A look at some of the funny, bad and just plain weird performative aspects from the game, plus an interview with ‘The Suffragette’s Murder’ playwright Sandy Rustin

In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Toni Tresca and Alex Miller ventured outside Colorado to talk about Super Bowl LIX from the point of view of the non-sporty performances. From Kendrick Lamar’s exuberant, well-choreographed halftime show to the goofy ads to some of the other odd messaging and big stars, we Tuesday-morning-quarterback the whole shebang.

Sandy Rustin headshot

Playwright Sandy Rustin

Later in the podcast, Alex catches up with Sandy Rustin, whose new play The Suffragette’s Murder just opened in a world premiere at the Denver Center. And we also run down our Top 10 Colorado Headliners — shows you may want to consider checking out. This week’s list, in no particular order, includes:

Listen to the podcast

Transcript

(AI mistakes happen)

Alex Miller (00:01)

All right. Hello and welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca (00:07)

and I’m Tony Tresca.

Alex Miller (00:09)

And yeah, so this is our February 11th podcast. We’re recording this on the 10th. So this is the Monday after Super Bowl, which, I don’t know, seems like it should have its own name like Boxing Day has after Christmas. What would the day after Super Bowl be like?

Toni Tresca (00:23)

Post-Bowl Day?

Alex Miller (00:25)

or like,

critique the ads day or something like that. So we’re to get into that, right?

Toni Tresca (00:29)

At least in our world, yeah.

We’ll dig into that a little bit more in our main topic. We’re going to be talking about the performative side of the Super Bowl this year. But first, I just wanted to say a big thank you to you all for tuning into another episode of the official podcast of OnStageColorado.com. We are the only weekly show dedicated to covering the Centennial States theater scene and FeedSpot’s number one Colorado arts podcast, apparently.

Alex Miller (00:59)

Yeah, whatever feed spot is. Yeah, I was wondering what the other podcasts are on this list and it’s pretty interesting. So number five, hold on to your hat, is the Vale Design Review Board. So it’s a real barn burger. Not sure why it’s on the arts list, but number four is Treehouse Storyteller, which is some kind of Jesusy kids show. Number three is Architecting, a podcast of Colorado Architects, which I guess is at least arts adjacent. Yeah.

Toni Tresca (01:23)

That sounds pretty interesting, actually.

Alex Miller (01:25)

And

number two is a Springs-based music pod called Music in Motion.

Toni Tresca (01:30)

Yeah, and I noticed that the top 10 list also had a white water rafting podcast, which I might dig into myself. That sounds for that sounds kind of compelling. Another one about martial arts, a few more music podcasts and a comedy podcast also from down in the springs. So I’m not really sure how representative this is of the arts podcast in the state, but I guess we’ll take the recognition where we can get it.

Alex Miller (01:36)

You

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, well at least martial arts has the word arts in it. You know? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, martial arts and culture. I don’t know if that’s a thing. Maybe it should be.

Toni Tresca (02:00)

That’s true. It literally has the word art in it. I didn’t think of it like that.

that’s a really good pun, so i- i- i appreciate it, at least on that level, alex.

Alex Miller (02:14)

Ha ha ha.

Yeah,

so well we should also note that when it comes to covering the arts in audio form it’s hard to beat our friend Eden Lane at Colorado Public Radio who’s always out there doing cool stories about Colorado artists and you can catch them on their radio or on streaming or also on the CPR.org website.

Toni Tresca (02:25)

Very true.

Yeah, she’s great. And they’ve also got some other good arts and culture folks with shows like the local 303 from Indies 102 Alicia Sweeney, which focuses on the very vibrant Colorado music scene. So that’s another really good one. But

Alex Miller (02:48)

She’s great.

Yeah, she really, she knows her stuff. I read into her once at a film thing and she was just very sweet and kind and I just always love listening to her talk about it because she really knows her stuff.

Toni Tresca (03:02)

Totally. Well, this week on our podcast, as usual, we are going to be talking about some of what we have seen around the state. We’re going to discuss some news that’s happening in live performance around Colorado. And then we will get to Alex’s interview with playwright Sandy Rustin. Can you tease that a little bit?

Alex Miller (03:21)

yeah, yeah, she was fantastic. Great interview. Of course, the world premiere of her play, The Suffragettes Murder just opened this past weekend, which we’ve talked about before we saw the reading of it at the Blue Place Festival, the Denver Center. So we talked a lot about that and some of her other plays like The Cottage, which is also playing at Stage Door in Conifer right now and will be at Platte Valley Theater Arts in May. So lots of Rustin activity in Colorado and good stuff. So stick around for that one later on.

Toni Tresca (03:50)

Yeah, I’m excited to listen to that one myself. Sandy was really fun to talk with briefly a little bit before the summit and at the summit itself. And so I’m very, I’ll get to see this play in a couple of weeks. I’m excited to see how it’s developed since then.

Alex Miller (04:05)

Yeah, for sure. So, all right, well, let’s talk a little bit about what we saw. a little bit of a quiet weekend. I only got out to see Tragedy of Medusa at Two-cent Lion at the People’s Building in Aurora. We were both there on opening night. And then we both saw Morning After Grace at… Did we talk about that last week? I feel like we did, but I can’t remember.

Toni Tresca (04:20)

That’s right.

No, we I think we may have mentioned that we would be heading to the industry night, but on the podcast, but we because we record on Mondays, we had not actually talked about it. So I guess we yeah, let’s that seems like a good place to start. That’s directed by Appie Applebows, and it’s running at Miners Alley Performing Arts Center through March 2nd. It’s the regional premiere written by Cary Cram and it focuses on these these three people who are all they’re kind of in this

Alex Miller (04:31)

Okay.

Toni Tresca (04:55)

Two of them are living in this retirement kind of home, assisted living seems kind of like, and then one, it’s focusing on the morning after a funeral when these two people have hooked up, Grace and well as this retired lawyer, who’s, as we kind of learned throughout the throughout the first act, his wife has just died. That was the funeral they were at.

Alex Miller (05:18)

Yeah. Yeah, it’s a fun show. And it’s not like an old folks home. It’s more like a, I don’t know, 55 plus community or something like that. You know, it’s not like people, you they’re definitely older, but Kevin Hart plays Angus, the lawyer, and Tammy Meningini was Abigail, who were both fantastic. And then Dwayne Carrington was Ollie, who was the other person here who…

kind of, he’s kind of like the intermediary between them in some ways, but it’s a very funny show. But it also touches on some real, know, real interesting stuff about aging and sex and stuff like that. And really, really a nicely done show that I think people are really enjoying.

Toni Tresca (06:01)

And there’s really, Dwayne Carrington who plays Ollie, who is that intermediary who you mentioned. He is in particular, he’s playing a baseball player who is also, he’s also gay. And so he’s kind of dealing with the kind of how that was perceived back in the eighties when he was kind of discussing, he was at the height of his career versus now in contemporary day and kind of having to grapple with that, particularly with his own family who’s also aging.

Alex Miller (06:13)

Right.

Toni Tresca (06:28)

And I thought that that led to some really interesting, of, really powerful monologue in particular from Carrington. So really strong play overall, the acting in particular, as well as the direction by Abbey.

Alex Miller (06:44)

Yep. Yeah. And so Carrie Crim, this was another kind of Purple Rose Theater Company associated play. So that’s a Jeff Daniels company out in Michigan there. And, know, they had Paul Strolli’s somewhat kind of similar jukebox for the Elton Conquin last year. So there’s kind of like a little thread there, I guess.

Toni Tresca (07:02)

I was talking with John Howser, who’s on staff at Miner’s Alley over there, about that a little bit. And he was like, we were a little bit worried that the, when we told people the premise of it, they were like, so it’s basically like jukebox for the Algonquin 2. And I was, I was like, I don’t think that’s really kind of how I would describe it. It’s really, it really is its own thing. The plot is totally different. It’s exploring, I guess the only similar theme is like, they’re about characters who are aging, but I would say other than that.

Alex Miller (07:17)

No.

Aren’t we all, Tony?

Toni Tresca (07:32)

Exactly. like, I feel like those

are pretty universal themes. So I feel like it’s relevant for them to engage with that. So I don’t think they’re that that similar at all. that they after grace, it’s a little bit long, I would say in the second act, I think you and I both walked out of that thinking that there were perhaps some places in the script itself that could have been tightened up.

Alex Miller (07:55)

I almost never don’t think that. So yeah, great play. And that one is playing in Golden through March 2nd. So plenty of time left to catch morning after grace out there. And then the other one we saw, let’s talk about the tragedy of Medusa. So this was at the People’s Building in Aurora. This is a Two-cent lion production, and it’s an adaptation of the Medusa story. So in Greek mythology, Medusa was a

Toni Tresca (07:58)

That’s true. That’s true.

Alex Miller (08:24)

a priestess of Athena who gets raped by Poseidon and rather than, condemn Poseidon for it, Athena kind of focuses her ire on Medusa because, I don’t know, God’s gonna do no wrong or something and banishes her to this island and turns her into a Gorgon, which do all Gorgons have snakes for hair? I don’t know. But yeah, so famously she is…

You know, the Medusa who, you look at her, she will turn you into stone. So all these guys have tried to show up on the island and kill her to, I don’t know, improve their manhood or something. And so this was a little bit of a queer take on it where there’s a more of a sexual relationship between Athena and Medusa that plays out in the first part. it really, it’s kind of like, it was almost like two pieces. was a rather long, non-intermission show. So it was almost, what, almost two hours?

145.

Toni Tresca (09:19) It was, yeah, it ended up being about an hour 45.

Alex Miller (09:23)

Right. With a long curtain speech by the writer-director Olivia Bontane. But anyway, it has a lot of really fun stuff in the beginning. It’s not like a comedy, but it had a lot of laugh lines. It has a pretty strong cast. And then I think we both felt like it kind of went off the rails a little bit towards the end.

Toni Tresca (09:44)

I would agree with you. think that it had a kind of interesting open in which Medusa, who is played by Tamara Nelson, is explaining to Perseus, played by Archer Rosencrantz, that her story is a little bit more complicated than it’s getting told back on the mainland. She’s on the island. And so she’s explaining this.

Alex Miller (10:04)

Mm-hmm.

Toni Tresca (10:07)

We kind of go into these scenes between her and Athena, played by Annalise Vesely. And those are all actually pretty strong, I would say. Their relationship is pretty compelling. They find really interesting ways to play with the family dynamics and kind of Medusa’s evolution from just kind of simple girl who feels like she may end up having to get married to kind of being a priestess and kind of exploring her sexuality.

Alex Miller (10:19)

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (10:35)

through a relationship with Athena. It’s honestly quite touching. However, I would say the second that the gods get introduced is kind of like when it kind of started to go off the rails for me because there’s this weird integration where like in some moments with the gods, it’s very anachronistic and they’re set kind of set in modern time, which kind of clashes with actually the ideas at play, which is that the gods represent this old fashioned kind of power dynamic and they don’t believe that humans have any free will, that’s why they can take advantage of them, that I don’t think ultimately kind of works with the rest of the play, particularly because they’re kind of also the comic elements, but they’re also the ones who are enacting the violence in a way that’s kind of uncomfortable and doesn’t sit well with the rest of the play. So I thought that kind of with those characters’ introduction and kind of where the Medusa storyline ends up going, it kind of didn’t end up working for me.

Alex Miller (11:33)

Yeah, yeah, so I’ll just say, so yeah, since we were both at the show, we’re gonna do kind of a back and forth review on this one that we’ll have posted on the transcript posted on the site. So check that out on On Stage Colorado website.

All right. So that is the tragedy in Medusa. then so you saw Hope and Gravity, which we talked about some last week. But how did you how did you enjoy that? This was.

Toni Tresca (12:01)

I thought it was okay.

This is Betsy’s production that’s currently up at the Savoy and is going to be moving over to the Nomad Theater in Boulder later in February. I thought that the first act was a little bit kind of clunky. I’m not quite sure all of the individual scenes worked, but the second act starts off with that very, very funny scene that you discussed last week between

Jason Maxwell and Becca Lynn Broski, where he is playing this liar dentist and she is someone who is afraid of dentists. And it’s a hilarious scene. And then it really builds into some other more touching scenes that pay off elements to the first act that ultimately really made me rethink a lot of those scenes that we saw because the whole play is presented out of order. And I ultimately really ended up quite liking the experience, even if I thought it was a little bit slow in the first act.

Alex Miller (12:35)

time.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. But yeah, overall, a fun show to get to and really some great performances in there, especially from Emma Messenger and Jason Maxwell and the aforementioned, what was her name? Bruce. Bruce. Yeah.

Toni Tresca (13:13)

Becca Lynn Broskes as Jill and Barb. Actually,

really honestly really liked the whole cast. Michael Morgan had a really good dual role as Marty, the kind of construction worker, more tough guy, but who ultimately kind of really loves his wife. And Douglas, the kind of professor who is involved in the elevator accident, has a really, really touching scene with Emma Massenger to close out the play. And Matt Sam-

Alex Miller (13:26)

Yeah, he was great.

Mm-hmm.

Toni Tresca (13:41)

And Matt Zambroni as Steve, who’s kind of that more, he’s playing more of the straight man in a lot of the scenes. He’s this kind of struggling poet who is really quite romantic, but is ultimately in a struggling relationship when we first meet him in the play. But I really like where ultimately his character goes through. He goes through some nice growth and change. yeah, it’s this play by Michael Hollinger was really interesting. And in the insert, the director.

Alex Miller (13:47)

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (14:09)

of the play, Josh Hartwell. He has a really fascinating interview that he did with Michael Hollander that I’d definitely recommend reading maybe after the show, because there’s some spoilery stuff in there that I really enjoyed kind of getting to experience in the moment.

Alex Miller (14:20)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. All right. Well, that’s what we saw. Or did you have one more field trip?

Toni Tresca (14:31)

I did, I have one more. This is controlled by Control Group Productions. It’s kind of a, it was a work in progress. It’s a dance piece that takes place on East Colfax. It started with some kind of yoga-like exercises to bring you into the space that it was being done in. And then we did some theater games, including mirroring activities and kind of leader follower things with hands.

stuff where it was kind of movement based things that we did inside and then out on the streets of East Colfax. I thought it was interesting idea to kind of do a physical dance piece in the space. It’s based on techniques of theater of the oppressed. However, in the feed, they were asking for feedback because it’s a work in progress. And I did say that since it was being kind of billed as a piece as something being about the streets of East Colfax, it would have been more interesting, I think, to

or at least interesting to explore, kind of building in discussions about the actual place we were in during some of those earlier practices before we actually go out onto the streets to make that make a little bit more sense and understand our place and the history of it. And they seemed really open to it. The performance is going to evolve and it’ll be presented again in March as well as in April. So there’s quite a few more chances to participate in these pieces as it evolves over time.

I ultimately was left wanting a little bit more after that experience.

Alex Miller (16:01)

Okay, well, we’ll look and see what comes next with the evolution of that piece. So what about on the news side? Do we have anything in the news section this week?

Toni Tresca (16:12)

Yeah, so last week the Colorado Theater Guild announced the return of the Colorado Theater Guild’s unified auditions. This is their third annual event. They’re going to be hosting in-person musical and non-musical auditions on Sunday, May 4th, and Monday, May 5th at the Aurora Fox Arts Center, which I think it’s pretty exciting. So these events take place in that one location.

and they allow casting directors and folks from all around the state to see a bunch of different talent that they may not otherwise be aware of or not may just not have on their radar as they kind of go into their upcoming seasons.

Alex Miller (16:52)

That’s great. And it’s a really great thing to do for Colorado Theatre Guild. It’s a perfect type of event for them to host.

Toni Tresca (17:02)

Yeah, mean, as President Betty Hart frequently points out, there is just so much great talent throughout the state. But because of the physical distance of Colorado, it’s just kind of a large state to traverse. Performers are often siloed into one region. you have the folks in the Fort Collins area, folks who do Denver Metro. You have the Boulder folks. You have the folks in the Springs. You have the folks along the Western Slope. You have the folks in Durango, the Pueblo area. And this is designed to really just

Alex Miller (17:18)

Mm-hmm.

Toni Tresca (17:32)

connect them all in a single large event and just hopefully connect performers from across the state with other companies that they may not have known and those companies with performers that they may not have seen.

Alex Miller (17:46)

Yeah, that’s great. And actors are well known for being willing to drive great distances to be in a show they’re interested in.

Toni Tresca (17:54)

Absolutely. So if you are interested, you’re an actor who wants to get involved in this, you can submit your resume and credentials for consideration via the Colorado Theater Guild portal. And this year, freelance directors will be accepted as a part of the producer and observer group. So which I think that’s pretty interesting. That was one of the things that Betty and I talked about last year in terms of allowing those freelance folks who…

make up a bulk of the directing community now. It’s very rare to have like resident directors on staff for a lot of companies. It’s really important for them to be in the room as well, since they’re going to be doing a lot of the casting decisions for these companies. And they do note that because space is limited and because representation and equity and auditions, casting and performance matters, submissions are going to be reviewed by a committee that is representative of the Colorado Theater Guild community.

Alex Miller (18:25)

Hmm

Toni Tresca (18:49)

and they say, should submissions exceed capacity, priority will be given to underserved populations.

Alex Miller (18:56)

Okay, great. Well, so that’s definitely something that our actor friends will wanna know about. Another thing I was just gonna mention was I noticed an email from Mark Reagan at Boulder Ensemble Theater Company, called it his fancy pants New York City trip. So it’s interesting if you love to go to see theater, this is an opportunity to go to New York and see a whole bunch of theater, May 12th through 18th. So.

I’m not sure why it’s called the holiday theater tour, but you get seven days and six nights in Times Square. You see four Broadway shows, one off-Broadway show. There’s a bunch of theater tours, a harbor cruise, and all for the low, price of 57.45 with airfare. So not for the penurious among us, but if you’ve got the cash, it sounds like a great trip. And Mark said they had a decent amount of interest, so he’s looking to get 40 slots booked. So man, I wish I had an extra six grand lying around. I would definitely go to that.

Toni Tresca (19:49)

Yeah, if anybody wants to sponsor our attendance on this trip, feel free to reach out. Because that does it sounds like a lot of fun, but I know that there some other theater tours that happen on a somewhat similar regular basis. I heard that the Denver Center either used to do one or maybe they still do. I couldn’t find any information thing on it. Yeah. But I know you can also go. You can do one on breakaway tours dot com.

Alex Miller (19:52)

Yeah.

That’s right. Yeah.

Yeah, I couldn’t find any in, yeah. Yeah.

Toni Tresca (20:19)

What did you Can you say a little bit more about that one, Alex?

Alex Miller (20:21)

Yeah, I mean, that’s the company that’s organizing this one through Betsy and Mark Reagan. apparently they do these all the time. So I think you could probably hop on a tour wherever you want to. But it is fun to go with a bunch of people from your own theater community, I’m sure. Because I know Theater Seal Co, formerly Lake Dillon Theater Company, has been doing it as a fundraiser for years as well. And they go to New York or London. But I couldn’t find their website led to a

Toni Tresca (20:33)

Nice.

Alex Miller (20:49)

a bad page, so I’m not sure when their next one is. But yeah, I mean, I think it would be fun to get someone, and maybe Mark will come on to talk about how traveling for theater is fun. It’s like people travel to see concerts and going to other cities to see other, what other companies are doing outside of Denver is just a great way to indulge your theater habit and love.

I’m sure there’s some, there’s some, you know, other than New York and London, there’s also some, some other great cities to go to.

Toni Tresca (21:24)

Totally. Changing topics. So we have some news in the opera world. We don’t often discuss that on the podcast, but when I saw that there was a really exciting update there, I wanted to shout out that community. There are three Colorado arts organizations who announced a strategic partnership with the aim of bringing a new and lesser known chamber operas to audience in the Pike Peak region over the next five years. So those three organizations are the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs,

the Opera Theater of the Rockies and the Arch Chambers Colorado. And they are calling this new venture Opera 2030, according to reporting by Eden Layna. She shared news about that in her CPR story last week. So the focus of those works are gonna be ones that have flashy world premieres, but need to grow their legs in order to become the classics of tomorrow, according to the leaders of that team. And all that just sounds super cool.

Alex Miller (22:20)

Okay.

Yeah, that’s pretty neat. it’s like a good attempt to make opera a little more relevant and affordable. Because, you know, if you think theater is struggling, think opera companies are really struggling around the country. I just don’t think there’s a huge, you know, audience space for opera. mean, a of people are just, I think, intimidated by it.

Toni Tresca (22:38)

Absolutely, and that includes Denver’s own Opera Colorado, which recently had to reduce its season down to just two shows. And I think that has something to do with its recent 990 tax forms, which reported a $1.5 million loss. And they’re going through a big leadership transition at the moment. So it’s really good to have some good news in that opera community for once.

Alex Miller (22:54)

Ooh.

Okay, so when will we see the first of these opera 2030 shows?

Toni Tresca (23:07)

Yeah, so the first opera 2030 production debuts this month, so that’s February 22nd at Broadmoor Community Church, and their debut production is A Flight of Operas, which will feature three one-act operas woven into a single narrative that follows a single character across two decades.

Alex Miller (23:26)

Okay, that sounds, you know, something a little more digestible for someone if not maybe not ready to dive into Madame Butterfly or something like that.

Toni Tresca (23:35)

Yeah.

And one final thing in the news bag before we move on to our main topic, a quick congratulations to Jenna’s, to Denver’s Jenna Bainbridge, who is making Wicked Broadway history when she joins the cast on March 4th as Nessa Rose. This is gonna mark the first time that a wheelchair using witch will be played by the authentic wheelchair using actor on, the Broadway production, which I think is just super cool.

Alex Miller (24:02)

That’s fantastic.

Yeah, I mean, that should be the way it always is.

Toni Tresca (24:07)

Absolutely, and that was how was in the recent film version that directed by John Chu that came out. They cast an actor who is wheelchair using in that film production. And so it’s very, I think it’s about time that the Broadway stage adaptation is doing the same.

Alex Miller (24:24)

Yeah, and I think John Moore had his column about this in the Denver Gazette if you want to learn more.

Toni Tresca (24:32)

That’s right. It’s a great interview he does with the actress, as well as a couple of other folks through who have worked with family over the years, which is where she got her start, including Reagan Linton and Steve Wilson. They give some really great quotes in that piece.

Alex Miller (24:47)

All right. Well, we were kind of stuck for a topic this week, so we’re going to do something that’s not necessarily Colorado focused, but certainly timely. You want to introduce it, Tony?

Toni Tresca (24:58)

Sure, so we are going to be talking Super Bowl 59 and before you tune it, turn this off and be like, this is not, how is this theater for performance related? Don’t worry, we’re not going to really be diving into the main game between the Chiefs and the Eagles, all that much. We’re just going to be focusing on the more performative aspects that fit more into our wheelhouse.

Alex Miller (25:07)

Yeah

Yeah, so we can Tuesday morning quarterback a little bit of this stuff. Of course, there are the ads that everybody always talks about. There’s the Halftime Show with Kendrick Lamar that was choreographed by Charm LaDonna. I thought she did a great job with that. And then there was some a lot of weird shit like the Brad Pitt thing, the Tom Cruise thing. Yeah, so you want to talk about the ads?

Toni Tresca (25:44)

Absolutely. So it was reported this year that in order to get 30 seconds it cost 8 million dollars. So that’s quite a few pretty pennies which apparently we’re not making anymore.

Alex Miller (25:52)

Mm-hmm.

Nice tie in there. That may be the one thing Trump’s

done that I kind of agree with. I I don’t know.

Toni Tresca (26:03)

Honestly, yeah, that came

in last night as I honestly I think it was as the game was on which I think is funny because he was there so I guess that was pre-scheduled or whatever but I thought that was it. I was like, okay, I can get behind this. It is kind of wasteful cost more to make pennies than it earned but eight million dollars is a lot of those pennies that are expensive to produce and so I thought that that was a I mean that’s a shocking amount of money. That’s the most it’s ever been for ads.

Alex Miller (26:11)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I have to say, was, you know, I was kind of making all kinds of bad for you food items that I was serving to the folks at my house. So I was kind of just kind of in and out, but I did see some of them like I would catch a part of them. And, you know, there was the one with seal who really, I don’t think he’s had a hit in 30 years, but he has an interesting name that also is an animal. So they him as a seal for a Mountain Dew ad, which was really bizarre. Very strange.

Toni Tresca (26:32)

at the Super Bowl.

quite yeah that was pretty dumb. They make a joke about how weird it is at the end via a line where like that’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen and I’m like that doesn’t make it better we just just have to sit here and watch this.

Alex Miller (27:07)

Yep, yep. And of course we saw a lot

of actors, big actors in these ads.

Toni Tresca (27:15)

that was just

about to say it was like it seemed like all the budget there like if we’re gonna spend a lot of money on it we might as well throw some celebrities in there to get track hopefully get traction online and I think it worked in some cases didn’t work in others I quite liked the Jeremy Strong Dunkin Donut ad with Ben Affleck in it where he Jeremy Strong is kind of making fun of his method acting where he was going bean mode in order to get into character for his somebody in a Dunkin Donut ad.

Alex Miller (27:42)

Right.

Yeah, yeah, I, know, if you didn’t know that Jeremy Strong had that method actor side to him, it was kind of, I didn’t understand it, but it’s part of the, what they call the self-aware cameo trope, you know? And so Aubrey Plaza and Michael Shannon did a Ritz cracker ad and it’s like, you you look at those and like, really? Is that gonna sell my Ritz crackers? I don’t know.

There was a Nike ad that featured a lot of female athletes like Kitten Clark and Asia Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu that I think everybody thought was pretty cool.

Toni Tresca (28:17)

Yeah, I thought that one was pretty cool. liked that the NFL took some time. It looks like they’re advocating for women’s flag football to be in all 50 states at the varsity level, which I thought was pretty cool. seemed like a, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Give equal opportunity to play that sport. And I liked that commercial. I thought it was very effective.

Alex Miller (28:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And then those like the scatological like Angel Soft, which makes toilet paper had a potty tunity, they called it where I don’t think they showed anything that is said they’re gonna give you 30 seconds to run to the bathroom.

Toni Tresca (28:54)

I was it was kind of funny, but it went on for too long. was like, I know that’s the point, is that it’s a bathroom break, but I was like, ugh. I didn’t need to go to the bathroom. I was like, I just have to sit here, and this is jarring.

Alex Miller (29:07)

Well, plus

many people have DVRs where you can pause it anyway. there was pair of ads that I don’t think were coordinated, but it was really interesting that they were both involved, hair flying off of people’s faces. So the one was with Eugene Levy, who’s known for his bushy eyebrows for Little Caesar’s with these some, you know how Little Caesar’s always making other things made out of pizza ingredients. I can’t remember what they’re called.

But he loved him so much that his eyebrows fly off his face and take off around town. then there was another one that had mustaches flying off people’s faces, like Nick Offerman, famous mustache guy. But I can’t remember what that one was for.

Toni Tresca (29:47)

I didn’t, I don’t, I think I missed that one.

Alex Miller (29:49)

Yeah, I think it might’ve been Pringles or something like that for some reason. And the one that really made me kind of ill was Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal doing this recreation of the Harry Met Sally scene where she fakes an orgasm. And it was over, she’s having an orgasmic mayonnaise moment. And it’s just like, you can almost see the cringe on their faces, even though they probably get paid a shit ton of money to do it, but they both just look like, please kill me now to do this stupid ad.

Toni Tresca (30:18)

And then they have Sydney Sweeney come in and do a cameo right at the end. like, it just all felt very cynical at that point. You’re like, yeah. And then Bud Light has had a commercial where they’re doing like the, a man rebrand with Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning. Bud Light who kind of famously got into controversy a couple years ago for hiring a transgender activist who in order to be in one of their kind of commercials and promote.

Alex Miller (30:20)

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (30:46)

and promote stuff for them. They seem to have fully backpedaled from that this year with their commercial.

Alex Miller (30:50)

Yeah, they’re

beer cooler with a bunch of guys. I’m surprised they didn’t have truck nuts on the beer mobile or whatever it was. Speaking of Manly, Harrison Ford did this really long, I think it was a 60 second spot that seemed to go on forever. He’s talking about his electric Jeep. some of these ads are just so bombastic. They talk about like, almost like buying this Jeep is gonna make you like, I don’t know, a better American or something. You know, and he makes a little joke about how

His name is Ford and I think I actually show him passing a Ford Bronco or something as part of the ad, which is unusual for a car commercial to show another brand. anyway, that was, that was kind of dumb.

Toni Tresca (31:33)

Yeah, the Instacart one with the old commercial mascots was, I thought that was at least kind of inventive. I mean, is it still a cynical branding exercise? Sure, absolutely. But it was kind of pretty effective, I think, to see all those kind of characters kind of show up and demonstrate the potential of Instacart. One that lit up, yeah, one that…

Alex Miller (31:52)

Yeah, script-wise, made sense, right? You know, it’s like Instacart

has all its brands,

Toni Tresca (32:00)

Totally. One that lit up at least my Super Bowl party discussion was the chat GBT ad that did you did you catch that one?

Alex Miller (32:06)

I don’t

think I did. What was that one?

Toni Tresca (32:10)

It was just one that was kind of an animated thing, or guess probably it was created using one of ChatGBT’s features. And it was just kind of demonstrating all the different things that the platform could do, which I didn’t really care for it, but it got everybody talking in the room.

Alex Miller (32:29)

Okay. It was more predictable beer ads like Matt Damon did one for Stella Artois with somebody else I can’t remember. There was a cute one about from Dove. Dove always does these female impairment type messaging things with a little girl and talking about how, know, when she’s just having so much fun running now, you know, in 10 years she’s going to be ashamed of her legs or something like that. There was a weird ass coffee mate.

ad with a tongue that’s like coffee mate is disgusting why would anybody use it but maybe they’ll sell some more I don’t know

Toni Tresca (33:03)

I quite, the beer ad that I liked, the one of the night that I quite enjoyed was featured Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara for the Mikolo Ultra where they’re being the tennis players and they’re kind of playing for the, they’re beating all these people in competitions for that beer. I thought that one was pretty silly. And they’re both so committed to the bit that it just makes it work.

Alex Miller (33:12)

yeah, that was good.

Yeah. And

they’re both so fun to watch in anything. So, uh, so there was some other things that weren’t necessarily ads. was this whole Tom Brady was Snoop Dogg, Annie Hate Ad, which a lot of people thought seemed kind of tone deaf. At first he got Trump in the audience. It’s like, there’s your leading, leading progenitor of hate in the country. Uh, you know, and Snoop Dogg performed at his inauguration, which I don’t think anybody will ever forget. uh, you know, the thought behind it was there maybe, but the execution was kind of off.

Toni Tresca (33:56)

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I thought that the Tom Cruise pitching the new Mission Impossible film without actually pitching it was kind of weird. It made the game sound like the final battle between good and evil or something, which was weird. then the new Super Bowl spot that they showed for the movie really just didn’t, it was a lot of old footage, which I thought was a little bit surprising.

Alex Miller (34:15)

Yeah. The one thing I did like that was a little corny was that I had like some hometown fans. So John Hamm introduced the Chiefs when they came out and Bradley Cooper did the Eagles, which I was a nice touch. Why not?

Toni Tresca (34:27)

Yeah, that was pretty cool. But I guess now we can get on to the main event, at least in our world, the halftime show, aka intermission for you theater people out there.

Alex Miller (34:38)

Yes.

Yes. I was called intermission’s halftime anyway. So yeah, I was kind of mystified by the whole thing because I, you I’m not a hip hop or rap fan and my son Andy loves Kendrick Lamar. So it was interesting to sit here and see how much he enjoyed it. But there’s this whole Drake rivalry thing that, you know, is this whole thing that I just, I don’t care about and think it’s silly, but I guess, I don’t know, he thinks Drake’s a pedophile or something. I don’t know.

Toni Tresca (35:03)

Yeah, they’ve been just releasing songs back and forth, diss tracks as they’re called, back and forth against each other for like a couple, like the past year now. And Not Like Us, which he did ultimately into performing as a part of the set is like the big ultimate diss track in which he calls Drake a pedophile on the record. Like there’s no way around it. And Drake is suing not Kendrick Lamar.

Alex Miller (35:09)

Yeah.

Yeah.

The record company.

Toni Tresca (35:30)

but the record company for releasing

the thing and he was making jokes about it throughout it. I think it’s interesting that this kind of petty rivalry is like at the center of our culture at this time. I think it is probably not the most healthy thing to be centering, but it was a good, I thought it was a pretty interesting performance. The dancing was quite strong. I really liked that element. It was kind of cool to see Samuel L. Jackson show up and narrate.

Alex Miller (35:47)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (35:58)

I thought that was a cool interplay and kind of definitely showed the resistance element in there was kind of powerful to be doing, particularly with Trump in the room right there. So I thought that worked. I, as somebody who does also, I like Kendrick’s music. I was a little bit disappointed that he didn’t do some of his older stuff and he was clearly more there to be promoting his current tour that he’s on by doing like…

Alex Miller (35:58)

Yeah. Yeah, I was.

huh.

Toni Tresca (36:24)

It’s song that he had only kind of teased in the past and just was performing, dropping publicly now, and then all stuff from his current album. So I was hoping for some older hits, but it was okay overall.

Alex Miller (36:38)

Yep. All right. Well, I guess it was kind of a weird Super Bowl overall, like you said, with Trump in the audience and then like, know, with his kind of, I guess it’s another type of feud between him and Taylor Swift. It’s like, you know, having them in the same building. Apparently they’re both cheering for the Chiefs.

Toni Tresca (37:00)

That’s interesting. I didn’t… Yeah. Huh. That is weird. Well, I guess they’ve bonded over that. They have a mutual sadness to bond over today. Because since the Chiefs kind of embarrassed themselves last night, I guess… Do you have anything else you want to say about the game itself besides that? It was kind of really sad to watch for them. But I enjoyed it because I wanted them to lose, so…

Alex Miller (37:05)

So.

Yeah, right.

Yeah,

me too. And not because I have any great antipathy against the Chiefs other than if they beat the shit out of the Broncos most of the times they meet. but you know, it’s like they win one of last two. It’s like time for time for a new champ. And I was very surprising to see how much they lost by. But I mean, any team can have a shitty day on the field. That’s just the way football is. And that’s what happened. It’s, know, you know, but there was some other weird stuff. There was a Palestinian protester that ran onto the field.

Toni Tresca (37:32)

Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (37:53)

And then Kanye West was at some weird ad where he was in a dentist’s office and then he quit Twitter after an anti-Taylor Swift ran after the edges. All stupid stuff.

Toni Tresca (38:04)

And that comes after his real life rants that he’s been doing currently that are super anti-semitic and all over the place. I don’t know, I hope he gets help. He’s clearly not, he’s not doing super well right now. If his social media feeds are any indicator of real life, which who knows? I don’t know this guy personally, actually, I should say.

Alex Miller (38:15)

Yeah. Now.

Yeah.

Yep. All right. Well, that was our Super Bowl take for the year. We’re to take a quick break now to hear from our sponsors and return with her to share our top 10 Colorado headliners and then my interview with playwright Sandy Rustin. And I need to take a real break here, so I’ll be right back.

Toni Tresca (38:42)

Okay, sounds good.

Alex Miller (38:42)

All right.

Yeah, I like to be this old guy that just categorically says, I hate rap. And because there is some that I kind of like. And I really tried to focus on Kendrick Lamar and think like, I just, man, I just don’t get it.

Toni Tresca (38:56)

Not my favorite of his performances, if I’m being honest. He’s, I like, I think he’s better in the, he’s better in a more traditional concert environment. I think that the spectacle of it ultimately got away from him and he was not. Yeah, I didn’t like, and I don’t like that they use so much recorded tracks either. And they were clearly lip syncing, which we don’t, we guess we didn’t have, we could have maybe gotten into, but.

Alex Miller (39:11)

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t paying that much of attention. But so. All right, we’re back and ready to hit this week’s Colorado Headliners. So these are some of the upcoming shows the next week or so that we think you should know about in no particular order. So Tony, what have you got to start?

Toni Tresca (39:37)

I’m kicking us off with the Suffragettes murder, which just entered its previews at the Denver Center. This opened on February 7th and has previews through the 13th before its opening on Valentine’s Day, where it’ll run through March 9th. And this is a farcical whodunit by our guest this week on the Onstage Colorado podcast, Sandy Rustin, who is the pretty acclaimed playwright of the Clue adaptation, as well as the cottage, which we’ve talked about at the top of the podcast.

Alex Miller (39:40)

yeah.

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (40:07)

This play was originally seen at the 2023 Colorado New Play Summit, and it follows an eclectic group of tenants in 1985 who bustle about their Manhattan boarding house as they arrange the final details of a clever scheme that they hope to pull off in the name of building the budding women’s suffragette murder. However, as they prepare to host an important secret gathering, they receive an unexpected visit from a constable. One of the tenants who’s staying there has been murdered.

This odd bunch then has to band together to throw the constable off their scent in a kind of a pretty funny play. I remember even just from the reading, I could already tell the potential for like particularly physical comedy in this. I think Rustin’s a very physical writer from knowing her previous work. And so I’m really looking forward to seeing it executed. I’m going to be seeing that on the 20th.

Alex Miller (40:49)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a quirky fun play. And just a quick question. I think you said 1985. I think it’s set in 1885. So it’s kind of back in the back in the day. But yeah, I would definitely get out and try and see that one at at the Denver Center if you can. My first. OK.

Toni Tresca (41:08)

you’re absolutely right Alex. I misspoke.

And it,

I was just gonna say, and it’s also gonna be a part of the upcoming Colorado Play Summit as one of its two full productions that was originally staged there along with the Reservoir, which you can catch through March as well. So if you are going to the new Play Summit to catch the four new plays there, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in the upcoming weeks a little bit more in depth, you can also add these two shows to your list.

Alex Miller (41:30)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, real quick, I should mention I’ve set up an interview with Denver Center Theater Company, artistic director Chris Coleman to talk about the new play Summit. So we’ll have that on an upcoming episode.

Toni Tresca (41:57)

Brilliant.

Alex Miller (41:58)

Yeah. So all right. My next one is Baskerville. So this is a fun play by Ken Ludwig, kicking off or teeing off the whole Sherlock Holmes thing. This will be at Main Street Live in Trinidad, February 14th through 24th. And I just mentioned it because I love to mention shows that are going on outside the metro area. So Trinidad is way down south. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in Trinidad, but I would love to see a show at Main Street Live some.

Toni Tresca (42:26)

Yeah, and that sounds like a good one to check out. My next headliner is also outside of the Denver metro area. It is in Boulder at the Dairy Arts Center. It’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. It’s being produced by Boulder’s Upstart Crow and directed by local Hannah Richards, who she also does PR for the theater company of Lafayette. And this play deals with addiction, unfulfilled dreams, mortal flaws, and the struggle of family relationships in a way that only Eugene O’Neill can.

It’s set in the summer of 1912 in Connecticut and follows the Tyrone family who is struggling to cope with the realities and consequences of each member’s failure. So it’s a kind of a more dark introspective play. But if you’re looking for a serious grown up adult drama up in the Boulder area, this just might be the show for you.

Alex Miller (43:15)

All right. Cool. My next one is a show called Humble Boy. So this is from a newish or new production company called Springboard Productions, and they’re performing at the Three Leaches Theater, formerly the Benchmark Theater over there in Lakewood. So this is set in the English countryside. It delves into the life of Felix Humble, an astrophysicist struggling with the complex dynamics of his family and the legacy of his late father. Sounds like it’s a drama that explores themes of love, loss and the search for self-understanding.

And this one runs, let me see, 13th through the 22nd there in Lakewood.

Toni Tresca (43:52)

If you’re looking for something kind of fun and romantic for Valentine’s Day, Vintage Theater is opening its production of Guys and Dolls, this beloved Broadway classic about smooth-talking gangsters and straight-faced, laced missionaries who collide in New York City. This is going to be running February 14th through March 23rd there, and Vintage always does a really nice job with these musicals, so…

I’m looking forward to checking this one out myself. I’ve never seen guys and dolls on the stage. I’ve only seen the kind of filmed. I, I, and I love all, but I love all the music.

Alex Miller (44:23)

Yeah.

huh. Yeah, I feel like I’ve seen it, but if I did, was a very long time ago. So maybe I’ll get out and check that one too. My next headliner is from the Springs Ensemble Theater Company in Colorado Springs on Clover Road, February 13th through March 2nd. So this is written by friend of the pod, Steven Dietz. He was on the podcast quite a number of years ago now, but this is a psychological thriller that explores the dark world of cults and the desperate links a mother will go to save her child. So it centers on

Toni Tresca (44:50)

Mm-hmm.

Alex Miller (44:58)

This woman who hires a professional cult deprogrammer, we could use a whole team of those in America right now to help rescue her teenage daughter who was lured into a dangerous cult. Cults are such a fascinating thing. It’s just so bizarre. Sounds like a cool exploration of it.

Toni Tresca (45:17)

Speaking of cults, just got done watching the Love Has Won series on HBO Max, which is about this cult led by, it’s set, here in Colorado, was here in Colorado, it was the cult of Mother God, and it is really an insane show. She, she believes that the ghost of Robin Williams is communicating with her until she ended up dying and then her followers.

Alex Miller (45:23)

yeah.

Toni Tresca (45:43)

transferred her mummified body around across state lines. It’s a truly bonkers story.

Alex Miller (45:49)

Wow, was it a good series?

Toni Tresca (45:53)

It was a very, very good series. The interviewer was given, the documentarian was given such cool access to the whole thing because all of the people who are in the cult are such, they’re so obsessed with fame and attention seeking and they want to get this message out there. Like it’s so critical. So they’re willing to just like let her in to all of these really intimate moments and they capture so much film from these like in

unbelievable moments throughout this woman’s life, Amy Carlson, who believes herself to be Mother God and the leader of this kind of religion. It’s a little bit disturbing, so if you’re a little bit squeamish, I maybe would not watch this right before bed or maybe have something fun to watch right after, but it’s a very good show. Love is One on HBO Max.

Alex Miller (46:39)

Okay.

Okay.

Toni Tresca (46:46)

But that is not my headliner actually. My next headliner pick is over at the Arvada Center. It’s Clybourne Park. This is opening February 14th and runs through March 30th. And it’s loosely inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. It’s written by Bruce Norris. It’s a biting dark comedy that takes on the specter of gentrification in our communities. The scene is set in one house on Clybourne Street in Chicago’s South Side.

Alex Miller (46:49)

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (47:14)

in 1959 when a Black family moves in and then in 2009 a white family does. It’s a winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play. The Clybourne Park is a razor sharp satire about the politics of race, housing and gentrification and it’s got a great cast being directed by Kenny Moten so I’m sure this is going to be a banger production.

Alex Miller (47:39)

Okay, cool. My next one takes us all the way out to Carbondale at Thunder River Theater Company. They’re doing tiny, beautiful things, February 14th through March 2nd. So it’s a pretty familiar title that has been performed a few times in Colorado. I think it’s the first time Thunder River’s doing. I think some of our friends from the Denver area are in it, but I can’t remember exactly who. I didn’t do my homework. I’ll look it up. But that’s always a fun show to see the whole.

Cheryl Strayed story about this sort of advice columnist.

Toni Tresca (48:11)

It’s a really, really moving play. of perfectly perfect balance between really sweet, sentimental, and really biting and sad kind of like sad stories that really just jerk at your heart.

My final show is not going is not a tearjerker in any way. It is a raunchy dirty comedy show. that is a comedy works both downtown in Denver and south over in Greenwood Village. They’ve got the run of this show from February 16th through March 12th. And it’s a original dirty comedy showcase created in house by Comedy Works. That is for audience members over the age of 18 only. No kiddos allowed.

Alex Miller (48:28)

All right.

if

Yeah.

Toni Tresca (48:57)

because it is very lewd, mildly off-color, very vulgar, of risque, mischievous, quite blue, and very steamy. So they’re gonna be just a bunch of local comics who are coming there to perform their body-est and most raucous material for your pleasure. So if you don’t like edgy comedy, this probably will not be for you, but if you’re into something a little bit blue, this might be the show for you.

Alex Miller (49:07)

Wow.

Toni Tresca (49:25)

I didn’t intend for it to rhyme, but I realized halfway it was going to, and so I just decided to commit.

Alex Miller (49:26)

look at that.

All right,

I’m always down for some body humor, so that sounds like lot of fun. All right, my last one is, it’s Monday, it must be murder. So this is Longmont Theater Company running February 7th through 16th. So I have to say, this is their 68th season. I think they were dark for a little bit. I think there was also some concern that they were gonna come back at all. So they have a new season lined up and this is, I think, the first one. this is a, like a comedy, a guy named Harry Monday posing as a.

golf playing psychiatrist at a country club, quote unquote, a place where old polyester goes to die. Apparently club members start dying on the course and the club members are all crazy. There’s a astrological moon child club president, a Wall Street ad man and all this stuff going on. A sultry heart hearted dame and a surly police sergeant. If you have to figure if it’s Monday, this must be murder. So it sounds like just a silly, silly kind of rump, but welcome back Longmont theater company.

Toni Tresca (50:29)

Yeah. So those are our headliners for this week. And now we are going to throw it over to Alex’s interview with playwright, Sandy Rustin.

Alex Miller (50:41)

All right. Hey, Sandy Rustin. We are here today with the playwright of The Suffragettes Murder opening soon at the Denver Center. Thanks so much for joining me on Stage Colorado Podcast.

Sandy Rustin (50:51)

Thanks for having me.

Alex Miller (50:53)

Yeah, well, so this is going to be coming up on February 7th, it opens and runs through March 9th at the Kielstrum Theatre. This is a world premiere. So I have to say I did hear the original reading a couple of years ago and loved the script. So how much has it changed since then?

Sandy Rustin (51:10)

Thank you, that’s nice to hear. You know, it’s always, with all new plays, it’s a work in progress until you hit that opening night magic day. So it’s definitely shifting and shaping, but the core of it remains the same, certainly from what you saw. And then hopefully just finessing and fine tuning and figuring out how it’s gonna play on stage.

Alex Miller (51:35)

All right. So yeah, for those unfamiliar, which most probably most people unless they were at the New Play Summit. So this is a really interesting story set in 1857 in Manhattan in a boarding house. And it’s kind of a whodunit. So how did you come up with the idea to kind of merge the whole suffragette story with this whodunit, all these wacky characters?

Sandy Rustin (51:56)

Yeah, sure.

So during the pandemic, actually, Florida Studio Theater, which is a theater in Sarasota, Florida, where I am part of a playwriting collective, they got a grant to commission four U.S. playwrights to write a play on the subject of women’s suffrage in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of women’s suffrage in America.

And so they came to me and said, would you like to write a play on women’s suffrage? And I said, sure, is it okay if I couch it in a comedic tone? And they said, sure. So I had just sort of finished working on Clue, which is the adaptation of the movie Clue, which is now a stage play that I scripted. And so I guess I had murder mystery on the brain and thought that would be kind of fun to try to do an original.

mystery genre play, but really kind of turn it on its head, come at it from a different angle, and look at it through this, the lens of the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement. So that’s kind of how I came to the idea.

Alex Miller (53:03)

Okay.

Okay. And so, so you’re, it’s a serious subject, of course, but taking a comic take on it. So how did you approach characterizing the women? Are they based on any real characters from that era?

Sandy Rustin (53:08)

Yes.

Yeah, so I went down a real deep rabbit hole of research on this era and in my researching I came upon a book called The Physiology of Boarding Houses that was written at that time by an author named Thomas Gunn. And in it he describes all sorts of boarding houses that existed in New York City at that time. And amongst the chapters I fell upon a chapter about this one particular vegetarian boarding house.

Alex Miller (53:30)

wow.

Sandy Rustin (53:44)

And the author has a very comic tone of voice. It’s very snarky. And so as I was reading the chapter, there were all these colorful characters that began to come to life in my imagination. And I thought, well, how about this? What if I create this environment where all different kinds of people, all different kinds of characters can find a place to congregate? And what if the person who’s at the head of this boarding house is the

that her mission is to create a safe haven for women. And that’s really where the idea began. And then I spun it out from there. But you’re right, it is a serious topic. And the era was a serious time. Women’s suffrage and the abolitionist movement and immigration in America at that time, all three of these issues come to light in this play. And though we try to handle it lightly,

Alex Miller (54:22)

Okay.

Alright.

Sandy Rustin (54:42)

as we go, there certainly are moments that feel weightier throughout the course of the play.

Alex Miller (54:48)

Right. It’s hard not to think of some parallels to today and people are still fighting for their rights, sometimes ones that had already been gained or so we thought. Are you cognizant of some of that going on in our current environment?

Sandy Rustin (54:56)

Yes.

Yes, definitely. I wish this play were less relevant than it is.

Alex Miller (55:06)

Yeah. So when you were doing all of your research, did you come across any characters or stories that really surprised you from the hero?

Sandy Rustin (55:15)

Well, I mean, I was really taken by this book that I’m talking, that I was telling you about. I just thought it was so imaginative the way that this author began to describe these people from all walks of life that found themselves suddenly living together. And so I became really curious about what that looks like and who these people really were and started to dig deeper into those characters. So it was really that one particular chapter that sparked my imagination.

Alex Miller (55:44)

Okay, you it’s really interesting you think about boarding houses and you read so much today about like loneliness. It’s like maybe we need more boarding houses. I don’t know. It must have been an interesting way to live. We just throw together with people you know.

Sandy Rustin (55:53)

Yeah, it was

very popular. It was a very popular way to live in New York City at that time in our country. I think it’s really interesting. Sort of a communal style life, yeah.

Alex Miller (55:58)

Yeah, was economical.

Yeah, low carbon footprint, all the stuff that you’re supposed to be doing, right? So, well, read somewhere that you’re one of the most, the most produced playwright in America, is that true?

Sandy Rustin (56:08)

Mm-hmm.

Oh my goodness, I don’t know what the statistic is, but I can tell you that my play Clue has been produced now over 4,000 times throughout the world, which is an unbelievable number. Yeah, and it’s currently on a national tour. So maybe it’s coming soon to a city near you. And so that it is that play that has given me that.

Alex Miller (56:25)

What?

Sandy Rustin (56:41)

accolade, which is just like, can’t really wrap my head around it, but it is, it’s wonderful that people have responded to that play. I think, you know, it’s a combo effort there that the title of Clue is such a household name. People grew up playing the board game. There’s many, many lovers of the movie. So I think there was a general curiosity about what, it was going to look like live on stage and people just embraced it and have had the best time with it, which makes me delighted.

Alex Miller (56:44)

Hahaha

All

Maybe you should start reminiscing around other old board games. it’s time there’s a whatever, part cheesy play or something like that. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about, so adopting something is one thing, creating something from whole cloth is another. Do you have a favorite or are you kind of like switching back and forth?

Sandy Rustin (57:13)

Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, right. Good idea.

I do like switching back and forth. You when you adapt something from existing intellectual property, you inherit a lot of information. You get characters, often get tone and style, a genre, sometimes in the case of Clue, really famous dialogue. know, like there were lines from the film that absolutely had to make it into the stage play, or I was afraid people would revolt and leave the theater, you know? So you really inherit a lot of information.

Alex Miller (57:55)

huh.

Sandy Rustin (57:59)

And that gives you a very solid foundation from which to build upon. And that’s really exciting to have those kinds of boundaries. With an original piece though, the flip side is there are no boundaries. It’s completely free. Your imagination can run wild. There’s no yes or no. There’s no right or wrong. You can just go, go, go. And that feels very freeing. So what I’ve learned about myself as a writer is I always like to have one of each kind of project at the forefront of my workload.

so that I can exercise both parts of my brain. One that’s very structured and enjoys having the foundation that an adaptation offers, and the other that is really can just run free and be wild and, you know, just be, go to the heights of my own imagination and explore what that is. And that felt really gratifying to get to work both parts of myself as a writer in that way.

Alex Miller (58:52)

Okay. How much of the stuff that you’re working on today or recently has been on commission and how much of it is just things that you’re just working on to see what happens?

Sandy Rustin (59:02)

Yeah, well certainly that percentage has shifted as I’ve aged and my career has shifted. In the beginning of my career, it was all original stuff. There was no commissions. It was just me putting my stuff out into the world. Now I would say it’s more like 50-50, where sometimes people come to me and have an idea or a specific job or a specific show that they’d like me to be part of, which is wonderful.

And then also at the same time I have my own ideas that I’m trying to put out into the world in my own way as well and sometimes those two things At this point sometimes those two things merge so sometimes a Producer or a theater might come to me and say we have space for a new piece of theater What are you working on? What would you like to do? That’s dream right to say gosh. Okay. Well, I have this great idea Do you have space or time to help me develop it and?

Yeah, so I would say that it’s a nice even balance between commissioned pieces and my own stuff.

Alex Miller (1:00:05)

Okay, so yeah, I know many writers, myself included, work well with a deadline and a kind of a clear direction and can maybe get a little slower when they’re doing the other thing. Do you find that it’s a little easier if you’ve got something like a deadline and a clear project to get it done?

Sandy Rustin (1:00:23)

You know,

I think because I started really writing in earnest while I had two little boys at home, I sort of taught myself to take advantage of every possible minute. You know, I was writing plays during their nap time for several years. So I sort of learned how to use my time and get into the flow really quickly. And as a result, I think whenever I’m working on anything, whether it be a piece with a deadline or my own

Alex Miller (1:00:38)

huh.

Sandy Rustin (1:00:52)

idea, if it is brewing in me, it sort of feels to me like it has to get out of my brain. And so there’s this internal pressure to get the work onto the page. So I tend to get those first drafts out pretty quickly, no matter the circumstance. And then I take my time in finessing and fine tuning.

Alex Miller (1:01:14)

Okay. Hey, I wanted to switch gears real quick. I know we’re mostly talking about the new play, but your Broadway debut with The Cottage was a pretty big milestone. And we also have that opening, think, tonight or tomorrow night at the StageDrawer Theater up in Conifer, which is just outside Denver in the mountains here. So yeah, yes, I know they’re excited about doing it. So what was it like with that happening, this Broadway thing?

Sandy Rustin (1:01:34)

That’s awesome.

Oh my goodness, well, you know, obviously it was like a little girl dream come true. I had been wanting to be a part of the Broadway community since I was, you know, since I can remember, really. The Cottage was a play, that was an original idea that I developed starting I think in 2012 or 2013. And it had been being produced regionally around the country for 10 years before it found its way to Broadway.

So it was a real journey with that play of really trying to figure out how to shepherd it from one theater to the next into different producers’ hands. And then it finally found its way to Broadway Stage, which of course was incredibly thrilling.

Alex Miller (1:02:26)

Wow, so it was out there 10 years before it made it. So not an overnight success as they say. Most of them aren’t, right? So great. Well, what else I wanted to ask you about. So this collaboration with Edie Burkell on Now Never Knows Tomorrow, what’s that one? Is that up or is that still pending?

Sandy Rustin (1:02:30)

No, not at all. Nope. No, no.

So this is a work in progress that I’m so excited about. I actually just had a reading of this new piece on Tuesday night, which was thrilling with this wonderful group of actors in New York, which was just great. And Now Never Knows Tomorrow is a temporary title. It’s actually a lyric that Edie came up with that I’m just using as the title until we come up with whatever the title for the show is going to be. So this was a play that I wrote a long time ago called Houston.

It’s about a Jewish girl who falls in love with a Jordanian boy at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston while both of their fathers are having bone marrow transplants and It’s it’s you know, it’s sort of a unusually set rom-com But it’s loosely based on a true story and I wrote it as a play initially, but always felt like it needed music. I think it’s actually a play with

music, not quite a musical, but somewhere in between a play and a musical. And my world sort of collided with Edie’s and we became friends and collaborators. And she asked if I had anything that was in need of music. And I shared this play with her and she responded to it and said she would love to help me create the music soundscape for it. So that’s what we’ve been working on. had time together last summer with her amazing band, the Heavy Makeup Band.

people should check them out. And together we’ve sort of crafted the beginnings of what this new show is gonna look like. yeah, so we’re still in the phases of development, but we’re getting ready and looking forward to next steps in production, hopefully in the next year or two. Yeah.

Alex Miller (1:04:34)

All right, that’s exciting. Yeah, so

have you done anything with music before?

Sandy Rustin (1:04:39)

Yes, so well, you know, I am a performer also. So I grew up as a musical theater kid, singing and dancing and doing all that stuff. My first job when I graduated from Northwestern, I played Sandy in the national tour of the musical Grease. Yes, so musical theater is my love language, my first language. I, you know, I love it and I love writing musicals. In fact, tonight is the third preview performance of

Alex Miller (1:04:55)

Go well.

Sandy Rustin (1:05:08)

my musical adaptation of the movie Mystic Pizza that’s opening at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey this week. So yes, I have a bunch of different musicals going. I like to be working on musicals and plays in equal amount. So, yeah.

Alex Miller (1:05:24)

Wow, that’s fantastic. Well, I want to ask, you know, a lot of times when someone gets to your level, all of your world kind of blows up and like everybody wants you to come to their thing and to come to their playwright, whatever workshop or whatever you finding that those kinds of opportunities are just fast and furious.

Sandy Rustin (1:05:25)

Thanks.

Yeah, mean, truly, I do look at all of those things as opportunities. I’ve been at this in New York for 25 years, I guess. So to be in a place professionally where people are interested in developing and producing my work is thrilling. So mostly, I just see it through the lens of absolute gratitude. certainly, there’s a schedule to manage here, and I can’t

and you know, I can’t do everything that I’d like to do, but I’m grateful to be in that position. So it feels less overwhelming and more like, holy cow, people want to do my work, oh my gosh. So that feels wonderful.

Alex Miller (1:06:28)

great. And then the last thing I kind of want to ask you about was the writer’s life. What’s yours? Everybody’s got their thing. It’s like I write in the morning, I write at night, I work right every day for X number of hours. What’s your technique that you have to keep things moving?

Sandy Rustin (1:06:37)

Yeah.

You know, I

wish I could tell you that I’m some like wildly disciplined person that has, you know, some sort of secret sauce that I embark upon every day, but that would be not true. I think mostly my work has come from my ability to find pockets of time while parenting. And then that’s evolved as my children have aged. So in the beginning, it was very willy nilly.

Alex Miller (1:06:45)

you

Sandy Rustin (1:07:11)

now that my, you know, my kids are teenagers, I have much more time. And so I do have a more sort of scheduled day that the school day provides. even within that, you know, some days I’m in New York City in the rehearsal room and some days I’m home writing and sometimes I need like a week to myself to just concentrate and get a job done. And then I have to go not in my home, you know, somewhere else for a while. So.

It really, my day is dictated by what’s on tap and what’s required.

Alex Miller (1:07:45)

Okay. All right. So do you live in the city yourself?

Sandy Rustin (1:07:49)

Nope, we live in a suburb just outside of New York City that’s an easy commute to Penn Station. But yeah, we have a house instead of an apartment. Yeah.

Alex Miller (1:07:54)

Okay

Okay.

All right. Well, I know I said that was the last question, but I always like to ask on new plays like this. So Shelley Butler’s directing this, which unusual for two shows in a row at Denver Center.

Sandy Rustin (1:08:04)

Sure.

Yeah, so Shelley

directed Jake Rash’s last play that’s running now that’s called The Reservoir and my play is being directed by a wonderful director named Margot Bordelon. And she’s, yeah, that’s okay. Margot’s terrific. And Shelley is terrific too. Yeah.

Alex Miller (1:08:14)

Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.

I’m sorry.

Okay,

well let me back up again. So just to ask your relationship with the director, some playwrights are kind of hands off, just do it and some of very involved. Where do you land on that continuum?

Sandy Rustin (1:08:37)

Yeah, well for a world premiere for sure, I love to be as involved as the production will allow. And the Denver Center and Margot have been wildly embracing and inviting and encouraging of my involvement. So I’ve been very much a part of it, part of the casting, part of all the conversations about design and thinking about how the show is gonna look and move and feel. And Margot has fostered an incredibly collaborative

warm rehearsal space where I feel very welcome and where we’re sort of just in tandem building this play together and that feels really wonderful and exciting.

Alex Miller (1:09:19)

All right, great. Well, Sandy Resson, thanks so much for taking the time to be on our podcast. So The Suffragettes Murder opens February 7th and runs through March 9th at the Kielstrom Theater at the Denver Center. Really funny play. I’m sure the live stage, the full stage version will be even more funny and fun than when I saw the readings. So best of luck, break legs all around and thanks again for coming on.

Sandy Rustin (1:09:45)

Thanks Alex, it’s so nice of you to have me.

Toni Tresca (1:09:47)

Honestly, I’m just so impressed that we were able to get Sandy on the podcast. That’s a great conversation about her upcoming play, The Suffragettes Murder, that you had. That’s awesome.

Alex Miller (1:09:57)

Yeah, yeah, I love talking to playwrights. I mean, there, that’s where it all starts, right with somebody staring at a blank screen. And then the thing at the other end is, is an entirely different, different animal, which is what’s so cool about theater, which is I love talking about that the genesis of the ideas and things like that.

Toni Tresca (1:10:15)

So, what else is new on the OnStage Colorado site, Alex, that folks can check out? What new reviews and news do we got on there?

Alex Miller (1:10:24)

Good question. So yeah, we have a review of the Heart Sellers, which is at the Ant Center in Colorado Springs that April got down to see. My review of Hope and Gravity. So Alice Kedelin reviewed Casanova, which is at the Colorado Ballet, which she just couldn’t say enough good things about. And in the company in general, she just says, you know,

Toni Tresca (1:10:27)

I

Alex Miller (1:10:52)

They’ve just been improving every time she sees another one. about Gee’s Bend at Aurora Fox. And then coming up on the site, we’ll have a review of In Her Bones, Suffragettes Murder, Clyburn Park, On Clover Road, and a couple of other things. So lots of stuff coming up on the site.

Toni Tresca (1:11:19)

Yeah, so if you want to stay up to date on what’s going on in theaters and comedy venues across the state, subscribe to the Onstage Colorado newsletter, which comes out every Thursday. And you can read all of these reviews, news, and listen to old episodes of the podcast at onstagecolorado.com. If you like what we’re doing here on the podcast, please consider leaving us a review wherever you are listening now and tell other theater lovers in your life about what we’re doing here.

Alex Miller (1:11:47)

Yeah. Yeah. So next week on the podcast, I’ll have that interview with Chris Colbin. I haven’t had him on the podcast in several years, but of course he’s a huge player in Colorado theater as the artistic director at the Denver Center Theater Company’s theater. So that’ll be real interesting to talk about the Colorado New Play Summit, which is coming up right at the very beginning of March. So we always get really excited about that one. That’s kind of like our Super Bowl for theater in Colorado.

Toni Tresca (1:12:12)

I agree and I’m really excited to be doing again interviews with all four of the participating playwrights ahead of their participation in the new play summit this year. I really enjoy getting to speak with them before the process because it gives me insight into what they’re thinking about going into, what they hope to learn. because the Denver Center often chooses plays that are from those new play summits to fully produce.

you get to kind of contrast what they said before the play summit with what happens before their play opens eventually at the Denver Center. So I just, I’m really excited to pick their brains.

Alex Miller (1:12:50)

Cool, and where can people see those interviews?

Toni Tresca (1:12:54)

That Playwright Preview is going to be in Denver Westward, so folks can check it out on the site there in just a couple of weeks.

Alex Miller (1:13:01)

Awesome. All right, well, that’s it for our episode this week. Thanks so much for listening. I’m Alex Miller.

Toni Tresca (1:13:08)

and I’m Tony Tresca and we’ll see you at the show.