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Performing Arts

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:

12 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Jumpin Jan's conversation with Susan]

14th Annual KOTO Doo Dah 2010-FINAL Telluride is big on parties this summer. First there was our local fire department's all-day celebration for the Fourth of July. On July 6, the Wilkinson Public Library set the stage for another day-long bash to honor the 75th birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. On July 10, starting at 1 p.m., Telluride Town Park, KOTO FM celebrates its 35th birthday with the 14th annual KOTO  Doo Dah. The headliner is Boulder-based The Motet.

Founded and led by drummer Dave Watts over a decade ago, The Motet has roots in jazz, Afrobeat, funk, salsa and samba layered with house and techno rhythms. The result is a complex tapestry of shoe-shaking melodies and syncopated rhythms that push the sonic envelope and defy categorization. Also on the bill: The Rockadiles, Salt Fire Circus, and Joint Point.

08 July, 2010 /

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.

08 July, 2010 /
[For Wah! click "Play"]

2008_hug1_thumb One singular sensation: "Her Wahness" is featured at the third annual Telluride Yoga Festival."Kirtan with Wah! Sean Johnson & the Wild Lotus Band" takes place Friday night, 7:30 – 10 p.m. at the Telluride Conference Center in the Mountain Village.

Sound as a means of healing is a technique –  or a variety of techniques –  recorded in the ancient Americas, Africa, Greece, China, and Rome, and dates back at least to 5,000 B.C. The Yoga tradition has known for centuries that sound is the new apple a day –  only more so. Chanting mantras has physiological benefits such as increasing circulation to the different parts of the body, balancing heart rhythm, deepening exhalation; emotional benefits, such as inducing relaxation and mood elevation; intellectual benefits such as improving memory function and recharging brain cells.
07 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Jennie Franks]

People like secrets. Knowing them makes us feel important, even powerful. Here's one: the Telluride Playwrights Festival. Like the Telluride Musicfest, the Telluride Playwrights Festival is one of the best kept secrets on Telluride's summer cultural calendar –  despite the fact both events feature blue chip talent and reinforce the Telluride brand on world stage.

Last year, for example, the Telluride Playwrights Festival presented a play by Jan Buttram. Her "Phantom Killer” went on to get produced at the Abingdon Theatre in New York City this past February and received great reviews. Another Playwrights Festival alum, Tracy Shaffer, will see her Telluride script, "(W)Hole," go up in Denver this fall. Given the track record, it is a safe bet the  scripts written by this year's crop of carefully vetted playwrights – Philip Gerson, James Still and James McLindon, each highly regarded in the fields of theater and television – will meet with similar success. The best part: You can say you knew them when.
06 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Jim Riley]

Sunset Show Summer traffic in the Telluride region is generally concentrated in our box canyon: the town of Telluride is central ops for all the major festivals, which tend, however, to concentrate their activities over long weekends. Mid-week the action shifts "uptown" to Telluride's sister town, the Mountain Village, where every summer Wednesday night, 6 p.m. rain or shine, the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association presents the Summer Concert Series.

In its 11th year, the popular program draws on average 1,500 – 2,000 music lovers to the grassy slope known as Sunset Plaza at the top of the Chondala (Lift 1), where everyone seems to enjoy an opportunity to catch up with one another as much as revel in the sounds.
05 July, 2010 /
[to hear BBHC's Sam Andrew talking to Susan, click "Play"]

BBHCoriginalnologos Telluride's Sheridan Opera House welcomes Janis Joplin's original band to town. Big Brother & The Holding Company are performing live concert at the historic venue on Friday, July 2. Show time is 8 p.m. Doors and box office, 7:30 p.m. (Stop by the Sheridan Opera House courtyard from 5-8pm just prior to the show for a free Gala Premiere and Silent Auction, featuring paintings created by artists attending Telluride Plein Air’s 7th Annual Celebration of Outdoor Painting.  Complementary wine sampling and snacks provided.)

Janis Joplin brought her big, bad, bluesy voice from the red dirt of Texas to San Francisco, when "The Haight" was the heart of the drugs, sex and rock 'n roll flower child days of the 1960s. Virtually overnight, thanks to a man named Chet Helms, she went from drifter to a superstar universally described as "the greatest white urban blues and soul singer of her generation." That is, thanks to Helms and the band he managed, Big Brother & The Holding Company, which became Joplin's surrogate family.
30 June, 2010 /