Looking ahead to the 2026 Colorado theatre year

While we look back on the shows that were in 2025 with the upcoming OSCA awards

As we wrapped up 2025 with the usual mix of holiday shows and retrospectives, it was fun for us at OnStage Colorado to reflect on everything that happened last year. In 2025, the OnStage Colorado Review Crew got out to roughly 165 shows. Our top five most read reviews in 2025 included a mix of touring productions and local work:

• Cirque du Soleil ‘ECHO’ wows under the big top in Denver
• A drunken path to redemption in ‘The Reservoir’
• At BETC, ‘The Thin Place’ delivers a spine-chilling journey into the unknowable
• Subpar production undermines strong performances in ‘The Wiz’
• ‘The Tempest’ at Colorado Shakespeare Festival is a visually stunning, anti-colonial fairy tale

We also sent out 50 or so Theatre Blast newsletters (subscribe here if you haven’t already), recorded 45 episodes of the OnStage Colorado Podcast and entered thousands of calendar items. Right now, we’re preparing nominations for the Third Annual OnStage Colorado Awards for Theatrical Excellence (the OSCAs), which we will announce soon.

This year, we’re doing the awards a little bit differently:

1. We will announce the OSCA nominations ahead of time, similar to other awards programs. We’ll do that on our first podcast episode of 2026, coming out Jan. 6 or 7. The nominees will also be listed on our website here.
2. Nominations will be limited to 10 per category.
3. We’re narrowing down the winners in an Olympics-style format, with first, second and third place awards.

The funny thing about theatre is that it’s an ephemeral art form. Performances come and go, living only in the memory of the cast, crew and audiences. Unless the theatre captured some video for promotion, there’s little visual record to refer to, and often for cast members the only way to summon those memories is to run into each other after the show run ends and play the ‘remember when …’ reel from memory.

That’s a big part of the reason we created the OSCAs. We wanted to recognize those moments, those performances, those bits of stage magic created by actors, directors, lighting designers, scenic designers, the people creating the perfect costumes and all the rest.

It’s also why we go out to review so many shows; to help spread the word that this group of artists have something they want you to see. Yes, at times we are obliged to report that something may not be all it could be, and that’s part of our mission to provide a reliable source for theatre news that doesn’t just play cheerleader.

We may be much happier to report on the good and the great — and there was plenty of that in 2025 — but as we head into our eighth year, we’re more determined than ever to expand our coverage and tell it like it is while most other media outlets have given up publishing reviews altogether.

So far, 2026 is shaping up to be another busy year of theatre in Colorado, and we’re looking forward to covering as much of it as we can. If you have a show you’d like featured on OnStage Colorado in the new year, you can request a review here and/or submit the event information to our calendar here. Thank you for reading and listening … and we’ll see you at the show!