The cast of 'Puerto Rican Nocturne' is made up almost entirely of actors who are company members of Su Teatro.
It has taken more than a village and a whole lot of patience to get the play “Puerto Rican Nocturne” to the stage for its long-awaited world premiere on Friday at the Bug Theatre.
“It’s also taken an awful lot of stubbornness,” said Denver playwright Jon Marcantoni. “But I am incredibly stubborn.”
“This is a story I really believe in, and it has something relevant to say about the world," he added. "So I just kept pushing it.”
The award-winning novelist, publisher and actor has joined forces with an uncommon cohort of local arts groups, including IDEA Stages, Sasquatch Productions, Control Group Productions and The Bug, to bring his enduring passion project to reality. This, after essential development support from Su Teatro in 2020, and a fully realized inaugural production with a small Colorado Springs theater company called THEATREdART that closed just hours before its scheduled opening performance on March 13, 2020 – the day the world shut down to wait out the pandemic. But Marcantoni did not give up.
“I believe from my experience that when you are trying to put something big together, you need a team,” he said. “I had been trying for too long to do things on my own.”
Playwright Jon Marcantoni
“Puerto Rican Nocturne” is a chronicle of the 1978 Cerro Maravilla murders, when undercover police officers killed two independence activists who had planned to bomb hillside radio towers in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in protest of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico. The officers initially claimed the activists fired first, but investigations revealed they were unarmed and severely beaten before being shot to death. Marcantoni calls the operation an assassination, one that actually targeted five activists, one of them a teenager.
Marcantoni, who moved to Denver in 2021 after seven years in Colorado Springs, is the author of five books, including “Kings of 7th Avenue,” and has written for the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and others.
One of the many reasons he wanted to tell this story, he says, is that often, "women are pretty much excluded in the reporting of it.” The intent of his play, he added, is to engage the community in a dialogue on grief, state violence, racism, and the effects of colonialism on Latin America and those of Latin American descent.
This unusually collaborative project is being willed into existence by groups committed to creating more inclusive theater for Colorado's oftentimes ignored communities. “Puerto Rican Nocturne” is the first of what is being called the “Higher Ground” series: One annual fully staged production every August.
“What makes a place like Denver great is that it’s a land of nomads and weirdos coming and trying to make a life for themselves,” he said. “And our theater community is one where people really do want to support each other."
The play runs through Aug. 21 at 3654 Navajo St. For more, listen to this extended interview with Marcantoni on the newest episode of Sam Gilstrap’s “The Ghost Lights Podcast.”
James Knapp
Farewell season for James Knapp
James Knapp has announced his retirement as artistic and managing director of the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus after the upcoming season, which will be his 10th with the sponsoring Rocky Mountain Arts Association and 41st as a conductor.
The Denver Gay Men’s Chorus, established in 1982, is an auditioned, diverse, 140-strong community chorus. Throughout his tenure, Knapp’s mantra has been unchanging: “Our mission is to build community through music.”
Among Knapp’s many artistic accomplishments have been Andrew Lippa’s “I Am Harvey Milk” and “Home,” a concert for housing insecurity. The Denver Gay Men’s Chorus celebrated its 40th anniversary in May with “Unbreakable,” Lippa’s follow-up to “I Am Harvey Milk.”
"I encourage and invite our singers to pull upon their personal experience of homophobia, of being physically and verbally attacked, because it makes the music that much more real and makes it personal," Knapp told 9News in May. "It doesn't come from the musical page. It comes from the musical soul."
Knapp’s farewell season will be announced in two weeks.
“From Coors Field, Red Rocks, the Air Force Academy, Carnegie Hall and the inauguration of the nation’s first gay governor, James led the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus to heights greater than ever before,” Michael Sattler, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Arts Association, said in a statement.
Public art in Aurora Highlands
The words “public art” and “planned community” don’t often go well together, but developers are doing their best to bring some beauty and whimsy to a massive new 12,500-unit housing community called Aurora Highlands, located off E-470 about 2 miles north of I-70.
Artist Olivia Steele next to her 'Embrace the Mystery' piece at Aurora Highlands.
“Life Blood,” a 28-foot-tall, 7,000-pound twisting ribbon sculpture designed by Hunter Brown (and hauled here 1,100 miles from Arkansas on a flatbed truck), is one of many pieces that are being installed along the new 2-mile, 100-acre Hogan Park at Highlands Creek, which plans further call for performance plazas, climbing walls, a zip line and gardens.
Nearby, artist Olivia Steele, who lives in Mexico City and Berlin, has installed traffic-like signs with unexpected daily affirmations like “Love Yourself.”
Development spokesperson Carla Ferreira said the hope is that having strategically placed, original public art throughout the community “will inspire and create the kind of emotional connections that only art can.”
'The SpongeBob Musical,' based on the animated series, will now close Aug. 21 at BDT Stage.
BDT Stage will close ‘SpongeBob’ early
The recently sold BDT Stage will be nimble with its scheduling as the iconic dinner theater prepares for its closing next year, fluidly scheduled for May 13, 2023. While “The SpongeBob Musical” has been charming audiences, it has not sold well, so producer Seamus McDonough is closing the show two weeks earlier than scheduled, on Aug. 21. (Remaining tickets just $45 with the code HAPPY45BDT).
BDT Stage will then present a (mostly) tribute concert series including FACE (Sept. 8); Citizen Dan: A Steely Dan Experience (Sept. 9-10); The Mary Louise Lee Band: A Night of Whitney Houston (Sept. 15); Cody Qualls and the Brand New Ancients (Sept. 16); Those Crazy Nights: The Ultimate Journey Experience (Sept. 17) and The Petty Nicks Experience (Sept. 23).
Broadway musicals return with “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” from Oct. 21 through Jan. 28, 2023. After that, the hope is to present “Something Rotten” from Feb. 28-May 13, 2023, and close out big with “The Sound of Music” from June 10-Sept. 30, 2023.
That plan, however, is contingent on Quad Capital Partners, which bought the property for $5.5 million in June, allowing BDT Stage to continue after its present lease expires next May.
Susannah McLeod in Miners Alley Playhouse's 'Fun Home' in 2018.
Broadway in Carbondale
Broadway star and Colorado native Beth Malone, who is home to perform a benefit concert for the Denver Actors Fund on Aug. 15 at the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown, will make her directorial debut next month with her hometown Thunder River Theatre Company’s “Hurricane Diane.” The play runs Sept. 30-Oct.16 in Carbondale.
And, get this: Malone was nominated for a Tony Award for originating the role of Alison in Broadway’s “Fun Home.” Susannah McLeod, who played the same role for Miners Alley Playhouse in 2018, will star as the Greek god Dionysus in “Hurricane Diane,” a trippy little climate-change apocalypse story that’s sort of “Desperate Housewives” meets “Lysistrata.”
“I’m freaking out a little bit, but this is a huge honor and I am super freaking stoked,” McLeod said. “This is a chance to do a show with one of my heroes.”
Briefly …
The Colorado Symphony has set the dates for its previously announced “Imagination Artist Series” – essentially a collaborative new-works project with stars from other musical disciplines. “A Ballet through Mud with RZA” will be presented at Boettcher Concert Hall on Feb. 17-18, 2023, and “Nathaniel Rateliff with the Colorado Symphony” will play March 3-4. The program offers the stars unparalleled creative access to the entire orchestra and a blank canvas to create new orchestral programs. Tickets at coloradosymphony.org …
Meanwhile, (we) theater geeks are surely geeking out in anticipation of Kristin Chenoweth’s upcoming appearances with the Colorado Symphony on Aug. 12 at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver and Aug. 13 at the Vilar Center in Beaver Creek …
Neighborhood Music School, founded near Stanley Marketplace in 2012 by local entrepreneur Skye Barker Maa (Factory Five Five, Factory Fashion and Sky Bar), has been sold to Denver-based Ensemble Music Schools, which operates 30 music schools across the U.S. …
The city of Denver is accepting applications for three new public-art projects: The Urban Farm; Federal Boulevard and 25th Avenue; and the Green Valley Ranch Recreation Center. A total of $169,000 in commissions is available. Colorado artists and teams are eligible to apply through Aug. 29 …
The city is also accepting applications from anyone interested in serving on the 11-member Denver County Cultural Council, which distributes money to the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District’s smallest (Tier III) organizations …
Can it be already? The final show of the 2022 City Park Jazz summer series is here. Sunday’s headliner is Raul Murciano and his Colorado Mambo Orchestra. He was one of the founders of the Miami Sound Machine starring Gloria Estefan. Starts at 6 p.m. …
Wait for it …
Denver Film’s 14th annual Cinema Q Film Festival is coming next week (Aug. 11-14), headlined by the presentation of the LaBahn Ikon Film Award to actor Colman Domingo. On Sunday, here on these pages, we will be profiling curator Keith Garcia.