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Performing Arts


When Telluride Inside... and Out first heard the term "Americana" attached to "music," the words were used to describe Grammy-winner and Telluride Bluegrass Festival regular Tim O'Brien's hybrid of country, folk, bluegrass and swing. Americana is music with a comfortable back-porch feel.

Co-producers (Barbed Wire Productions/Sheridan Arts Foundation) of the Telluride Americana mini-Fest, July 21-24 sum up their event this way: "Americana, roots, blues, folk with a kick, and country with a rock ‘n roll heart."

18 July, 2010 /
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.
15 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Philip Gerson]

IMG_4517 Jennie Franks of the Telluride Playwrights Festival discovered the play in the process of creating her 2010 season. It was Franks who suggested the joint venture with the Telluride Repertory Theatre, the play's producer. "This Isn't What It Looks LIke" is being staged at Telluride's Palm Theatre, July 15 – July 18, with the audience sitting in the round on stage with the action. Show time is 7:30 p.m.

Written by Philip Gerson ( story editor, "Murder She Wrote," co-executive producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman")  "This Isn't What It Looks LIke" is billed as a "comedy about  everything you can't talk about at a dinner party: sex, religion and – oh no – politics." Franks experienced the play as "an hour of non-stop hysteria."
14 July, 2010 /

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 /