A month of great theatre stories, plus we speak to Denver-born playwright Jake Brasch, whose play ‘The Reservoir’ gets its world premiere at the Denver Center
In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcasts, Alex Miller and Toni Tresca are joined by special guest host John Moore. A longtime theatre writer in Colorado and senior arts reporter at the Denver Gazette, John is also the creator of the annual True West Awards honoring local theatre folks. He’s also the founder of the Denver Actors Fund, which to date has raised and donated over $1.5 million to theatre folks (and in some cases, their pets).
Also in this episode, Alex interviews playwright Jake Brasch. The Denver native has their first professionally produced work in a world premiere at the Denver Center, opening in previews Jan. 17.
And we’re back with our Top 10 Colorado Headliners, which this week include:
The 39 Steps, Jan. 11-Feb. 8, Lincoln Center Magnolia Theatre, Fort Collins
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Jan. 16-26, The People’s Building, Aurora
A Case for the Existence of God, Preview Jan. 16-17, runs Jan. 18-Feb. 16, Curious Theatre Company, Denver
Jane/Eyre from Grapefruit Lab with live music by Teacup Gorillat at Buntport Theatre in Denver Jan. 17-Feb. 1
She Kills Monsters, Jan. 17-Feb. 23, Vintage Theatre, Denver
Mary Poppins, Parker PACE Center, Jan. 17-Feb. 9
Kid Detective, A Bildungsroman from Shifted Lens Theatre Company at Roaming Gnome in Aurora, Jan. 11-26
Ghost Quartet, The Catamounts at the Boulder Dairy Center, Jan. 18-Feb. 8
The Time is Always Right from BETC at the Dairy Center in Boulder, Jan. 19 at 2 and 7
Still We Rise from Motus Theater, Jan. 20 at the Dairy Center in Boulder
Listen to the podcast
Transcript
Created by hallucinogenic AI; forgive any mistakes
Alex Miller (00:00)
Well, hello and welcome to the OnStage Colorado podcast for January 14th. I’m Alex Miller.
Toni Tresca (00:06)
And I’m Tony Tresca, and today we are joined by a very special guest, senior arts journalist at the Denver Gazette and founder of the Denver Actors Fund, John Moore.
Alex Miller (00:17)
Hey!
John Moore (00:18)
Hello Tony, hello Alex, hello Colorado theater community. How you doing?
Alex Miller (00:24)
Good, great to have you on John. We had you on the pod a few years ago and we had so many tech problems and it was a disaster and we’ve been trying to get you back on. So we’re glad you’re here today. And we want to talk about your, True West Award winners that you do every December and talk about that. a little, we’ll talk a little bit about the state of arts journalism going into 2025. So all things that I know you have a lot of interest in. So.
But before we get to that, we wanted to get to the question that’s on everybody’s mind. It’s like, we heard a rumor. Actually, you told me. You told me. How much time? You actually took some time off. You’re like, never take time off. So how’d you do over the break? Are you all rested up and?
Toni Tresca (00:59)
you
John Moore (01:06)
I’ve been spending my break from my work at the Denver Gazette doing accounting for the end of the year books for the Denver Actors Fund. whereas other people go to a beach, I go to my desk and I just do different work. That’s how fun I am.
Alex Miller (01:23)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (01:24)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Miller (01:26)
Wow. Okay. Well, that’s okay.
John Moore (01:28)
That’s sad, I’m sorry.
Toni Tresca (01:31)
Well,
I know another thing that you also got up to was your January 6th performance of Waiting for Obama at Miners Alley in Golden that was a benefit for the Denver’s Actor Fund, which I’m so sorry to have missed that, but how did it go? How was the reading?
John Moore (01:47)
It was really a special experience and I don’t usually talk in those kind of terms when it’s my own stuff. this, was a kind of a remarkable confluence of time and opportunity. I feel like for people who don’t know, I wrote this play called Waiting for Obama in 2016. It was commissioned for the New York Fringe Festival. And it just, they wanted to play about guns in America in the final months of the Obama administration.
And it was sort of inspired by this idea of saying, you know, I’ve been listening for eight years to people say, Obama’s coming for your guns, Obama’s coming for your guns. And I thought, well, what if he did, you know, what would happen? Wouldn’t that be kind of fun to look into? So we did it in New York. We turned it into a big all Colorado production. Everyone in the show was making their New York stage debuts. It was a wonderful experience, but it’s a play very much of its time. And I thought that I didn’t even try to get it licensed or really.
Alex Miller (02:23)
you
John Moore (02:43)
fully staged in Colorado, just did it and sort of moved on. But the last eight years have sort of incorporated, I don’t know, an entire generation of change in the discourse, in the way that we talk to each other, in politics in America, in civility, all those things. And so as the kind of rails that we’ve fallen off the rails in terms of being able to just…
talk about things in America that with the anniversary of January 6th coming up and with the inauguration of Donald Trump coming up, there are several people who just put the idea in my head, like, why don’t we just have one night where people who are feeling trepidation or fear or great enthusiasm and excitement, depending on what your political leanings are, a place to get together and sort of talk about where we’re at at this particular moment. And with everything that’s going on in the landscape,
just the idea of just sort of slipping back in time to eight years ago when you could have discourse, but it was more civil discourse. I think it was a salve, I think, for the people who were there to just sort of remember what it was like to have a president where you could have a conversation that didn’t have to involve cutting each other down and name calling and just petty politics.
You can actually talk about ideas and it was a night of ideas and I think that it was a pretty special night.
Alex Miller (04:16)
Yeah, it was. was really happy to see that it was almost a full house. A lot of people showed up. was lots of folks from the theater community there. And I really enjoyed the play that you wrote, John. I hadn’t read it before or seen anything. So I thought it was a really interesting way to address the topic. And yeah, it’s both a piece of its time, but also still plenty relevant. So yeah.
really, really enjoyable and glad that hopefully made a chunk of change for the for DAF to help folks out.
John Moore (04:52)
Yeah, people were very generous. We raised just over $2,000, which made the whole thing worthwhile. Everybody donated their time. Yeah, this is feel like there was a special energy in the room. In fact, we actually oversold the event, but as weather in January does, it scared away about 30 people. So there were some empty seats, but it was fully sold out.
All the actors donated their time and Miners Alley Playhouse went out of their way to make all of their staff available to us. It was a true demonstration of community, I think.
Alex Miller (05:28)
Yeah. Yep. So congrats on that. I didn’t see anything else recently just because it’s just this kind of interregnum between the Christmas season and the start of the new season, which really kind of kicks off this weekend, I would say. You know, there’s a few things up, but I haven’t been to anything other than that. What about, Tony, you got out and saw some of this stuff at the Sea Film Center, right?
John Moore (05:33)
Thanks.
Toni Tresca (05:46)
Definitely.
That’s right, yeah. So on Saturday, January 11th, I went to see the second showing as a part of their screening for January Jalo, which is an Italian style of horror, kind of inspired by Agatha Christie novels that has excessive violence and really cynical depictions of humanity. So perfect for horror. And…
I went and saw this really interesting 2001 film called Valentine about this cupid faced killer who was coming back to kill people who had spurned him at a middle school dance and he was killing people in all these really cheeky Valentine’s day ways which is just right up my alley. I love holiday horror. I’m a big horror guy and so this was really fun. It was a part of their Scream series that they do.
which is they just host a bunch of spooky screenings monthly.
John Moore (06:48)
Could I interrupt you real quick, Tony? So you said 2001, right? So what’s it like for a guy like you to go to a cinema and see these movies from the before times, like before you were born?
Toni Tresca (06:50)
Absolutely.
That’s right.
Alex Miller (06:55)
You
Toni Tresca (07:01)
I, I, quick correction, I was alive in 2001. I would have just been one year old. So I was not able to see Valentine in theater. You are correct. So it was, this was definitely my first time. And it was interesting. think there were quite a, Keith Garcia, who’s the artistic director there, asked everybody if, how many people had seen Valentine before. It was kind of a healthy mix of people who had seen it, but most of the crowd had not seen it. So that made it.
Alex Miller (07:04)
You
John Moore (07:04)
You
Alex Miller (07:07)
Yeah
You
John Moore (07:29)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (07:29)
particularly fun with all the jump scares and everything. We were all screaming and whatnot.
John Moore (07:31)
Well, yeah. So Valentine for you is what, I don’t know, Citizen Kane was for Alex and I.
Toni Tresca (07:40)
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.
John Moore (07:41)
Although I think I just…
Alex Miller (07:41)
Maybe, yeah. I’d never heard of it, but yeah.
John Moore (07:44)
Sure, sure.
Alex Miller (07:46)
So for those who don’t know, Tony also works on another podcast that comes out, I don’t know, once or twice a month, that’s all about horror. So you want to plug that real quick, Tony?
Toni Tresca (07:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it’s called Such a Nightmare Conversations About Horror. I host it with one of my former professors. Her name is Dr. Catherine Troyer. And she actually got her PhD in horror literature and horror analysis. And so we just dive deep into horror good and bad from kind of an academic perspective on that show.
Alex Miller (08:17)
Yep. So yeah, if you’re into horror, it’s the podcast for you. So before we dive into our main topic, I just wanted to quickly tease our interview this week later in the podcast. talking to Jake Brasch. I’m actually talking to him tomorrow as you’re hearing this. hopefully he is, this happens so that I don’t have to edit this, but yeah, he’s a Colorado playwright whose new dark comedy, The Reservoir, opens at the Denver Center this week. And all three of us, I think, heard a reading of the play at the…
Denver Center’s new play festival in 2023. And I think it’s fair to say we’re all pretty intrigued and excited by it. It’s funny, touching, and pretty intense as the main character has come to Denver from NYU and struggling mightily with sobriety. yeah, we are, I think, really looking forward to seeing the show. And I’m excited to talk to Jake tomorrow. And I think you guys have talked to him before, haven’t you?
John Moore (09:10)
Yeah, he’s a kid who went to Denver School of the Arts and he’s just a real success story and a sweetheart of a human being. I think this play is a real culmination of, how should I put it? It’s a triumph for local playwrights. He left Colorado pretty quickly after high school, but this is a Denver story.
And it’s going to be getting not only the largest stage at the Denver Center, but it’s going to be performed as a tri-production in LA and I believe Atlanta. you don’t see these kind of successes for local playwrights at this level very often. And I think we should all take some notice of this and champion the work of all local playwrights. It’s a win for everyone.
Toni Tresca (09:47)
That’s right.
Alex Miller (10:03)
Absolutely.
Toni Tresca (10:03)
Yeah,
couldn’t agree more. I’m really excited to chat with Jake a little bit more about that later this week. I’ll be going over to the Denver Center to just chat with Jake a little bit before his rehearsal for the show, because he’s actively still workshopping it with the Denver Center, which I think is just a really cool thing for a local playwright, like you were saying, John. So I’m really excited to check out that full production, because the reading was just such an interesting meditation on the kind of parallels between addiction and aging from a
really personal level that I think just really warrants a full production.
Alex Miller (10:39)
Yep. Yeah, so that’ll be coming up a little bit later. So our main topic today, of course, we have John Moore here who started the True West Awards. Originally were the Ovation Awards when you’re at the Denver Post. so, John, you can explain it better than I certainly can. They’re your baby. So can you give a quick explainer about what the True West Awards are?
John Moore (11:01)
Sure. Things have changed in journalism so much. I started out as a theater critic at the Denver Post in 2001, and it seemed very appropriate at that time that the lead writer at a time when we had specialists, like, I mean, it’s so funny to think about now that we had somebody covering comedy, somebody covering film, somebody covering TV, somebody covering pop music, somebody covering underground music.
Alex Miller (11:03)
Ha ha ha.
Toni Tresca (11:04)
Ha
Alex Miller (11:24)
Okay.
John Moore (11:29)
I covered theater and I didn’t realize at that time that that was going to be going away quite so fast. But I spent 12 years at the post focused entirely on the Colorado theater community. took the responsibility very seriously. And at the end of the year, I did very traditional awards called the Ovation Awards. And they were exactly what you would expect. They were categories and nominees. And we printed something like 270 names in the paper on one Sunday. And then two weeks later, you’d find out who won.
And it seemed appropriate. You, Denver Post, had a circulation of something like 575,000 on Sundays at that time. it was hard to be in a position where you have to be an arbiter of what you thought was the best. It was just one person’s opinion. I never said my opinion was more or less valid than any other person’s, but I picked the winner. And that was lovely for the winners, and it turned out could be quite painful for those who didn’t win.
But it just you know, think of awards. It’s like the Tony Awards or the Oscars, know, just just goes with the territory that 80 % of your nominees are gonna lose and And but like I said, it seemed appropriate for my role at the Denver Post But when I left the post I kind of had a come to Jesus. This is around time. I was starting the Denver Actors Fund and re-evaluating everything in my life and one of those things was awards and I just decided I didn’t want to be a guy
who’s very dedicated and heartfelt work on behalf of this community causes trauma and awards cause trauma. They just do. But I wanted to have an end of the year project that acknowledged all the great work in the community without it having been something that was assumed or presumed. And so I had this notion of the True West Awards, which I call 30 days, 30 bouquets.
As a journalist, don’t look at them as awards as much as I look at them as a review of the year. So it’s an opportunity, an insane opportunity to write a story a day for 30, really 31 days. And I’m sure the pure volume of it probably drove people crazy. But I used it as an opportunity to go, you know what, I want to look back at the year and I want to.
I want to remind people of good stories of the year and I want to tell stories that I haven’t had a chance to tell all year. But I want every day to be a bouquet. It’s the holiday season. wanted people to be surprised by what they opened up. It’s not the paper anymore. But to find out who that day’s honoree was. I wanted it to be flowers on a doorstep. I wanted people to just go, it’s nice to be acknowledged.
in this format where you’re just saying, know what, attention should be paid to Mertur Vethan, right? One of my favorite ones from this year is looking back at the story that when it was going on, they preferred not to have it in the paper, but it was two long-time friends in the car theater community, Mertur Vethan and Jeree Hinshaw. Jeree was going through a health crisis with her husband that had been going on for years with his declining kidney function.
And just to fast forward, Mare was a match. Mare donated her kidney. Jeree’s husband is now living a much better, higher quality of life for his family and his son. And it was all made possible by theater because of the friendship that happened between these two. And it was exactly the kind of story I want to be telling in December. And some people knew it, some people didn’t, but the story hadn’t been told yet. And it was kind of the quintessential point of these things, which isn’t that nice.
And I wanted every day there to be something in there that just gave people some positivity, uplifted some people and made some people feel seen. And so that’s what the spirit of the awards were. And that’s the insane challenge that I took on of trying to do one of those a day through a holiday season when people are supposed to be taking days off. But I did not.
Alex Miller (15:37)
There’s a lot of work. That is a lot of work.
Toni Tresca (15:39)
Yeah,
you’re kind of like Santa during the month, delivering all these presents to the theater community throughout that we get to unwrap. You said you were worried about overwhelming us. I always enjoyed waking up to the Facebook posts in the morning and seeing whom was selected and which stories you chose to elevate. The story about the kidney donor with Mare, that was a particularly beautiful one.
Alex Miller (15:43)
You
Toni Tresca (16:04)
I asked there, but there were just, there were so many. really like, thought your profile of Caitlin Lownes and their journey within the theater community and Colorado Springs was also really well written, but there were so many throughout. Alex, did you have a favorite?
Alex Miller (16:22)
Yeah, know, the kidney one definitely struck me. one of the one of our big kind of theater heroes this year was or 2024. And I’m sure she’ll be rocking it again this year is as in tears as shorts, who was just had just these baffled performances, several of them over the course of the year. So it was great to see John calling, calling her out as just having like this just it’s always fun when you see an actor like just break out and just have an amazing year and they just get like
these roles that are perfect for them. And all of sudden you’re just like, whoa, know, of course she’s been, she’s been at it for a while, but it was like, she really, she really made a big splash.
John Moore (16:58)
But when you look at the plays and musicals that she was in this year, I mean, there are breakout years and then there is, my God, she carried so much work. There are good years and there are years for the ages. But I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t sure that that was the kind of thing I wanted to do an entire day for, but I started giving it more thought. And the reason, and I’ve only started to get to know her over the past year, but she’s an extraordinary
like human being on this planet. And I got to know her a bit, not through theater, but through the Denver Actors Fund. And I can only tell this story because she talks about it herself. We started an affordable mental health care program at the Denver Actors Fund and she signed up for it and she received help for it for as much time as she needed for it. And then she moved on. One thing at the Denver Actors Fund is we ask anybody, like, it okay if we tell your story?
you know, about half of them say, I prefer you don’t and half say, yeah, sure. we’ve never asked anybody in our mental health program, whether we could sort of, you know, use their example as the, for the good that that program does. And, and I guess I’m, I was sort of furthering the stigma about mental health by just assuming that we shouldn’t tell those stories. And what I love about Anne is that when she.
was starring in Waitress and the Arvada Center decided to do collections for the Denver Actors Fund and volunteered as the star of the show to make the pitch. when we talked, she said, I’m going to use my personal story about how much you helped me with mental health at a time that I really needed it. And I was like, Ann, that’s getting into some pretty sensitive territory. And she’s like, shut up. It needs to be told. It needs to be out there. And the fact that she
Alex Miller (18:45)
Yeah.
John Moore (18:51)
used her own story and the good that she got out of that to encourage other people not to shy away from getting mental health care because it’s available to everyone in the Colorado theater community. It just opened my eyes to even more to what a special human being she is. And I thought that just kind of, I just needed to take a day and celebrate her.
Alex Miller (19:14)
Right. That’s great. I didn’t know there was a mental health element to DAF either. do know, you know, a lot of times it’s medical stuff, but there’s also a pet program too as well,
John Moore (19:24)
That was a development from 2024 that we’re really proud of. I guess it’s been about a year and a half now, but it’s controversial. Pretty much anything I do is controversial, whether I want it to be or not. But when one of our former board members, who’s an emergency room doctor, came up with the idea of, we’re helping people with their medical bills. What’s really the difference between a pet medical bill and a personal medical bill? If you have a dog or a cat and you don’t have help.
Alex Miller (19:35)
You
John Moore (19:54)
pet insurance and they swallow something and they’re going to need a $10,000 surgery and you’ve got to be able to pay for it on the spot or else you might have to make some really horrifying decisions about whether or not they’re going to put that animal down. It was like a light bulb going off for us where we were saying, know, it may be a bill for a pet, but if you’re legally responsible for it, money is money and you owe it.
it’s even harder to come up with that kind of money in a pet situation because oftentimes they won’t do the surgery if you can’t prove that you can, that you’ve got the credit. So people get mired in these 22, 23 % care credit programs. when you do that, when you get stuck with like the, essentially the equivalent of a used car loan, the next time there’s auditions for a show at Minors Alley Playhouse, you might’ve had to take a third job at snooze or at a bar.
in order to make your new $275 monthly payment that you’re going to be making for the next 10 years. And you might say, can’t do that show because I got to work. We’ve always tried from the very beginning to take money out of the equation so people can focus on what we want them to be doing, which is performing. And that’s been the greatest thing of all. we predicted and it turned out to be true that we have several donors who do not want their money going to
Save animals so we knew from the very beginning we had to start a completely separate pool of money For the pause fund so that those people who donate to the Denver Actors Fund can be assured that their money is being used for what they think that That what we’ve told them the money is going to going for so that then reactors fund will pay down your medical bills and the pause fund will pay down your Medical expenses, but they don’t they don’t cross over because
I don’t know why, but there are some people out there who just think it’s somewhat frivolous. But by keeping them separate, we keep hopefully everybody happy.
Alex Miller (21:58)
Yeah, that’s great. you know, there’s, definitely people that if you’re not a dog lover or cat lover, you know, you might not relate to what those animals mean to people. And, you know, I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, you know, I certainly wouldn’t have been the person that wouldn’t say don’t use my money for that. But I, you know, it was only a few, maybe four or five years ago that I got the real meaningful animal in my life. And it’s like, she’s just
There’s no way I you know, I understand how important that is, you know, it’s just too, you know, it’s a, it’s a family member. So.
John Moore (22:32)
Don’t mean to I don’t mean to offend people when I say this but you know, they’re better than people You know, they just are That’s that’s true that’s anyway, I strayed from your point of the true-est awards it’s hard about that
Toni Tresca (22:38)
There’s certainly less judgmental than people, I’ll give you that.
Alex Miller (22:44)
Yes, for sure. Yeah.
That’s
okay. Well, you you can go on the Denver Gazette site and see all of these, you know, ones we can’t get through all of them. But there are a couple I wanted to ask about and they kind of with the last few that you did, impact plays, musicals and seasons, and then talk about the theater persons of the year. Do you want to touch on some of those?
John Moore (23:10)
tour.
Yeah, that’s where I get to be a little bit contradictory. Those are the closest ones to true awards. So I actually was thinking about not even doing them this year because they are subjective. are people. But we all go to 150, 160 shows a year. You two know exactly what it’s like. You’re watching throughout the year and you’re watching some people emerge. You’re watching some people who just show up over and over and over again.
And I didn’t want to do, I didn’t want to do like best actor in a play, but if I see somebody, you know, like a Brian Watson or someone, you know, I’ve never even met him, but I’m seeing him in play after play after play and going, you know, an attention should be paid because it is, these are the stories of the year. And so, you know, a guy like Colton Pratt, another one I hadn’t met before at theater works.
but he’s been doing it for years. It’s kind of nice to just reach out over miles and theater companies and kind of just go, hey, I noticed. I don’t know what that means to you, but I hope it means something to you that I noticed. The problem is, just like with real awards, when you’re doing peak seasons, as I was doing, my list, and I’m sure if you did the same thing, your list would start with 50 people. And you gotta work it down to whether it’s five or 10 or one or whatever it is.
Either way, you have to make some pretty cutthroat hard decisions to get it down to a manageable number when there’s so many people who deserve to be acknowledged. And so I kept trying to tell people, these are in large part meant to be representative. When I was honoring volunteers, when I was honoring understudies, I was hoping that while you have to focus on one or two people, people would feel,
He notices stage managers, that’s a good thing. I feel a little bit more seen because another stage manager got a day in the sun. I hope that that’s true. But I think you’re asking specifically about impact plays, impact musicals. Those are the ones that really kind of tell the story of your year. And I don’t know, I’d love to have a conversation with you because I’d love to get your thoughts on the year. But it was a bit of an up and down year. you boil everything down to…
the Impact plays and the Impact musicals, I’m sure your lists might be very different from mine. But when I look at things like plays and I see things like, and if you had told me at the beginning of the year that a play about the Lehman Brothers was gonna be the thing that completely rocked my world at the Denver Center, but also locally that Mark Reagan of all people who is running a theater company.
also turns out to be a bit of a playwright and he adapted An Enemy of the People into something that just completely caught me off guard. I did not expect an adaptation of any play from the 1860s, 1880s to be able to just watch that and just go, my God, he has not significantly changed the circumstances. He’s not overloading the language to be…
to turn this into a political polemic in 2024, but you couldn’t watch that play and not say, oh my God, this is the pandemic. This is Trumpism. is everything that we are fighting about right now, greed, lack of concern for your fellow person, putting your own self-interest before all else, letting people die if it’s gonna affect your profit margin.
Alex Miller (26:42)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (26:43)
Mm-hmm.
John Moore (27:00)
All of these things are seeing things that we are seeing right in front of us. And who would have thought I’m going to shut up and let you guys talk. But when I saw enemy of the people, I was like, that’s the most urgent play I saw all year long.
Alex Miller (27:12)
Yeah, I wouldn’t disagree with that. really was an eye opener. it’s also it drove home the fact that this shit that we’re dealing with now is nothing new. It comes around and around and around and it’s unfortunate, but also maybe gives us a little hope that it also passes at some point. But yeah, Mark did a nice job with that with that adaptation and cut I knew he had to cut a lot of stuff, you know, out of like, what was I think like a three hour play or something like that.
John Moore (27:43)
Tony, you want to add something to that?
Toni Tresca (27:44)
And
I was just going to say, kind of speaking of Mark, Mark was another kind of honoree for your theater persons of the year, Mark and Mark Reagan and Jessica Robly over at Betsy, just kind of for their work. And particularly, you talked quite a bit about Mark’s advocacy that he did for not only Betsy, but the entire theater community and the financial support that he gives to companies like Boulder Ballet, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, local theater and
So I just wanted to hear a little bit more about kind of your thought process for how you selected those two to be your Theater Persons of the Year.
John Moore (28:23)
Well, for that. Well, for having done it for as long as I’ve done, know, I started Google Doc like on January 1st and I just start taking notes for things I don’t want to forget by the time December comes around. And honestly, when I looked at who was the Colorado Theater Person of Year and I really started in November to just kind of go, well, I better, I have to decide this quickly because everything kind of revolves around.
whoever you’re gonna choose. You gotta set up a photo shoot. You’ve gotta do interviews and things like that. So you kinda have to know what the story of the year was. I don’t think I’ve ever had a year like this one where I did not have a big long list of people. I looked at what Jessica and Mark was doing. Now Mark is a very unusual presence in this community.
As a human being, I’m looking out for how I described him in the story. He’s a unicorn, and I’m like, well, as a writer, that’s not enough. That doesn’t really quite grasp what’s going on here. So I called him a rainbow-colored leprechaun with a unicorn horn and a pot of gold that he shares freely. Because, I mean, you guys know he’s a character.
Alex Miller (29:39)
You
Toni Tresca (29:40)
You
John Moore (29:48)
It’s not just that here’s a guy with a lot of money and he spreads it out. You know, he’s spreading it out to his competitors. He’s spreading it out to people who are competing, even though they don’t like to use that word, in the same community for the same audience. But when you think about it, it’s brilliant. You know, he’s supporting the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which frankly only needs to have an audience for about two months a year. Betsy is providing theater year round.
And so there might be a moment where somebody is like, well, honey, tonight we could go see something at Betsy or we could go see something at the Shakespeare Festival. Isn’t it strange that the guy who’s from Betsy is the primary sponsor of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival? But it’s all about rising boats and it’s about building an audience that loves theater, who if you see something that you love, you want more and you don’t want to wait until the next Colorado Shakespeare Festival season.
you’re going to develop that audience over the year by hopefully getting them in as season ticket holders. So there is a self-interest that’s the best kind of self-interest because it’s about building community and building theater goers for life. The fact that he’s willing to spend that much money on and in other disciplines, you mentioned the Boulder Ballet, shows that he’s really not in this to crush anyone. He’s in this…
to really build up an ecology. I think in the wake of this story that I wrote, I know that there are some national magazines that have contacted me and they’re like, this guy’s not for real, is he? I and I’m like, yeah, and he potentially could be a model for other communities who are looking for a way out. Because as I mentioned in the story, Tony, it’s not that unusual that a company has a benefactor.
Alex Miller (31:25)
the
John Moore (31:41)
I mean, you can’t exist without one. But to have your benefactor also be the guy who’s the managing director of the company, who’s making some creative decisions along with Jeff, who is contributing to the making of the art by, as we mentioned, adapting a really tough book, like an enemy of the people into something that audiences can digest, it’s really artful. And you know,
Toni Tresca (31:43)
Yeah.
John Moore (32:10)
We have a very ribbing kind of relationship, and I, because I tease him, he teases me, whatever. I just, at the end of the year, the thing that put it completely over the top is that he partnered brilliantly with Jessica Robly, somebody who admits in the story that she had no business being hired as the artistic director of Betsy. She felt like she didn’t have any of the commiserate experience that she needed. she had a year of her own that would…
you know, that’s a year for the ages, you know, the directing that she did, the one woman play that she did, the adapting that she did. I mean, she’s a real triple threat. And you put those two together, I didn’t see anybody who is moving the needle in the Colorado theater community in 2024 the way that those two did. I thought it was just a complete and total, I didn’t have a runner up, I didn’t.
Toni Tresca (33:06)
Yeah. And I’d go all goes without saying they’re also doing this while also selling out their own productions in just really incredible shows of force over at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, which is a pretty impressive feat and not a lot, not one that a lot of companies in this post pandemic landscape can boast.
John Moore (33:25)
Yeah, and just to prove that I’m not bought and paid for, you I was the one on Caller to Gibbs Day who was teasing Mark Reagan relentlessly because I don’t know if you were getting the same emails that I was, but you know, after about the seventh email of the day from Mark Reagan, he sent one out and it was like, hey, everybody, I promise, this is the last email you’re going to get from us today. And I was like, thank God, because I can’t take one more email from Mark Reagan. And you know, sure enough, like 45 minutes later, he’s like, one more thing. Like that is.
Toni Tresca (33:35)
Mm.
Ha ha ha!
Alex Miller (33:46)
you
John Moore (33:55)
Quintessential Mark Reagan, and there’s a charm about that. But he has certainly invigorated this community. It’s good to have a sugar daddy. It’s good to have somebody with all that kind of money. And if he’s going to use it for good, then I’m all for it. Spend all your money on the arts, Mark. Go for it. Double down. He has completely shaken up the ecology. I I called it Reaganomics in the story for a reason, because it’s a whole new way of doing business.
And I’m sure every theater company is like, where’s our Mark Reagan? And it’s like, well, he’s a unicorn, sorry. But at least we’ve got one.
Alex Miller (34:27)
Yeah, yeah.
Yep, yep. So yeah, I thought that was well deserved and kind of two different stories under the same, you
Yeah, so just a reminder, you can see all these on the Denver Gazette and really great notice to a lot of, and a lot of stories that might’ve gone unheard in different ways that you called out. And it’s a very different way that you cover the theater community than we do. I mean, we focus more on reviews and things like that. And you’ve always been more about the people. And I think it’s a great.
Great service you do there, but much appreciated.
John Moore (35:12)
guys, I cannot tell you after reviewing literally thousands of shows for the Denver Post how happy I am that I am not the person reviewing the shows and that you and that you are because I mean, I don’t want I mean, if you if you if you I don’t know how anybody is a theater critic in 2024, it’s just nothing but dicey waters out there. And it’s it’s
Alex Miller (35:24)
Yep.
John Moore (35:40)
It would be very, very tough to be an objective critic with a high critical bar that come what may in 2024. It’s, I don’t know, it’s a conundrum to me. Alex, you and I have talked about that over and over throughout the year. hey, but before we leave this topic, can I shout out one other story just because I want to use it to shout out them?
Alex Miller (36:09)
Sure.
Toni Tresca (36:10)
Absolutely.
John Moore (36:11)
One of my favorite stories is related to a show that’s opening this week. was a story on Grayson Allensworth and Maya Eisbart, who are two 16-year-olds at Denver School of the Arts. They started a theater company when they were 12 years old during the pandemic. They’ve already done five main stage shows completely produced by young people, fully orchestrated, choreographed, directed, all by young people.
And the fun in writing their story now is that later this week at the Montview Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church, it’s on Colorado Boulevard, they are doing the teen edition of Hadestown, which is a monstrous creative undertaking. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful show. I think it is the spring awakening of this decade. And I sat in on a rehearsal and part of the fun of interviewing them was I’m like, what do you say to people who think that this is cute?
Alex Miller (36:56)
Yes.
John Moore (37:10)
And he’s like, and Grayson just looked at me right in the eye and he’s like, I don’t think anybody who comes to see the show is going to think it’s cute. You know, because these are little professionals. This show is, I can’t wait to see it. I haven’t been this excited to see it a play in a long time. It opens on January 15th. It only runs for four days. So the public is encouraged to go see it. Come with high expectations because they will be met. And these two young people are just.
Alex Miller (37:17)
Yeah.
John Moore (37:40)
remarkable and I think they should be supported with your curiosity and your attendance if you’re open to it. Plus it’s Hadestown for goodness sake. It’s our first chance to see Hadestown done by a local company and they all happen to be like 16. It’s incredible.
Alex Miller (37:50)
Yeah, great show. Great show.
Yeah,
that’s amazing.
Toni Tresca (37:59)
That is insane,
they’re doing the regional premiere for Hadestown. Look at them go.
John Moore (38:03)
They
really are. Yeah.
Alex Miller (38:03)
Yeah.
All right, well, stick around, John, we’re gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll do our Colorado headliners and you will be a welcome presence to chime in where you want. So stick around, we’ll be right back.
Alex Miller (38:21)
On Stage Colorado is brought to you by the Aurora Fox Arts Center presenting Gee’s Bend. The play tells the powerful story of a family of quilters from the isolated town of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, as they confront the struggles of segregation, household conflict, and the Southern Freedom Movement. The show runs from January 31st to February 23rd. Tickets at aurorafoxartscenter.org.
Onstage Colorado receives support from Candlelight presenting Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical Oklahoma, where a high spirited rivalry between local farmers and cowboys provides a colorful background for Curly, a charming cowboy and Lori, a feisty farm girl to play out their love story. Running January 23rd through March 30th in Johnstown. Tickets at ColoradoCandlelight.com. Support for Onstage Colorado comes from the Boulder Ensemble Theater Company, Betsy, whose production of Hope and Gravity plays at the Denver Savoy January 23rd.
through February 16th, and at Boulder’s Nomad Playhouse, February 21st through 23rd. This puzzle of a play touches on love, sex, and the tenderness that lies just beneath the surface of our interconnected relationships. Tickets at BETC.org. On Stage Colorado is brought to you by the Town Hall Arts Center, presenting Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Christopher Durang’s outrageous farce is a take on the works of Chekhov
That includes a fortune telling cleaning woman, an aspiring young actress, a farmhouse full of secrets, sibling rivalries, resentments, and trysts for a raucous comedy that plays January 17th through February 9th. Tickets at townhallartcenter.org.
Alex Miller (39:52)
All right, we’re back and ready to hit this week’s Colorado Headliners. These are some of the upcoming shows that we think you should know about in no particular order. Tony, what have you got to start?
John Moore (39:59)
you
Toni Tresca (40:04)
I’m starting us off with a familiar favorite, The 39 Steps. This opened actually this last weekend, January 11th, and it’s being done at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins. It’s kind of a Hitchcockian 1930s thriller set in London. It features a cast of only four actors who play over 150 characters in this Tony award-winning play. So it’s a lot of fun. know both the…
You and I, Alex, saw this when it was at the Denver Center and I’ve seen it a couple times before. It’s really just fast-paced, kind of spy fun.
Alex Miller (40:40)
It is, yeah. So this is an open stage theater and company production up in Fort Collins. And I just got the review in today from our Northern Colorado correspondent, Leela Einhorn. So we’ll have that up on the site here pretty soon.
My first one is, I’m calling out Mary Poppins. I think this is a really fun show and it’s a friend of the pod, Julia Tobey, Hergiv5 Productions. Production folks are teaming with Parker Arts for another big, very familiar musical based on the original Disney films. And I also noticed that this is the highest grossing film in 1964, which was my birth year. $103 million worldwide it made and made it an Oscar for Julie Andrews and four others.
This will be at the Pay Center in Parker January 17th through February 9th.
Toni Tresca (41:28)
My next pick is totally different. This is not your Disney Mary Poppins. It’s an intense play by Martin McDonough, the beauty queen of lean name. It’s running January 16th through the 26th at the people’s building and Aurora. And this is a dark show about this woman who is trapped in a rural town in Ireland. And she finally sees a way out when there is this like handsome person who comes into the town. However,
Alex Miller (41:38)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (41:57)
her dreams of escape are kind of pushed back against by her mother who wants to keep her in the town. So this production is being done by Invictus Theater Company, which is kind of a newer Denver-based troupe who was founded in 2018. But they’re gonna be doing this over at the People’s Building in Aurora for just two weekends. So check it out if you’ve never seen the show before.
Alex Miller (42:19)
I have to say, Beauty Queen of Leenan is, so my wife is, she’s very picky about what she goes to and Beauty Queen of Leenan, saw it, and it must have been 10 or 15 years ago, I can’t remember where it was, and it ruined her for dramatic plays for a while because she just hated it so much. And it is a very dark show and it doesn’t have a lot of light in it or sort of anything resembling any kind of happy ending.
Toni Tresca (42:27)
Mm-hmm.
Alex Miller (42:48)
But of course I love Martha and McDonough and you know this is definitely one of his gloomier pieces. what do you think of this play, John?
John Moore (42:58)
I love it.
Alex Miller (42:59)
Yeah.
John Moore (43:01)
No, mean, there’s a company that very kindly did a reading of Beauty Queen of Lennon last year for us at the People’s Building. And I think the production that you’re talking about was at, I think it was the Edge at the time, might’ve been benchmarked by then, but Emily Peyton Davies, one of our truly great actors locally, was in that. I believe with Emma Messenger.
Alex Miller (43:19)
Maybe, yeah.
John Moore (43:30)
And it’s nothing excites me more than these plays that will just scrape out the soul of the human experience. And the fact that it’s so Irish, and I’m Irish, and the things that we will do in our families that are against our own, that are to each other in order to keep the status quo of what we want.
Alex Miller (43:40)
Yeah.
Yes.
John Moore (43:59)
It’s just such a uniquely Irish play and I would say go and savor every dark and uncomfortable moment of it.
Alex Miller (44:08)
All right, yeah, well, we will have a review of it. think I can’t remember who’s going to it, but we will get to that one. My next one is a much lighter side. It’s called Kid Detective, a Bildung Roman. And this is from Shifted Lens Theater Company, who I don’t think they’ve done anything in a while. And in fact, I have this big long list of theaters. Tony, did you have something add there?
Toni Tresca (44:30)
They did cruel intentions. They were the troop who did that at the People’s Building last fall.
Alex Miller (44:34)
Okay.
Okay. My mistake. yeah, they were. So anyway, they’re doing this at the Roaming Gnome Theater in Aurora. So this is, and it’s January 11th through 26th. it’s, the story is about Penny Pepper, the kid detective extraordinaire, maybe like an encyclopedia Brown kind of character. And about a lost schnauzer and there’s a serial killer that slaughters all the other detectives in town. So I was thinking, well, maybe this isn’t a kid show necessarily. They say it’s 12 plus.
But anyway, she somehow joins the police force to help out and all this stuff going on and she’s 10 and a half. So it sounds like a fun show there from Shipped at Lens at Roaming.
John Moore (45:19)
Whatever you do, theatergoers, do not confuse the Kid Detective with the Beauty Queen. Because you could end up very, very confused if you do. They’re both in a room. Go see both works. sorry. Can’t help myself.
Alex Miller (45:24)
Ha ha ha ha!
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (45:28)
They are both in Aurora,
but they are not the same content. No.
Alex Miller (45:35)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (45:39)
No, that’s a good warning. You wouldn’t want to walk into one unexpectedly. My next one is over at Curious Theatre Company. is the regional premiere of Samuel Hunter’s play, A Case for the Existence of God. It’s being directed by Warren Sherrill and it unfolds in a cubicle where two people who are seated next to each other choose to bring one another into their fragile worlds. Stars Keith, a mortgage broker.
John Moore (45:41)
Content warning.
Toni Tresca (46:08)
and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker, who’s seeking to buy a plot of land that belonged to his family many decades ago, but they realize they share a specific kind of sadness, and that leads them to kind of talk about the bonds that they face and the challenges of parenthood in the modern day. So previews for this begin January 16th, it opens January 18th and runs through the 16th of February.
John Moore (46:35)
I would just add to that that if people enjoyed The Whale, written also by Samuel D. Hunter, if you saw The Great Wilderness at Benchmark, another Samuel D. Hunter play, when I directed The Treasure at Miners Island Playhouse, not a Samuel D. Hunter play, but Samuel D. Hunter just directed The Treasure himself up in Idaho. He tends to…
He tends to take on these great divides among people who are looking for their identity and looking for a place to call home in parts of the country that you would not think would be very welcoming for them. And it’s all about finding a way to find a home in the great wilderness, so to speak. I’m imagining this play is going to be a lot like that, but I don’t know that much about it.
Alex Miller (47:30)
Yeah. All right. My next one comes from the Catamounts. This is called Ghost Quartet. It’ll be at the Dairy Center January 18th through February 8th. So this sounds like a little something different from the Cats. The last few shows they did were kind of more outdoor immersive type things where you wander around and encounter folks. This one was written by Dave Malloy, who wrote Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, as well as a production that the Cats did.
in 2017 called Beowulf, A Thousand Years of Baggage. So this one features Nala Peckarek, people remember from Lumineers, a cellist who was also the Rattlesnake Cake creator. So there’s lots of music and you’re sitting on pillows and antiques sofas sipping whiskey. And it’s like a song cycle and interweaves four stories across seven centuries. There’s the Fall of the House of Usher mixed in there, something about Scheherazade.
a subway murder, and all kinds of stuff going on with this one. that sounds like a lot of fun from cat amounts, and that’ll be at the Boulder Dairy Center.
Toni Tresca (48:39)
I’m excited to see this one next weekend, because I know the actors are also playing the music live themselves and telling all those disparate stories. it sounds like a pretty cool storytelling convention and something that I hope the cats do a nice job with in that space there. Next one is also a little bit unconventional and a little bit musical by nature. It is Jane Slash Air from Grapefruit Lab that features live music by Teacup Gorilla.
at Buntport Theater in Denver running January 17th through February 1st. And if this show sounds a little bit familiar, it’s a queer adaptation of Jane Eyre. It’s because the company actually did it back in 2018. It was what Grapefruit Lab kind of kicked off their producing shows in Denver with. And so the show was such a success and people had been asking for them to bring it back that the troupe decided to remount it now in 2025. And they really found that it has a new kind of political
resonance in today’s day and age because it’s this really the story about women kind of standing up to their oppressors in kind of encountering issues of class, religion, gender and sexuality head on in this kind of musical gothic fashion. If you’re interested in hearing a little bit about what the show might sound like in advance, Teacup Gorilla actually released the full album.
that they’re going to be performing in the show on January 10th. You can get that wherever you stream music or you can also purchase it on vinyl. This is the band’s first foray into producing a vinyl and I thought that it looks really cool. I’m honestly kind of tempted to get it myself.
Alex Miller (50:25)
Yeah, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Well, my last one is a double header. So I’m going to turn it up to 11. I guess we’ll have 11 this week. So first, these are both in celebration of Martin Luther King Day. So the first one is from Betsy. And this will be at the Derry January 19th at two and seven. It’s called The Time Is Always Right. And so they partnered with the Boulder Ballet and the Boulder Philharmonic to honor MLK and other civil rights leaders. And it’s got music, dance.
John Moore (50:51)
Thank
Alex Miller (50:53)
spoken word and written and directed by Kenya Mahogany. who, in addition to having a really awesome name, think I’ve seen her in a few things. think I saw her in a show at Curious and I she’s been around for a while. And then other MLK show is Modus Theater. So this is the third year in a row they’re doing Still We Rise. So it’s a performance.
In alignment with Dr. Luther King Jr. says after the morning marches and inauguration day gag, join modus and the reminders at 3pm for an inspiring intersectional array of live music and monologues.
So now that we hit 11, John, you have any you’d like to call out as well coming up?
John Moore (51:38)
Well, you’re so much more ahead of the game than I am in terms of what’s coming up. I have a couple that are on my radar, but I don’t know if they open this weekend or next weekend. I think one of my faces to watch in 2024 or 2025 is Jenna Mall Reyes, and she’s directing a show called The Heart Sellers at TheaterWorks. This is just another example of a…
Alex Miller (51:49)
Go for it.
John Moore (52:08)
local kid who’s just really coming in to her own as a performer, as a director, as a writer, as a facilitator. She’s just done a lot of great stuff in recent years. I thought of her as a breakout in 2023, but she continues to break out. The play Heart Sellers is by Lloyd Sough. For those who’ve been around a bit, they might remember this particular playwright for writing.
Alex Miller (52:10)
She’s great.
John Moore (52:38)
controversial play at the Denver Center about 12 years ago called The Great Wall, which sort of made up this entire story about the Denver Post and the Rockybat News having somehow been responsible for the massacre of 30,000 Americans who were lured to China with this fake news that The Great Wall was coming down when it wasn’t. And when they got there, they found they were slaughtered.
It was a very frustrating play for me as a person who worked at the Denver Post at the time because the Boxer Rebellion happened, but this particular story was completely made up, but it was presented as if this was Denver history. So, it’s a little bit of a sort of consternation about that previous effort. But the Heart Sellers is a two-person play. It’s about two immigrants from, one’s from Korea, one’s from the Philippines.
Alex Miller (53:12)
Thank
John Moore (53:36)
And it’s about this unexpected friendship that develops between these two women. I think it’s a wonderful example of a story that 10 years ago, there’s not a theater in this region that would have scheduled it. And we are the beneficiaries of new storytellers and new stories. And this is one that I’m really looking forward to because I get excited about stories that I know are gonna take me to lands that I just.
that are unfamiliar to me and to meet people I’m unfamiliar with. So that’s on my list. I am also just looking forward, and I think this opens another week or so, so I’m sorry if I’m out of the timeframe, but it’s called Hope and Gravity by Boulder Ensemble Theater Company. It’s a Michael Hollinger comedy. It’s a little bit absurd, but it’s ridiculously funny. They did a reading of it last year. It’s a very…
Alex Miller (54:25)
Very funny. Yeah.
John Moore (54:28)
Very funny play and fantastic cast. And that opens, I believe next week. I’d defer to Tony on that. But there’s so much to talk about. There’s so much coming up. It’s crazy.
Toni Tresca (54:38)
And Alex actually want to
hop back in with one more to get us to that, to get us all the way to the headliners. She kills monsters over at Vintage Theater, which is opening also this weekend, January 17th and runs through February 23rd. And it centers on Agnes Evans. She’s leaving her childhood home after following the death of her teenage sister. But she then finds her sister’s Dungeons and Dragons notebook that launches her into this kind of magical land that was her sister’s refuge.
Alex Miller (54:42)
Okay.
Toni Tresca (55:07)
What I think makes this production particularly notable is Vintage is partnering with a Insight CoLab, which is Colorado’s only Asian theater troupe, to kind of do this as a co-production. So this is really cool play. It’s being done in their smaller space over at Vintage. And it’s a cool collaboration that I think more theaters should be open to trying to collaborate 2025.
Alex Miller (55:33)
Absolutely,
yeah.
John Moore (55:35)
I would also throw in my recommendation for that just because I think we need to be advocates for fighting against censorship and those forces out there that are afraid of difficult stories. She Kills Monsters is based in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a terrifically fun story, but it’s rooted in suicide. This doesn’t give anything away. This is the premise. It’s about a woman who’s trying to explore
the sister that she’s lost and Dungeons and Dragons ends up being the world that her sister was really into. And so by sort of immersing herself in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, she comes to all of these truths about a sister who she didn’t know as well as she thought she did. And we’ve seen some beautiful productions of it around town. And it is one of those plays that if high schools try to do it, they get censored.
Parents complain about it. just don’t want, they don’t want people anywhere near this play. And when parents and school officials don’t want you anywhere near a play, I say you run to that play. So go see, go see this play. Support local theater, but support, support freedom of, of, of, of ideas. And it’s a great show. So you should love it.
Alex Miller (56:38)
Yeah.
Toni Tresca (56:39)
Hell yeah.
I think that’s a perfect note to end our Headliners section for this week on. So these are a bunch of different shows that you can check out. There’s a ton more that you can see on our calendar section on OnStageColorado.com. Now stick around, get comfortable, because we are going to throw to Alex’s interview with Denver playwright, Jake Brasch.
Alex Miller (57:14)
Thanks so much for taking the time to come on and talk to the OnStage Colorado podcast about the reservoir. This is going to be a pretty exciting time.
Jake Brasch (57:22)
Deeply exciting and I’m thrilled to chat with you.
Alex Miller (57:25)
Yeah, so just real quick. So Jake Brasch grew up in Colorado. He went to NYU and Juilliard School and they live in Brooklyn. So the Reservoir is going to premiere, world premiere at the Denver Center Singleton Theater January 17th, running through March 9th. So I did see, I saw the reading of this at the new play festival a couple of years ago and it was one of those, it was definitely one of those plays I was like, oh, I hope this comes back as a full production. So I’m happy that it’s here. I can’t wait to see it. It’s a dark comedy.
about a lost queer neurotic mess of a 20 something, moves home to Colorado to get sober. And it’s got this really interesting story about this young man’s relationship with his grandparents. So I just want to start by asking, like, what was the kernel of this idea? It sounds like there might be a little bit of autobiographical content there.
Jake Brasch (58:13)
So this idea came about because I had always felt that there was an inherent connection between the fog of early recovery and my grandparents going through Alzheimer’s and dementia. And I couldn’t quite figure out what that wanted to be. But when I got a commission from the Sloan Foundation, which produces plays about science, I found this concept of cognitive reserve, which is this idea of what, if anything, can someone do to protect themselves from the onset of
dementia or any other brain damage, whether that be from alcoholism or traumatic brain injury or whatever it might be. And the factors are all things that are logical. Like the reason people do puzzles and they eat well or they sleep differently or they’re sort of trying to create new pathways in the brain. And that gave me permission to look at like, how can I have this main character who is someone in early recovery go on a mission with his grandparents to improve their cognitive reserve?
and help them. And of course, what happens in the play is that rather than this man helping his grandparents, it’s his grandparents help him. And as they sort of fall more and more into dementia and Alzheimer’s, he’s able to gain his life back. And it’s ultimately a sad and difficult story, but also a joyous and hilarious story about what it means to be alive and to be here now.
Alex Miller (59:39)
Okay. And the character, the main character, Josh is also suffering from some, some kind of memory loss as well. So there’s that, that overlap there between the grandparents, right?
Jake Brasch (59:50)
Correct, correct.
Alex Miller (59:51)
Yeah.
You know, I was trying to remember it because it has been almost two years now since I heard the play originally. What is the reservoir? does that actual thing fit in?
Jake Brasch (1:00:02)
Well, so in the play, it’s the Cherry Creek Reservoir. And the beginning of the play, the main character wakes up from a blackout thinking that he’s at the beach, then sees the mountains and is like, oh, right, this is where I’m at. And then the play, as he begins to get sober, sort of embraces the reservoir as a metaphor in all sorts of different ways for cognitive reserve, but also water is sort of a metaphor that…
Alex Miller (1:00:05)
Okay.
Jake Brasch (1:00:30)
he uses to understand the ways that pathways are made in the brain and sort of the way that we are captive to the ebbs and flows of life.
Alex Miller (1:00:41)
huh. Okay. Well, how far would you say the play is today from where it began with the early drafts? Are you still tweaking it up to opening night?
Jake Brasch (1:00:50)
I am, I am. I
the play has taken, has changed a lot since I wrote the first draft, which was four plus years ago. And the thing that has been the experience in production is that there’s only so much that you can develop in readings and workshops, right? Like when a play wants to be on its feet and specifically this play, which is a very physical play, I started out by saying I wanted to write an extremely physical play for older actors.
And so these actors are doing jazzercise and they’re doing flowy arms to represent the river. And it is an extremely theatrical play that wants to be on its feet. So starting in rehearsal, I was like, I need more time to get that person to hear. Like that sort of very pragmatic considerations were the big things that I’ve been writing towards. And then just having a cast that is so brilliant.
Alex Miller (1:01:38)
Right.
Jake Brasch (1:01:47)
has allowed me to be like, I need to tweak that there and this here. And probably from the outside, I haven’t done as many changes as it feels like I’ve done, but I’ve been tweaking all along and the thing will never be finished. It will just be shared.
Alex Miller (1:02:00)
Right, right. So the director is Shelly Butler and I know, you having talked to a lot of playwrights, some like her kind of hands off and some are really like to work in partnership closely with the director. How is your relationship there?
Jake Brasch (1:02:13)
I love Shelley. Shelley and I are buddies and we just have the same taste, which is hugely helpful and are able to productively disagree. But most of the time we’re on the same page and we’re working towards the same things. I pride myself on being a writer who is willing to adapt to what is actually happening in the production in front of him, as opposed to trying to preserve some vision of what I think it could be. I’m not an incredibly visual person. Shelley very much so is.
So we’re able to sort of tag team and be on the same page and are both willing to be like, no, I know this wants to be this way, but are also both willing to be like, I don’t know what this wants to be and let’s figure it out together. So it’s been a hugely productive relationship. And I should also add Olivia O’Connor, who’s our dramaturg is also a big part of what has made this process extremely joyous.
Alex Miller (1:03:08)
Can you dig into that just a little bit more? A lot of people aren’t sure what dramaturges do in this respect, what has been her level of participation.
Jake Brasch (1:03:18)
Sure. mean, the dramaturge is someone who is, I think the easiest way to describe it is like the editor for a book, right? Is someone who gets the script, sort of does the research, fact checks, but then also with new play dramaturgy specifically is looking at, okay, what is the timeline of the play? everything add up? Also artistically, like, is this serving the next moment by changing this? Does this other thing get out of whack? It’s just another.
a of eyes to be smart about the thing that I’m making and catch all the stuff that I might not be able to see being so inside of the writing of it.
Alex Miller (1:03:56)
That’s great. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, it really depends on the play itself, what the dramaturge is doing. But that’s really interesting use of that role as well with a brand new play. So this is a very funny play, but it’s also it’s dark in places. You know, there’s some people that are going through some serious shit in the reservoir. So how did you how do you incorporate humor to enhance this story? And is that is that a component of a lot of your plays from looking at your resume? I think it looks like it is.
Jake Brasch (1:04:26)
Yeah, I mean, my Hollywood line, right, is that I write comedies about things that aren’t funny. I’m sort of obsessed with the spaces in which we can laugh about the painful, gross, messy parts of our lives because that’s the way that I cope. That’s the way that I got sober. That’s the way that I dealt with any adversity that’s come into my life is looking for the humor and finding joy and uncertainty.
Alex Miller (1:04:32)
huh.
Jake Brasch (1:04:56)
That’s what I returned to over and over and over again. And specifically with this play, I set out to write a comedy about Alzheimer’s and alcoholism. And I’m proud to say that I actually think I’ve done that, right? And without shying away from what makes it hard, right? It is about hard stuff. There’s no way around it. But for me, what makes life worth it, even amongst all of the gunk, and I think right now in the world, there’s a lot of gunk, is…
is being able to point at something and be like, okay, that’s so messed up, but it’s also funny, right? It’s also just the soup of life. And my family, in writing this play that is a big mission of this play is to honor my family. Serious and silly belong together. They’re married forever. Jewish humor since the beginning of time has leaned on this. This is how we survive.
The humor is serious. It’s not like all, you know, alternately funny and then bleak. It’s bleak and funny, just like the world.
Alex Miller (1:05:54)
Yeah, for sure. So as a fair to say, there’ll be a pretty big brash contingent here to see this show.
Jake Brasch (1:06:01)
get ready, they’ll come marching down the aisle. All of my
aunties, my mom is bringing a bunch of her college friends to the first preview. mean, everyone’s coming out of the woodwork, which is thrilling. It’s thrilling to have them be here and to have a play that is a love letter to Colorado happening at the theater I revered as a kid is, and to have it be my first professional production. It’s a huge deal. And…
Alex Miller (1:06:13)
That’s great.
Yeah,
yeah, a lot of times to get that much family together, have to have a funeral or a wedding. So this is, this is a different.
Jake Brasch (1:06:32)
Exactly. So you just
got to write a play about your alcoholism and they all show up.
Alex Miller (1:06:36)
So in the play, does Josh’s path to sobriety mirror your own or is it different?
Jake Brasch (1:06:44)
It is different. think I changed a lot in the play, some of which to meet the needs of the original commission, which, as I said, was a science based commission. And then also just some things I changed for the story, for timeline, and then also to protect my heart and family. Right. I think I there’s definitely a lot of overlap. And then there’s also a lot that is sort of arbitrary or changed for for other reasons. And I think that brings me some comfort.
to know that there is a lot of myself in there, but like folks won’t be able to point to what is true and what is not. They will just experience a story. And strangely, the other somewhat esoteric thought I had is the more permission I gave myself to not tell my exact story, the more permission I felt to share the emotional truth, to share what it felt like to go through the thing. And that very much is mine.
Alex Miller (1:07:44)
Yeah, I mean, just from looking at your website, I mean, know being sober is a real point of pride for you and kind of a big identify of who you are. in addition to the reservoir to some of your other plays in development, have some of that in there as well.
Jake Brasch (1:08:01)
Yes, are, recovery is a lot of what I write about. One of my big missions, I feel like as a writer is to let folks know that actually recovery is a freeing and joyous and fun and hilarious and kind of punk rock space. Because I think especially folks like, am I really gonna have to be, you know, going to those meetings and like tap out on all of my friendships and parties and life? And it’s like, no, all of those things you’ll have plus like, you know, some self-respect.
Alex Miller (1:08:25)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Brasch (1:08:31)
and some fun, you know? So I have a play that is called Family Weekend that is actually loosely based on my experience of going to a 30 day program up in Estes Park, but specifically focuses on the family weekend at a rehab and there are no addicts in the play. It’s only their parents and significant others that come up and sort of commiserate and ask each other questions about what this means and is largely about codependency and what it means to love addicts.
Alex Miller (1:08:32)
Mm-hmm.
Jake Brasch (1:09:01)
and there’s also a comedy. And then there are little whispers here and there in other plays that are not even specifically about recovery, that look at spirituality within the context of a sort of recovery lens and just folks going through it. I think addicts are hilarious and neurotic and fun to write.
Alex Miller (1:09:23)
Yeah, it can be very messy and they definitely generate a lot of stories from what they’re going through, so that makes a lot of sense. So this is a world premiere here in Denver, but it’s also a co-production between the Denver Center, the Alliance Theater, and Geffen Playhouse. So that makes it even triply exciting. So how did that all come about?
Jake Brasch (1:09:44)
I mean, the answer is like through some glorious randomness and a lot of love and advocacy for the play. The Alliance connection is that I was a finalist with the play for the Candida Festival, for the Candida National Playwriting Competition, which is four graduate school level playwrights. They have a competition and one person wins and then they have finalists that have readings. And so I had a reading there last year.
they loved the play when they found out that the Denver Center planned to do it. They’re like, we want in on that. The way that the Geffen got involved was that Olivia O’Connor, who’s our dramaturg, came to the summit, came to the Colorado New Play Summit where the play was a couple of years ago and loved the play and brought it back. So that’s how that happened.
Alex Miller (1:10:29)
That’s great, very exciting. So you have at least five other plays in development. I was just looking at some of them. So how to draw a triangle, the one you just mentioned, spin, trip around the sun. So which of these are closest to the finish line? might we see on stage next?
Jake Brasch (1:10:47)
So, Trip Around the Sun, which is a two-hander about, it’s sort of, I like to say, a cousin play to the res bar and that it’s also about dementia, but it’s specifically about two parrot heads in South Florida who are sort of dealing with what does it mean to be staring down the barrel of this disease even before it hits them. And is a comedy about loosely based on me dragging some of my Jimmy Buffett loving relatives.
Alex Miller (1:11:09)
Mm-hmm.
Ha ha ha!
Jake Brasch (1:11:17)
I can’t say quite yet where that will be, but it will be shared in 2025. I’m hopefully bringing a show to the Edinburgh Fringe with my writing partner, Nadia Leonhard-Houper, which is called, you might have to bleep this one, but our group is called American Sing Song and we perform and write.
what we call impossible musicals, which are musicals written for like hundreds or thousands of characters. We sing all of the music, play all of the characters. I play all of the music and she does all of the sound. And the piece is called Ass Presents Whole. And Whole is about a community of people who wear butt plugs at all times. So that you can look forward to that. And this may or may not be my final interview, but come see that.
Alex Miller (1:12:06)
Okay.
I think
it’s okay.
Jake Brasch (1:12:14)
Scotland
in August. And then a couple other little things that are happening. How to Draw a Triangle is a play that is loosely based on little Jake who severely dealt with motor skills and hand-eye coordination issues and is about a little kid who goes to an occupational therapist who is the only sort of queer presenting person.
in his world, even though she is an introvert and a snowboarder and very much not someone that he would connect with organically, they do really see each other in a world that is very homogeneous. So that’s that plan. Hopefully stay tuned for information on that one as well.
Alex Miller (1:12:58)
Okay, yeah, I was very intrigued by the American Sing Song, which is described on your resume as a collective that writes and performs filthy, error-long comedic musicals. And I’m like, I think we need more of
Jake Brasch (1:13:10)
I agree. mean, we gotta laugh, right? I mean, this is the thing that I’m thinking about a lot right now in the world. We have to laugh, but we also don’t wanna just laugh at things that don’t pertain, right? We wanna laugh because we wanna like actually figure it out. And even as presents whole stays true to my mission in that it’s about group think and sort of, you know, a cult of people. And I think that very, in Nebraska, that very much pertains to
Alex Miller (1:13:13)
Yeah.
Jake Brasch (1:13:40)
what I see happening in the heartland right now of people sort of, you know, falling into ways of thinking that they might not quite know how much they’re being controlled. Yeah.
Alex Miller (1:13:52)
Yeah.
Yeah. I had one more question I wanted to ask you about the development process. you know, I know that, you know, from looking through some of your information, it’s, you know, your plays or development can be, it can mean a lot of things that can go on for a very long time. Like you said, your first draft of the reservoir was four years ago. Do you sometimes feel like the development process can go on too long? Maybe you want to be like those old playwrights who had no development process or somewhere in between. What’s your thoughts on that?
Jake Brasch (1:14:21)
Definitely somewhere in between. I do like baking things before I share them. Like I like to be able to be in a room, be with actors, be with the director, be with the dramaturg. I like when my plays grow beyond me and take on a life of their own. And I find that very difficult to do without development. That being said, oftentimes there’s a lot more development opportunities than there are production opportunities, which I think has…
the obvious consequence of a lot of plays don’t get to where they need to be or by the time that they do get to where they need to be, they’re over baked or they’re way too ready or they were written 15 years ago, right? It’s hard to get relevance within that model. The other thing that I think I’ve experienced is that it also tricks you into writing towards readings, right?
Alex Miller (1:15:02)
Yeah.
Jake Brasch (1:15:14)
you have all of these opportunities to share your plays in the context of folks reading them in music stands. And then it’s not until you begin to stage them that you realize, I was writing towards a reading as opposed to imagining that this would actually one day have a well-funded production because of the scarcity of that, right? Because there’s so few of those. I want writers to believe that that can happen and write those plays that are physical and challenging from a design perspective.
Alex Miller (1:15:34)
Yeah, that’s interesting.
Jake Brasch (1:15:44)
So I have thought a lot about what are development pathways that can include maybe workshop productions, something that could be an intermediary stage in between readings and productions. So if someone throws me $40 million, maybe I’ll start that nonprofit.
Alex Miller (1:16:03)
Okay.
Jake Brasch (1:16:04)
You want, Alex, you got the money for me?
Alex Miller (1:16:07)
I don’t know, but I may know someone, but we’ll see. All right, last question. What’s the senior bio about having 14 pairs of glasses and do you always stay at that exact number?
Jake Brasch (1:16:09)
Okay, okay.
Oh, I do not always stay at that exact number. That was actually, I think we’re up to 20 something to be perfectly honest. So I had the same pair of red glasses for like my whole life, not my whole life, but for 10 years and they broke. And then I realized that we’re in this brand new era of cheap glasses online. And I was like, I’m going to be the colorful glasses guy. And it’s gotten, it’s just gotten absolutely out of control. But I do, I do decide who I want to be every day. And I’ll be like, today is my old lady Wednesday. And I rock.
Alex Miller (1:16:34)
Yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Jake Brasch (1:16:47)
You know, today I’m wearing, you can’t see on the radio, but I’m wearing pink glasses and it’s giving approachable homosexual, I would say.
Alex Miller (1:16:54)
Yeah, I think they weren’t they’re working for you. You’re rocking them. So great. Well, Jake Brasch, thanks so much for taking the time. know you’re in the the final stages of getting this thing up. It’s the reservoir January 17th. It opens in previews and runs through March 9th at the Denver Center, the Singleton Theater. Best of luck. Break legs all around Jake. And I can’t wait to see it. And thanks again for taking the time.
Jake Brasch (1:17:20)
Thank you so much, I appreciate chatting with you.
Alex Miller (1:17:23)
All right, thanks.
Toni Tresca (1:17:26)
and we’re back. It was so great to have Jake on the show this week and hear just a little bit more about the play he’s working on. Thanks for doing that interview, Alex.
Alex Miller (1:17:35)
Absolutely, yeah, I can’t wait to see it. Definitely been kind of waiting for this one. So a lot of times when we go to readings, especially the new play summit, you we always have our opinions about things that we really want to see in a full production. This was definitely one of them. So really excited to check it out. So. All right. So we’ll have some fresh reviews on the site soon. It’s been a little dry. But like I said, we’ve got 39 steps from
Open stage, we’ll be covering Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at Town Hall, which I’m also really excited about. Mary Poppins that we talked about, The Case for Existence of God at Curious, albeit that one. Sisters of Swing at Vintage, and then Beauty Queen from Invictus that we talked about earlier. And so yeah, lots of stuff that’ll be coming up.
Toni Tresca (1:18:21)
Yeah. And before we go for this week, just a quick heads up that on Sunday, January 19th at 7 p.m. we’ll be hosting the second annual Onstage Colorado Awards for Theatrical Excellence, aka the Oscars, on a Facebook live stream that you can tune into. So like last year, we’re just going to be presenting a slew of awards that seeks to recognize kind of the breadth of talent all across the state.
Alex Miller (1:18:49)
Yeah, so John, this is the opposite of what you were talking about for for year awards. This is really so we did get to 200 shows in 2024. And so these are based on, you know, actual people who are in the in the scene. And, you know, we don’t do we don’t put the nominations out ahead of time. We don’t limit it to, you know, X number of people. But we, you know, we do we do have to win it down because there’s so many deserving
names, we do, you know, every category, you know, could have up to 10 winners per se. So it’s a lot of fun to do. And we really like to, you know, shout out all the great stuff that’s going on. And it’s different from other types. And the other thing that we do that’s a little different is that we don’t do actor, actress, you know, we just kind of lump everybody in, whether it’s a great performance or not, just despite any gender.
So that’s coming up. So John, what do you think of the Oscar Awards?
John Moore (1:19:51)
I followed very closely last year and I think that we’re on the same wavelength. I think that it is important for media organizations and you are one to pay attention and to put a year in context. When I started the Ovation Awards, before there was any controversy about them, about awards, it was…
you know, you look at it as a bit of history. Like when people look back and they want to get a snapshot of what Colorado theater community was like in 2001, they could go into the Denver Public Library and they could see these are the kind of plays we were doing. These are the kind of plays that were getting celebrated and all that information is there because if we don’t record it, it’s just going to get lost in the morass of information that’s out there now more than ever. And so I applaud that you have
have taken this on as your way to acknowledge great work of the last year, but also being mindful of trying to reduce trauma, frankly, that goes with them. I don’t think Betty would mind my saying this, but I’ve had conversations with, people start to see me as somebody who’s just in some ways,
provocateur in a way because throughout the entire history of the Henry Awards, I have stood somewhat as a journalist looking in and saying, these are the ways in which this program is falling short and these are areas in which they need to improve. But at the same time, I was always participating in them as a judge, as a person who puts together memorial video.
for years and years, was the one putting together the slides that were being shown there. But award shows need to be constantly reevaluated and looked at with the changing times, do awards do more harm than good, traditional awards? I think in 2024, this is somewhat controversial, but it’s worth the Colorado Theater Guild exploring the idea of have the Henry Awards outlived their usefulness in their present form because
The Colorado Theater Guild exists as an advocacy organization to promote and uplift the entire Colorado theater community. That is not necessarily the job of the local journalists, frankly, but weirdly we’re kind of have it, we kind of have it reversed at the moment because I think your awards, my awards, you know, they are, they are trying to put things into a perspective where, where people are surprised, they’re delighted, they’re not, they’re not hurt by it. And there’s always so much controversy that goes around with the Henry Awards that
I had a conversation with Betty last year where I said, you know what, think we’ve got it backwards. I think in some ways, we should join forces and the Henry Award should sort of become something akin to the Truest Awards where instead of, you throw out categories and nominations and six weeks of people stressing out about whether they were nominated or whether they’re going to win or why they weren’t nominated and such and such and all of that cloud of toxicity that comes in around that time of the year.
and adopted different kind of format where it really is about celebrating Colorado theater, where it’s about putting people together in a room and doing something that’s a great show, that is clever and surprising, and not just we’re gonna do a night where everybody just gets to sing a song. That’s what they did before the Henry Awards. It was a disaster. Nobody wanted to come. But originally the Colorado Theater Guild got it. They didn’t necessarily, after the decline of the Jumper Drama Critics Circle Awards,
they didn’t naturally evolve into the Henrys. There were several years of a gap in there where they did something called Celebrate Colorado Theater. And the thing was, it lacked imagination. It was a night where if you were about to do Mary Poppins, then you brought your people down and you did a song for Mary Poppins as an attempt to promote your show. But it was just a night of like 10 of those songs and that was it. And I look at it now where it’s like…
If you really crafted a show as the Colorado Theater Guild, that’s somewhat akin to what we’re trying to do with our two awards programs where it’s like, can you imagine a night at Lone Tree or whatever it is, it’s just gonna be, there are gonna be 30 awards tonight, and you can notify a place like Creed or whatever and say, you’re gonna wanna be in the room. We’re not gonna tell you why, but we’ve got something special planned.
and everybody’s gonna get their five minutes and the audience won’t know from one minute to the next what’s about to happen again. And you can do song excerpts from great shows of the year, but you also don’t have to worry about trying to get shows back together again that have been closed for nine months. You can focus on the year to come and promote Colorado theater, but do an endlessly kind of like fascinating evening where people just get together and.
Nobody feels like they were owed anything though. Like nobody, if somebody gets honored, it’s great, you know, they feel good, but they didn’t walk out of their, no one walks out of their feeling like they lost. And I think if you’re the Colorado Theater Guild, you exist to uplift and that should be your goal. And I think you could sell out a house every year, just like you can probably even better than you can sell out a night of the Henry Awards, if that was your focus. And people might be more inclined, I think.
Alex Miller (1:25:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Moore (1:25:27)
to look at the greater overall mission of the guild as something that’s positive for everyone. And I kind of, know, this is me being a provocateur, I guess, because I’m like, I kind of challenge our community to do better, because I think we can do better than traditional awards shows that where 80 % of the people who get nominated end up not winning anything.
Alex Miller (1:25:51)
I mean, if you think
about the Henry Awards, it’s said it’s an impossible task to really do it right, I think. And I think your idea is, you know, I can also think of it’s a big thing for the Theater Guild to administer. And I think there are some definitely some other things they could be spending that time on that might be more like putting butts in seats or helping theaters, you know, with their marketing and promotion and things like that.
John Moore (1:26:10)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Imagine a world, Alex, imagine a world where there are no judges, because you’re no longer determining best of anything. You might have a committee, and it’s their job to keep track of all the trends all year long. It’s to get to all the theaters, see what’s going on, find out who the movers and shakers are, talk to people like journalists do, find out what their story is. You might come out of there with 30 stories that would make for an endlessly fascinating evening in the last week of July every year.
Toni Tresca (1:26:16)
And I think you’re.
Alex Miller (1:26:20)
Yeah.
John Moore (1:26:46)
Tony, what were you gonna say?
Toni Tresca (1:26:46)
I think that
put the organization more in alignment with its stated purpose of the Henry Awards right now, is the Henry Awards are supposedly a fundraiser event for the Guild, and yet it really isn’t able to service that, since the only people who really buy tickets to the Henry Awards are folks who are nominated. And then, like you said, a lot of those folks don’t end up winning. And then what kind of feeling does that create within the community?
Alex Miller (1:27:11)
And then they’re bitter.
Toni Tresca (1:27:13)
It’s fascinating. think these are good questions, valuable questions to be raising.
Alex Miller (1:27:19)
Yeah. Well, we’re hoping.
John Moore (1:27:20)
Well,
you’re right that they’re a fundraiser and they should be a fundraiser because the Cardiff Theatre Guild, like the Denver Actors Fund in many ways, is operating almost completely out of the volunteer spirit, but it costs money to run an organization like that. So you need an event that will fill a room every year and fill your coffers so that you can do programming for the rest of the year. It doesn’t mean it has to be awards. doesn’t mean it… You can get a room full of people without having them be about bests. That’s just… I believe that very…
I don’t know if anybody agrees with me, but that’s.
Alex Miller (1:27:50)
Yep. Yeah, well,
we’re gonna have I think we’ll have Betty on the podcast here in the next sometime in the next few weeks. So we can ask her about that. I think it’s a really interesting thing to think about. So back to the Oscars. So check our Facebook page for that link to join or you can find it on our calendar. So, you know, we’d love to have people hearing the awards as they’re announced. But if you can’t, we’ll have it as our main podcast on January 21. If you miss it, and of course, all the winners will be posted online.
right after our live stream. Also next week on the podcast, we have an interview from way down south in Durango. So Zachary Chiaro from Murali Players is gonna be on. He’s the associate AD there at Murali Players and the director of their upcoming production of Swing State. And so one of the things that Tony and I talked about was trying to throw the net a little wider for our interviews that, you know, not just the Denver, the metro area. So we wanna talk to some other theater makers around the state. So Zachary will be our first.
first one of those this year.
Toni Tresca (1:28:51)
Yeah, so if you want to stay up to date on everything that’s happening in theaters and comedy venues across the state, subscribe to the OnStage Colorado newsletter, which comes out every Thursday. And if you like what we’re doing here on the podcast, please consider leaving a review wherever you’re listening now and just tell other theater lovers in your life about us. It helps get the word out and grow the podcast, which we love doing.
That brings us to the end of the Onstage Colorado podcast for this week. John, thank you so much for coming on. It has just been so great to have you here. Do you have any last words, anything you want to shout out that’s on the horizon before we wrap this up?
John Moore (1:29:30)
just want to come, like I came so close to getting through the entire hour without saying anything controversial and I’m already like kicking myself. Didn’t quite make it to the finish line, but that’s all right. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? No, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for doing what you’re doing. You’re blazing new trails. You’re sort of going down an unprecedented path, but I know what…
Alex Miller (1:29:39)
don’t worry about it. That’s all right.
John Moore (1:29:57)
By the way, you guys won the True West Award this year. Did we mention that? Because OnStage Colorado is one of the big stories of the year. The model that you’re developing, like Reaganomics, is unprecedented, and you’re fulfilling a service while also trying to uplift the community at the same time and try to walk that line. And I’m sure there are a lot of other cities who are looking at your model and going, huh, I wonder if we could make that work here.
Alex Miller (1:30:01)
Yeah, we did. Thank you.
Toni Tresca (1:30:04)
Thank you. Yeah.
John Moore (1:30:27)
And I’m a huge fan of anybody who’s like setting, you know, creating new paths. So good for you. Congratulations.
Alex Miller (1:30:34)
Thanks, John.
Toni Tresca (1:30:34)
And if you
are a, thank you, if you’re a theater producer who is listening to this in another state, please consider listening out. We’d love to have that conversation about how you can make this work. We’re happy to share all the research we’ve done here. We look, we just want to see arts covered. I mean, cause otherwise, I mean, traditional media landscape’s not gonna do it.
John Moore (1:30:36)
you
Alex Miller (1:30:53)
Yep, and we do have some planning going on about what we can do in the future to expand and improve what we’re doing. So keep an eye out for that. But thanks so much for listening. I’m Alex Miller.
Toni Tresca (1:31:06)
and I’m Tony Tresca and we’ll see you at the show.
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