The DCPA Theatre Company will open its 2023-24 season on Sept. 1 with a locally produced staging of Stephen Sondheim’s classic “A Little Night Music,” Artistic Director Chris Coleman announced Thursday.
While the Denver Center’s Broadway division hosts the big national touring musicals, the homegrown DCPA Theatre Company has staged its own plays and musicals from scratch for 43 years.
The company’s seven-show subscription season will include Lynn Nottage’s critically acclaimed “Clyde,” Kate Hamill’s fast-paced adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” and the 2022 Tony Award-winning Best Play “The Lehman Trilogy.”
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But the most intriguing entry on the slate is the one-actor Latinx coming-of-age play “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” written by Brian Quijada with original compositions by 2022 True West Award winner Satya Chavez, who has performed the play throughout the country, including outside the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College in August 2021. Chavez and Quijada returned in November to perform their immigration concert, "Songs from the Border."
“Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” opens with 9-year-old Bee Quijada asking a teacher during a history lesson on Rosa Parks, “Where did Latinos sit on the bus?” That opens into a full examination of what it means to be Latinx through the eyes of a child turned teenager turned adult. The performance is infused with Latin rhythms, rap, hip-hop, spoken word, and live looping.
Brian Quijda
Chavez co-wrote and starred in an aching immigration exploration called “Refuge” for Colorado College that became one of the zeitgeist productions of last year’s Colorado theater season. As an actor, Quijada appeared in the DCPA Theatre Company’s 2014 Colorado New Play Summit reading of “Victory Jones and the Incredible One-Woman Band.”
Coleman previously announced that the new season would include two developing world premieres that were featured at the company’s 2022 Colorado New Play Summit: “Cebollas” by Leonard Madrid and “Rubicon” by Kirsten Potter. “Cebollas” is a locally relevant comedy about three Chicana sisters who are forced to take an unexpected road trip from Albuquerque to Denver. “Rubicon” tells the true story of World War II spy Betty Pack.
“This lineup brings unlikely heroes to the fore, with some epic journeys and big imaginations,” Coleman said in a statement.
Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” which follows the plotting, flirting, and foibles of three affluent couples in circa-1900 Sweden, is best known for the iconic number “Send in the Clowns.” “Clyde’s,” set in a roadside sandwich shop where the cooks are the formerly incarcerated, is currently the most-produced play in America. Nottage says her play “is about people trapped in a liminal space. It is also about community, healing, creativity, mindfulness and forgiveness.” “The Lehman Trilogy,” as the title suggests, follows three German-Jewish immigrant brothers as they navigate fire, flood, war, and panic to build the financial behemoth that ultimately collapsed in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
2023-24 DCPA Theatre Company season
• Sept. 1-Oct. 8: “A Little Night Music,” directed by Chris Coleman (Wolf Theatre)
• Oct. 27-Nov 26: “Clyde’s,” directed by Jamil Jude (Kilstrom Theatre)
• Nov. 17-Dec. 24: “A Christmas Carol,” Directed by Anthony Powell (Wolf Theatre, not part of the subscription season)
• Jan. 26-March 10, 2024: “Cebollas,” directed by Jerry Ruiz (Singleton Theatre)
• Feb. 9-March 10, 2024: “Rubicon,” directed by Chris Coleman (Kilstrom Theatre)
• April 5-May 5, 2024: “Emma,” directed by Meredith McDonough (Wolf Theatre)
• April 19-Jun 2, 2024: “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” directed Matt Dickson (Singleton Theatre)
• May 3-Jun 2, 2024:” The Lehman Trilogy,” directed by Margot Bordelon (Kilstrom Theatre)
In addition, the company announced that its “Theatre for Young Audiences” offering (for pre-kindergarten through third-grade) will be a musical called “Little Red,” directed by Allison Watrous and running Oct. 5-Dec. 23 in the Randy Weeks Conservatory Theatre.
The 2024 Colorado New Play Summit, which allows audiences to peek in on the development of four promising scripts, was reduced to a one-weekend affair this season, and will be again next Feb. 24-25.
For now, only new and renewing subscriptions are on sale at denvercenter.org/theatrecompany. Single tickets will go on sale at a later date.
Satya Chavez in a rehearsal clip from 'Where Did We Sit on the Bus?' performed in August 2021 at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.