features a new animal rescue that they’re going to be supporting.

At this time, they had some foster dogs in attendance in the audience. So dogs were sitting amongst people at the Denver Comedy Underground. Comedians were riffing about the dogs. They brought the dogs up on stage. It was a very lighthearted time. The only thing that was odd was it felt strange to be watching standup comedy at 4 p.m. with the mostly sober crowd. Usually the comedy people, they joked during the show. Well, and yeah, with dogs, that’s a good point, Alex.

Alex Miller (10:24) Yeah. With dogs.

Toni Tresca (10:33) But they joked during the show that normally their audience comes in almost comically drunk and rowdy, and so it was interesting to just have to let the jokes land as they were.

Alex Miller (10:40) Right, that’s great. Yeah, well the only other thing I got out to was I got to my one show at Red Rocks this year. So Spoon with the Pixies. So Spoon’s one of my favorite alt rock bands. They blew the Pixies off the stage. They were the opening act. The Pixies were just kinda okay. The Pixies are more like, I don’t know, kinda almost like a retro act. They haven’t really made anything. They have made some new music since their heyday, but nothing of great interest, whereas Spoon is one of these bands that just, you know, they’ve been at it and they keep putting out relevant albums, so in my opinion. So yeah, Matt, let me, did you guys get out to Red Rocks at all this summer?

Matt (11:25) I actually got to go out twice this summer in May. Two concerts in one week. I got to see Leon Bridges and La Loam opened for Leon Bridges. And then a couple days later I got to see Black Keys and Hermana Gutierrez opened for them. And it was a very fantastic week of concerts. I was so glad I got to do that.

Red Rocks is my favorite place in the whole world.

Alex Miller (11:48) It really is. You know, sometimes you can get, you can be, you know, blasted by rain or hail or wind. The night that I saw it last, what was it, last Wednesday or something was one of those just perfect nights, you know, it was beautiful, beautiful weather. So, all right. Well, yeah, go ahead.

Libby (12:04) That is the best that’s absolute best Matt actually proposed to me at Red Rocks true No, it was actually in December so there wasn’t anybody there it was snow it snowed the day before so it was just us and a few other randos and then as soon as I got down on my knee this bus full of middle schoolers showed up for like a field trip and they all came over and sort of watched and I was like, she said yes, and then they all started cheering and throwing snowballs. Throwing snowballs everywhere. It was so good.

Alex Miller (12:37) That’s fantastic. Did you do it on the stage or?

Libby (12:41) No, it was just at the top of the amphitheater. I think they might have had it closed off because of the snow. I didn’t want to go down there. It was treacherous.

Alex Miller (12:48) Okay. All right. Well, that’s great. All right, Toni, let’s switch over to the news section. What else? What have we got here? So on the personnel side of things, big news from Performance Now Theatre Company. So they bring in Kelly Van Osbrey as their new artistic director. So KVO is a friend of the pod and a well-known and respected director and choreographer who’s been, she’s been the AD for Brighton’s Platte Valley Theatre Arts for the past several years. And she’s also, you know, she’s directed for a number of other theaters.

Toni Tresca (13:18) Yeah, namely like Performance Now. And she’s directed a number of times already for like Performance Now where she’s taking over. So she clearly knows this company pretty well. And Performance Now is, they typically put on big, well-known musicals at the Lakewood Cultural Center.

Alex Miller (13:36) Yeah, they usually generally do pretty well at the Henry’s. I think they had a number of nominations this year. I don’t remember if they had any wins, but Kelly takes over from Alyssa Inahara, who’s been running the show there for 20 years and will continue on as the board secretary.

Toni Tresca (13:53) Yeah, that’s quite a run over there and they’ve produced a number of really impressive musicals under her time. It does make me wonder what this means though for Platte Valley Arts. That’s a small company that Kelly kind of shepherded over there. It punches above its weight and I’d say that’s largely been due to her leadership.

Alex Miller (14:10) Yeah, hard to say, but they had a little news this week. They announced that they’ve been selected as a recipient for a grant from Arts Midwest, funded by the NEA. So, supports an upcoming community-wide arts and humanities initiative that shines a light on the history and legacy of Japanese Americans, which apparently the Brighton community has a legacy history there of that culture. So that’s pretty cool.

Matt (14:32) Yeah, good for that.

Toni Tresca (14:32) Yeah, it’s nice to see someone’s still getting money from the NEA at the very least.

Matt (14:39) Yeah. Amen.

Alex Miller (14:40) What else?

Toni Tresca (14:41) Well, I’d say let’s there have been a couple of season announcements since we last talked yesterday, Sunday, September 7th, Family Theater Company announced its 2026 season and artistic director Ben Rana quipped, it’s not Cats, it’s not Oklahoma, but they did put together pretty interesting season of five shows, which is one more than they did this year. Their theme for the season is We are here and like usual, they’re a nomadic troop. So they kind of bounce around where they’re doing each of these shows. First up is an adaptation of Little Women by Erin C. Reilly. It’s gonna be directed by Shelly Gaza over at the North Glen Arts. Shelly’s worked with the company before. She did A Midsummer Night’s Dream with them a couple of years ago, did a really banger job of that. So curious to see her take on Little Women and what this adaptation means and what family, is disability affirmative theater company, what they really bring to this show and this story.

Alex Miller (15:45) That’s great.

Toni Tresca (15:46) Also up from them, they’re doing a co-production with the Aurora Fox Art Center. They’re doing this musical called Violet, which I had never heard of before, but it’s inspired by the short story, The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betta. And it tells the story of a young woman who is disfigured in an accident and she embarks on a journey by bus from her farm in North Carolina to Oklahoma in order to be healed.

but she kind of goes on a personal journey along the way. I saw you nodding along, Libby, do you know this one?

Libby (16:19) I do, a very good friend of mine just recently directed it.

Toni Tresca (16:22) Nice. Yeah, I’m not familiar with it at all, but apparently it’s got some really cool sounding music of everything from folk to gospel to Americana style sounds. So it’s definitely something new for the area, which is cool. Another new thing to the area is the world premiere of a new musical they’re doing, 504 the Musical, being directed by Ben Rana at the DCPA.

And this musical takes place during the 1977 sit-ins for disability rights. It follows a majority disability ensemble cast and grapples with questions such as how does a community reimagine the world to better meet their needs and how do social movements stay unified while navigating internal conflict.

Ben in the announcement video that they shared on Facebook sounded really excited about this piece. It’s a, and it was really just kind of driving home how powerful it was to get to perform this piece on the DCPA’s stage. So really cool. Looking forward to seeing that one. And then they are rounding out their season with Tiny Beautiful Things, co-directed by Stacey D’Angelo and Ben Rana at the People’s Building in Aurora. And this is an interesting take on the familiar play.

which follows an advice columnist named Sugar. Normally the show has like four letter writers who kind of circle Sugar as she answers their questions. But this show is going to have, it’s gonna be a one woman show that will feature 85 people via video representing the letter readers from around the world. So it’s gonna be this massive collaborative production featuring disabled artists.

around the globe just kind of showing a global disabled power at this time and presenting this really unified front, which I think sounds like a really cool spin on this war horse play.

Alex Miller (18:14) That is, yeah.

Matt (18:15) Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Toni Tresca (18:16) Yeah.

And then finally, they’re doing Pericles and adaptive performance for people with cognitive disabilities for a one-week run in November at the Lone Tree Art Center. So they did this production this year. It was funded by the NEA. They were supposed to do a lot more productions over the next several years. Funding got cut, but then teased that they had something lined up that had allowed them to do this one-week run.

possibly other things that I suppose we’ll just all have to wait and see about.

Alex Miller (18:48) Yeah. Well, we also heard from the Aurora Fox Art Center announced their five show 2026 season over the weekend. So as you pointed out Toni, it’s down one productions from its six show season in 2025. But they’re kicking things off in January with Waiting for Godot, which is cool that it’s not something that gets done all that often. So people have an opportunity to see. You know, it’s definitely a little bit different than from the usual stuff that they’re doing there.

And then Fat Ham, what do you know about this one? This is one I’ve always wanted to see.

Toni Tresca (19:19) Yeah, this is the Colorado premiere of the play by James Ijames, and it’s a queer black take on Hamlet. So it’s set in the South and it follows Juicy, who is a Southern college student whose father shows up in their backyard and demands that Juicy avenge his murder. And it feels very familiar to this character who knows Hamlet’s story. So he’s like, wait a second, am I in a Hamlet situation right now?

And so it’s kind of riffing on this Hamlet story, but it features a really sensitive and self-aware young black man at the center of the piece. So it’s also apparently very funny and just very self-aware and meta for anybody who loves Shakespeare. There’s a lot of those in jokes.

Alex Miller (20:05) That’s great. And then, you mentioned Violet. They’re doing a co-production with Family. That’s in June. And then all the way a year from now, Feeding Beatrice by Kristin Greenridge. And then they’re doing Hank Williams Lost Highway next December. So that’s the Aurora Fox season. And then also, tell me, I heard from Central City Opera. What are they up to for the next year?

Toni Tresca (20:29) Yeah, they announced their 94th season, which congratulations for going that long. That’s an accomplishment in and of itself that is scheduled to run June 27 through August 2nd, 2026. It’s going to feature three productions, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, a revival of The Ballad of Baby Doe and Terrence McNally’s Master Class. It’s special for a couple of reasons, The Ballad of Baby Doe is going to be marking two anniversaries.

one Colorado’s 150th birthday and the 70th anniversary of the opera’s debut at Central City Opera. So kind of a big full circle poignant moment for the company because that work is set during Colorado’s mining era and premiered during that time when it was very popular in the city, which is. And then Master Class is also pretty interesting because it centers on opera singers and features prominent arias, but it returns.

of is a return to form for the festival’s early tradition of putting on plays alongside the operas. Usually in the past years this spot has been held by a musical like Kiss Me Kate or this year Once Upon a Mattress and so it’s interesting that they’ve swapped that musical, Broadway musical, out for a straight play.

Alex Miller (21:43) Yeah, that is a little bit of a departure for them. Master Class is definitely a cool play, and certainly appropriate for an opera company of some kind. It’s about Maria Callas.

Alex Miller (21:54) So cool. Well, let’s talk King Penny radio show. We got Matt and Libby here. How do you want to kick it off, Toni?

Toni Tresca (22:03) Well, I mean, I guess we can just kind of dig right into it for folks who don’t know. Can you talk with us a little bit about King Penny, which was started back in 2022?

Matt (22:07) All right, so King Penny is a 1940s improvised radio show. And we do our show in full 1940s costume with 1940s style old radio microphones. We also have a Foley artist. And a Foley artist is someone who does all of the sound effects for a radio show. So we have someone who does bells and whistles and walking and opening doors, that sort of thing.

along with a live pianist who also accompanies us throughout the show to give color and background. And we pull suggestions from our audience that we base the show on. So before the show starts, we don’t know the genre that we’re gonna be doing and we don’t know the title that we’re gonna be doing either. And the premise is that King Penny is a purveyor of all sorts of goods, soft goods, hard goods, everything in between. Modern day Amazon type of comparison to what King Penny might be in the 1940s. And so we also have our audience give us suggestions for fake products that we advertise throughout the show that we just are able to throw in suggestions from our audience to have them be able to participate in our show.

Alex Miller (23:31) That’s great. What’s an example of a fake product?

Matt (23:34) Oh gosh, one of my favorite ones that we pulled out was called a tank blanket. And who knows what a tank blanket is, you know, but I think at the time it was something that keeps your tank, maybe your fish tank warm at night, you know, so your fish don’t freeze or whatever that might be. But that was one of my favorite ones. Yeah, we pulled one, I want to say like maybe it was a year ago that was the King Penny pocket procrastinator.

Alex Miller (23:43) Okay.

Matt (24:01) And it was like a tiny little man that lives in your pocket and anytime you have something to do it’s like, well you could do that or you could read the funny pages. But we never really know and it’s sort of the audience comes up with some really clever fun stuff that we get to bounce around and play off.

Alex Miller (24:03) Nice.

Toni Tresca (24:17) I remember when I saw the show over at the Savoy in Denver, our crowd suggested the Toe Tickler 2000, which you guys just took and ran with.

Matt (24:26) Yeah, yeah, it’s wild and every show, you know, that we have maybe seven genres to choose from, the titles are always brand new and the products are always brand new. So every show that we do is always different, but set within this 1940s fictional recording studio, which we call WKPR Studios. And what I like the most about this particular form that we do is it takes traditional improv and sort of pushes it to a different level in that we are standing still, we’re not moving, and so we have to describe for our audience what they are seeing and what they’re hearing. And so it’s a little bit of a mix of long form improv and short form improv kind of all smushed together, which I find really fun. Yeah, most improv that you see, and if you ever take classes, they’ll tell you is, show, don’t tell.

act it out, show it in your behavior, don’t say what you’re doing. But for us, it’s the complete opposite. Because we are operating in an audio format, we have to tell and overly explain and describe when somebody walks into the room, you know, what the dame looks like and the cut of her hair and the swivel of her dress and that sort of thing. Which is just fun and a great practice for us who’ve been doing improv for a long time. We met doing improv in 2004 at the Impulse Theater.

which used to be beneath the wine cooper and for a long time was Denver’s longest running show. So we’ve been doing improv together for over 20 years, but this form really challenges us in a wonderful way.

Toni Tresca (25:58) And what compelled you guys to set it within this like 1940s time period? What grabs you about that kind of radio show and that feel of that time? You mentioned that you have to, it pushes you as an improviser to kind of talk through things, but are there other signatures of that time, of the genre, of this like actual, the radio shows that existed at that time that you guys just really love?

Matt (26:21) Yeah, I think for me it is, I feel like that particular time period was this very Americana, idealistic view of what we think patriotism is and just that sort of flavor of America post-World War, full of opportunity and optimism and just really exploring what that is.

especially kind of juxtaposed, here we are 80 years later. And some of those themes are still really prevalent. And some of the themes that we kind of play around with, which is a lot of like misogyny and attitudes towards women and how they are portrayed during that particular time period and just sort of like poking fun at that. I think it’s just a fun way to kind of look at how far we’ve come.

Libby (26:51) Yeah, I sorry, as storytellers, you know, the radio era was a time pre-television. And we get to exist in a genre where we are creating story for people simply by the words we are using and we are painting. We don’t have the image to help us out and to do the work for you. So that’s always very exciting too. Plus I just love the fashion. I love dressing up and wearing wingtip shoes.

Alex Miller (27:40) And this is kind of an all ages show too, right? Can kids come to this or is there a little, I think.

we wanted to ask you, so you met in Colorado, but then you moved to New York and then but then you came back. what’s that? How did that all transpire?

Matt (27:53) Well, I went to grad school at the National Theater Conservatory, which was a part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Sadly, it closed. I was part of the last class. Alphabetically, I’m the last student to have gone through the NTC. But that set me up to have an agent in New York. And through that showcase, I was able to get an agent. And we decided to move out there and give it a shot. We gave ourselves a 10-year sort of buffer to say, let’s see how much we like it. And if we don’t, we can move somewhere else.

Well, we were there for nine and a half years with a pandemic that made it feel like 15 or 16. And we just kind of felt like, you know, do we want to stay and rebuild that community? Some of the theaters that we had been working at, like the People’s Improv Theater, where we produced a lot, closed. And we kind of decided we wanted to go somewhere else and try to rebuild a new community. Around that same time, Libby, who had been working as the HR manager for Playwrights Horizons off Broadway, was looking for something new.

and saw that the Arvada Center had an opening for their HR manager. So she applied and because she’s awesome, she got it. And so it kind of felt like the right catalyst to bring us back here to Denver where we could then take the next steps in our career, myself taking more of a leap into the realm of directing and Libby taking over the HR position at Arvada Center. Plus most of my family is here and all of our friends. So it felt like sort of getting back into a nice warm blanket.

Alex Miller (29:18) That’s great. Yeah, well, I’ve done the same thing. I went from New York to Colorado and then to New York and then back to Colorado, some stops in the way. Colorado is a great place to be and New York’s fun, but it’s not for everyone. You guys were there for almost 10 years, so you must have liked it pretty well.

Matt (29:36) Yeah, I mean, honestly, if the pandemic hadn’t happened, we’d probably still be there. I think I can only speak for myself. I can’t really talk for you. It’s entirely likely. Yeah, I mean, as much as I love Colorado, New York is a place that is special in that things only happen in New York. You there are those special little things that you just don’t get anywhere else