Author: Telluwriter TIO

by Elisabeth Gick

[click "Play" for Elisabeth's conversation with Jangchub Chophel]

HHDL-Groups The monks of Gaden Shartse Monastery are returning to Telluride. When they were in town two years ago, they displayed some of their beautiful handmade wares at the Telluride Farmers' Market, conducted a healing ritual at the Ah Haa School, and evoked the vast landscapes of Tibet at the Town Hall lawn in Ophir with the eerie sounds emanating from their throats and longhorns.

This coming Friday and Saturday, July 23/24, the Gaden Shartse Monks plan to teach us aspects of Buddhism and hold a purifying ritual at the Telluride Yoga Center. The weekend activities are topped off Sunday morning, July 25, 10 a.m. to noon, with chanting and music on the terrace of the five-star Wilkinson Public Library.
By Jennie Franks, founder/artistic director
 
IMG_4495 While our small band of Telluride Playwrights Festival participants were busy talking, plotting, acting and reading, the Telluride Rep has been quietly rehearsing the third play of the Festival – This Isn’t What It Looks Like, Philip Gerson's zany, political comedy that anyone who lives in today's America can relate to.
 
This year I knew I wanted to do something bold and different for the Telluride Playwrights Festival, and Philip’s play immediately caught my eye. The vitality of This Isn’t What It Looks Like  jumped off the page.

by Tracy Shaffer

One. But he really has to want to share.

For the past seven days, ten writers from around the country and within the Telluride community have been hunkered down at the Sheridan Opera House or gathered in Jennie Franks' living room for a post-supper salon and informal reading. The event is the Telluride Playwrights Festival, a glorious blend of featured playwrights and theatre professionals existing in a fluid blend of rehearsal, response, reflection and rewrites with the goal of making good scripts better. Now in its fourth year, Ms. Franks has made impressive strides, attracting extraordinary talented writers, garnering support of the community and providing an experience unlike any other. As we lean into our public readings, tonight James McLindon's DEAD AND BURIED and tomorrow's offering LOVE ME SOME AMNESIA by James Still, I asked our two Jameses about this Telluride experience:

IMG_5505 BERKELEY, CA – Telluride Film Festival (September 3-6, 2010), presented by National Film Preserve LTD., is proud to announce its 2010 Guest Director, Michael Ondaatje. The celebrated writer has been invited to select a series of films to present at the 37th Telluride Film Festival.  The Guest Director program is sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
 
Each year Festival directors Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer and Julie Huntsinger select one of the world’s great film enthusiasts to join them in the creation of the program lineup. The Guest Director serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas and overlooked films to Telluride.

 

by D. Dion

No matter what you’re doing this weekend, Ricky Denesik’s got you beat. Denesik is running the Hardrock 100, a 100.5-mile endurance race in the San Juan Mountains at an average elevation of 11,000 feet with 33,992 feet of climbing. It might sound like pain and suffering to most people, but the lanky, local ultra-runner is taking it in stride. “I think I can do it. I just don’t worry about it, I take it as it comes, one mile at a time, one step at a time,” says Denesik.

It’s likely he will do it—Denesik has already finished the race four times, each time coming in the top 10. The first time he ran the Hardrock 100, in 1998, he won the prestigious event. “I was a lot younger then,” laughs Denesik. He says his goal this year is simply to earn his fifth finish; that way, he won’t have to enter the lottery to get a spot in the Hardrock 100 in the future. Five-time finishers are guaranteed a spot in the race, which strictly limits the number of runners.

by Tracy Shaffer

IMG00103-20100707-1918
Tracy with Paul Page

This is the question slated for the Telluride Playwrights Festival Open House on Thursday, and a conversation that circulates through the theatre community like a five dollar bill. I've popped this and a few other questions to some of the TPF participants. Grabbing a post-rehearsal snack at Smugglers with director/playwright William Missouri Downs, in from Wyoming to direct Telluride Rep actors in Phillip Gerson's This Isn't What It Looks Like.  A prolific author and playwright, Bill has eight upcoming productions around the country and just closed the Denver hit, Books on Tape.