Author: John Moore
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Loss of Sondheim echoes through arts community
It was evident within the first few missing beats of his heart and his music that the death of composer Stephen Sondheim was going to impact the performing-arts community, and its audiences, harder than most. Everyone, it seems, has a Sondheim story to tell. Yet everyone seems to be struggling with how to put the…
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Report shows pandemic’s blow to Denver arts community
The pandemic-fueled shutdown of the cultural economy reversed up to two decades of growth in some segments of the metro Denver arts sector, according to a devastating new report released Thursday by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts. The prolonged closure of theaters, concert halls, galleries and more starting in March 2020 had a…
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Former Loretto Heights theater would get boost from 2A
Much of the attention on Tuesday’s election is focused on a controversial bond initiative that eventually would replace the Denver Coliseum with a $210 million, 10,000-seat concert arena at the National Western Complex. But Denver arts advocates also have their eyes peeled on Referred Question 2A, which would, among other things, dedicate $30 million to…
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The meaning of ‘Wicked’ won’t go away
It has now been 26 years since novelist Gregory Maguire first suggested that some are born evil, some achieve evilness, and some, like the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West, have had their evil identities unfairly thrust upon them like a bucket of burning mop water. Maguire, author of 40 fiction books that often imagine…
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Stacey Abrams a star at Paramount Theatre
For Colorado Democrats who worry their national party is squandering its historic opportunity to pass Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure agenda, Stacey Abrams’ visit to Denver last week could not have been better timed. The rising political star dropped the mic — and a book’s worth of self-help gems — on a capacity crowd at the…
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Remembering the Original Scene; awaiting encore
The Original Scene closed its doors in 1993. But time is fickle, and eras tend to end according to their own timelines. For many of us who found a second home at the downtown Denver performing-arts center as teenagers, the end got a lot more real last week at a funeral service for Ann Pugh,…
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Let’s put on a show … on film … in 48 hours
WATKINS • It takes an average of 871 days for a Hollywood film to get made from start to cinema, according to film data researcher Stephen Fellows. But all across the globe, there are thousands of sleep-deprived creative rebels who make their own D.I.Y. movies over wild, two-day bursts of frenetic filmmaking. “It’s a weekend…
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Northglenn theater ready to raise curtain
The city of Northglenn’s new state-of-the-art theater space, which has been 17 years in the making, finally opens October 9. And right from the start, Michael Stricker promises: “We are going to blow the lid off this place.” Well, that’s a bit counterproductive. (Because, you know … winter is coming.) But the city’s Arts, Culture…
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An insider’s guide to navigating Meow Wolf Denver
Everyone is talking about Meow Wolf. Even if they have no clue what they are actually talking about. (And that’s AFTER touring the biggest thing to happen to American pop art since Andy Warhol popped his can of Campbell’s Soup.) This place is a hyper-stimulating head-scratcher, to be sure. But it scratches a big, cosmic,…
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Cultural organizations facing a ticking clock
I started this column intending to use this space to remind readers that, despite some hopeful evidence to the contrary, the economic devastation of the pandemic shutdown to our creative community is not over. Not by a long shot. After a year of calamitous data quantifying just how bad this has all been on arts…