Get TIO in your Inbox!

Culture

[click "Play to listen to director Krissy Smith talk about "Big Love"]

Image001 Telluride's SquidShow Theatre Company turns up the heat with its winter production of Charles L. Mee's "Big Love." (No, not that one. It's not HBO.) Performances are February 21, 22, 28, and March 1 at The Ah Haa School for the Arts (300 South Townsend Avenue). Show time is 8 p.m. Admission is FREE.


Mee is a playwright after Telluride's heart, the ultimate recycler. The writer/historian is known for radical reconstructions of found texts which he uses to create what amount to staged collages: "Big Love," based on "The Suppliant Women" by Aeschylus is a vaudevillian tragic-comedy that infuses the ancient text with pop songs, helicopters, dancing, singing, acrobatics and Mee's words.
20 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Susan's conversation with Joe Pug]

Reflect2
Joe Pug

Jte_0909_120px
Justin Townes Earle
photo:Joshua Black Wilkins

The program at the Sheridan Opera House on February 20, (doors and box office 8:30 p.m. for 9 p.m. show) features two clear-voiced populist troubadours. Top billing goes to Justin Townes Earle, the son of Steve Earle, who in turn learned his craft from two Lone Star legends, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.


Since the release of his The Good Life two years ago, which charted on Billboard Country as soon as it debuted, Earle has been hitting the boards all over the world: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest, Chicago Country Music Festival, Americana Music Awards, Down Home in Norway and his debut on the Grand Ole Opry. The chip off the old block has also performed in the UK, Australia, and Scandinavia.


18 February, 2010 /

Edgeofdarkness_smallposter Avatar Telluride's Nugget Theatre has "Avatar" as a return engagement and opens "Edge of Darkness" for the week of February 19-25.

James Cameron's "Avatar" creates its own world and philosophy and will undoubtedly take home a basket of Oscars. It is worth seeing for a number of reasons: compelling story, great special effects, just to see what all the fuss is about. Rated PG-13.

Mel Gibson has to take on the corporate world and the US government single-handedly in "Edge of Darkness" to learn why his daughter has been murdered. Not surprisingly, the movie is rated R, for violence.

See below for showtimes, and the Nugget website for reviews and trailers.

18 February, 2010 /

Mrs Robinson Fox
Tracy Shaffer as Mrs. Robinson

Editor's note: Telluride Inside...and Out now has a regular Denver contributor, Tracy Shaffer, for readers who may want a big city fix. Tracy is an abundantly talented playwright and well-known actress around the Mile High City, currently starring as the original coyote, Mrs. Robinson, in "The Graduate," which we got to see last Saturday (February 13). White hot always cool Tracy, not Benjamin, was the show's center of gravity, its heft and its raison d'etre. In a sleek production with minimal sets, the other rest of the cast became props to set off Mrs. Robinson's aria. The director, John Ashton, seemed to have pushed everyone else over the top to create cultural stereotypes of the 1960s  – The Successful, Golf-Playing Dutiful Dad; the Well-Intentioned, Hysterical Mom; the Rebellious Son. These contemporary riffs on Chaucer's archetypes allow the story of a complex woman's complex relationship with her daughter to emerge with greater understanding. Denver Post critic John Moore saw it differently: he saw underwear. We see his perspective as the emperor's new clothes, which Tracy describes in her  "Naked Truth."

My Naked Truth: Sex, power and ticket sales

by Tracy Shaffer

Much ado about wearing nothing in the Aurora Fox Theatre’s production of "The Graduate." In his Sunday column, Denver Post theatre critic John Moore took the Fox to task for "copping out" and clothing the star (though scantily) to suit its subscribers. The conversation was off and running.

17 February, 2010 /

(editor's note: Around the Viebrock house, Valentine's Day is a high holy day. So to celebrate, we are publishing works from Telluride regional poets, Enjoy!) And Love Said, You’ve Still Got a Thing to Learn, Dear, about Solitudeby Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer“When we...

14 February, 2010 /

(editor's note: Around the Viebrock house, Valentine's Day is a high holy day. So to celebrate, we are publishing works from Telluride regional poets, Enjoy!)Mirageby Sandra Dorr (from Desert Water)Years of shouting, slamming doors.Breaking the small dishes,leaving the room in mid-air --vanish into the ringing...

13 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Erika Gordon talk about "Why Oz?"]

Wizard11x17 Telluride is sorta kinda like Oz, only our denizens are taller. And we are not plagued by witches – although switching around a consonant or two could be a game changer.


"The Wizard of Oz (1939)" is as much a part of American culture as burgers, beer and baseball. The Library of Congress named "The Wizard of Oz" the most-watched film in history, and the movie is often ranked among the "top ten best movies of all times" in  critics' and popular polls.The perennial fantasy film from MGM during its golden years is the Telluride Film Festival's Valentine to the community. "The Wizard of Oz" is the featured film on Sunday, February 14, part of the Festival's ongoing Sunday at the Palm series hosted by outreach/education liaison Erika Gordon.


13 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Jeff Tretsven speak about Nonviolent Communication]

One of the best gifts one partner can give another on Valentine's Day is not roses or chocolate. It is listening so the other feels heard. The Telluride's Christ Presbyterian Church, 434 West Columbia, hosts a workshop on Saturday, February 20, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. that aims to teach that skill. The theme:  "Compassionate Communication." The facilitator: Jeff Tretsven, who has been coaching in the discipline for more than two years.


Compassionate Communication is based on  the work of Marshall Rosenberg, author of "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of LIfe." Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is itself based on the first of the five restraints or vows (yamas) in the ancient text "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali," thought-threads dating back at least 4,000 years. The grounding yama is ahimsa.

13 February, 2010 /

(editor's note: Around the Viebrock house, Valentine's Day is a high holy day. So to celebrate, we are publishing works from Telluride regional poets, Enjoy!)Not Just During Sunsets or in Candlelight, Butby Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerThere was that day in the grocery store beside the kiwis...

12 February, 2010 /

(editor's note: Around the Viebrock house, Valentine's Day is a high holy day. So to celebrate, we are publishing works from Telluride regional poets, Enjoy!)Even Though I’m Partial to Wordsby Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerOut the window, through snow, I see the irrigation ditch linedwith gray cottonwood...

11 February, 2010 /