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Performing Arts

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Nick Day & Jennie Franks

This summer, the Telluride Repertory Theatre Company celebrates 20 years of providing staged entertainment to the Telluride community.  As part of their summer celebration, the Rep is teaming up with the Telluride Playwrights Festival (TPF) to produce an exciting staged production of Philip Gerson’s new play “This Isn’t What It Looks Like.”  Nicholas Day of the Telluride Playwrights Festival and Great Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre Company directs a cast of local talent. The opening is July 15 at Telluride's Palm Theater.

“This Isn’t What It Looks Like” is part of a summer of “Made In Telluride” performing arts, which includes the Telluride Playwrights Festival showcase performances, July 11 and 12, and the Rep's "Shakespeare in the Park"  starting August 18. The Telluride Playwrights Festival and the Telluride Rep look forward to offering a great line-up of summer theatre.

04 May, 2010 /
Poster The Sheridan Arts Foundation's Young People's Theater in Telluride, under the direction of Jen Julia, presents its third full-length musical, performed by a cast of 27 young locals, grades 3 – 5. Performances are April 30 – May 2, 6 p.m. ( one hour with intermission).

Hansel & Gretel is a fairy tale of German origins, made famous by the Brothers Grimm. The story follows a young brother and sister, who discover a Gingerbread house filled with candy in the forest, the home of a child-eating wicked old witch. The Grimm version differs from the original in one fundamental plot twist: there was no evil stepmother. It was the children's own mother who convinced the father to abandon his offspring in the woods, a not unknown practice during crisis such as famine, war, plague, pestilence of the late Middle Ages. The change was to smooth feathers in a society not able to conceive of a mother forsaking her own babes.
29 April, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Elaine Fischer talk about Mark]

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Mark & Elaine

April is the month for uniquely talented people throughout the country and in Telluride, people who tend to think outside the box, march to their own drum, and find unique modes of self-expression.

April is National Autism Month and National Poetry Month.

Telluride's Autism Behavioral and  Consultation Team (now a state-mentored Model Autism Team) headed my Occupational Therapist/Yoga instructor Annie Clark has been busy muscling up its protocols and programs. And Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities and Talking Gourds are pleased to announce the 13th annual Mark Fischer Poetry Prize Award Ceremony and Poetry Reading. The event takes place Tuesday, April 27, at Telluride's award-winning Wilkinson Public Library.
27 April, 2010 /

Tia 1 "Tia Fuller’s sophomore release on Mack Avenue, "Decisive Steps," is a beautiful, musical journey. It has been a wonderful experience, watching Tia blossom from an eager music student in high school, to being known as one of the “up and coming” saxophonists and composers in the jazz world. Just like the Montgomery and Marsalis families, Denver’s Fuller Family is filled with talent and their musical roots run deep."
Susan Gatschet Reese
Assistant Program Director/On Air Host
jazz89 KUVO/KVJZ Vail

Telluride Inside... and Out has spent a whirlwind week in Denver. Friday evening we caught Tia Fuller's set at Denver jazz hotspot, Dazzle. Fuller was in town celebrating the recent release of her CD, "Decisive Steps" for the Mack Avenue label.

19 April, 2010 /
Mariela-in-the-Desert-main419.sflb Mariela's bummed, and Jose is in a major slump, but Telluride Inside... and Out is riding a wave that just won't quit on our whirlwind tour of Denver's rich cultural landscape.

Encouraged by Telluride Inside... and Out contributor and member of the Denver Center Company, Tracy Shaffer, on Wednesday night we attended a performance of Karen Zacarias' Award-winning play "Mariela in the Desert" at the Denver Center's Ricketson Theatre,  a tour de force of magical realism –  ghosts live and paint brushes are weapons –  that left us dumbstruck and moved to tears.
18 April, 2010 /
IMGP1119 "Opus." The word is Latin for work, but it was no work at all. The experience was, top to bottom, a pleasure.

Yesterday, Telluride Inside... and Out headed to the Curious Theatre Company for a Sunday matinee of Michael Hollinger's "Opus," a play about drugs (medicinal), sex (past and future and only insinuated), and chamber music, along with our friend and regular Denver writer, Tracy Shaffer. (Tracy, also a member of the Denver Center company and regular in the Denver theatre scene, just completed a run as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate.")
14 April, 2010 /




STREET DANCE 10 The things these two Telluride bands share are really big ones. I am talking about amps.

The cross-dressing Ralph Dinosaur and his Fabulous Volcanoes headline Telluride KOTO radio's end-of-season FREE street dance/costume contest, tomorrow, Friday, April 2, 3 – 8 p.m.

"There is nothing in the world like a Telluride party," said KOTO's special event queen jumpin' jan (zink), quoting  Ralph from his original "Telluride Stomp."

And now for something completely different. This year, at this party, for the very first time, Telluride's favorite dragster shares the stage with a sizzling hot opening act, performers who might be coaxed into dresses for high school reunions, weddings, and funerals: the town's favorite all-women rock 'n roll band, The 525s.
02 April, 2010 /
[click "Play" for an uplifting message from Bunzy Bunworth]

IMG_2273 Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Telluride's historic Sheridan Opera House...


On April Fool's Day, 7:30 p.m., watch sacred cows getting pounded into Whoppers, when the town's favorite actor, Jeb Berrier, along with friends – Buff Hooper, Doug Jones, Jen Julia, Leo McNamara and Bunzy Bunworth (yes, Bunzy, back in town from Down Under) – get together to perform  "Nothing is Sacred II: The Resurrection." The show is billed as a raucous blend of original sketches and live music by Sorbitol: broader than Broadway, more wild(e) than Oscar. Expect an evening that goes straight to The Dogs.
31 March, 2010 /

(editor's note: The Melodians were originally scheduled to perform at the Opera House on January 2, 2010. That concert was canceled because of weather. Lucky us: The Melodians will now play Telluride Wednesday, March 31, 8:00 pm)It's strictly ballroom at Telluride's historic Sheridan...

30 March, 2010 /
[click "Play", Sasha tells us why to support the Squids]

No joke. But lots of fun.


AprilFoolsPoster Remember Jerry Lewis? In an over-the-top, no-holds-barred attempt to win the Telluride Foundation's Text-to-Give contest by a landslide, Telluride's SquidShow Theatre troupe hosts a "Squidstravanganza,"  a variety show/telethon modeled on the meastro's kitschey fundraising marathons.

Highlights of the evening include "Best of the "Squids": song, dance, burlesque, comedy. The event, hosted by Squid founder Sasha Cuciniello and partner in crime Colin Sullivan (who moonlights as the Ah Haa School for the Arts curriculum development director), takes place April Fool's Day, 9:30 p.m., at Telluride's The Llama (corner of Colorado & Pine).
30 March, 2010 /