One of Denver’s most popular family traditions has returned with little fanfare but tremendous impact.

The JCC Mizel Arts and Culture Center shut down its popular Denver Children’s Theatre during a financial freefall back in 2019. To that point, the DCT had performed for more than 150,000 young people over the previous 22 years. But by then, “it had become no longer economically feasible for the Denver Children’s Theatre to continue to produce its own stories,” officials said at the time.

The JCC quietly restarted the program in 2022, and more than 6,000 kids attended performances in 2023, its first full year back.

“The Denver Children’s Theatre was always a beloved program, and it closed as a result of a change in leadership at the Mizel,” said Stephanie Herm, who was named COO last May. “We brought DCT back to help fill the need for an accessible children’s theater in our area.”

“Tomás and the Library Lady,” directed by True West Award winner Matt Zambrano, opens Feb. 8 and runs through March 1 in the plush Wolf Theatre, 350 S. Dahlia St. While most performances will be staged for specific school groups, three 10 a.m. Thursday performances (Feb. 8, 15 and 22) are open to the public. Feb. 18 will be free and fully accessible, courtesy of the SCFD’s Free Days program.

“To have a company that is producing theater for young audiences out of a permanent home is essential to enabling the next generation of theatergoers to be inspired by seeing stories that speak to them,” said Zambrano, a graduate of Wheat Ridge High School whose earliest theatergoing memories include seeing “101 Dalmatians” at the Arvada Center at age 7. “The visual of all the little cutouts of Dalmatians always stuck with me,” he said.

While theater for young audiences continues to thrive at the Denver Center and Arvada Center, children’s productions that speak specifically to Denver’s young Latino population are few and far between.

Read more about the 2019 closing of the Denver Children’s Theatre

“Tomás and the Library Lady,” based on Pat Mora’s book of the same name, is a biographical look at the legendary Chicano writer Tomás Rivera, who was known for documenting the struggles of migrants.

Rivera was born to a family of migrant workers who moved from Texas to Iowa to pick corn and other crops, Zambrano said. “Tomás met a librarian in Iowa who introduced him to the world of books, and he went on to earn his master’s degree in literature, which was very rare in the 1970s.”

The opportunity to tell Rivera’s story through theater, he added, “is an opportunity to show these young people a wonderful treatise on upward mobility and kindness and empathy and friendship.

“I hope they walk away knowing there is a place for them – and that curiosity can be their friend.”

Tickets to public performances ($0-$11.50) are available at jccdenver.org.

Follow that story: Joshua Bess, Holy Roller

There must have been something of a Messiah Complex at the Buell Theater last week as three actors traded places playing the titular role in eight performances of “Jesus Christ Superstar” because of various injuries and illnesses.

One of them was Denver’s own Joshua Bess, a graduate of Columbine High School, who wound up playing Jesus in both performances Saturday and once on Sunday. One of the many family and friends who made a beeline to the Buell Theatre to witness the Bess buzz was True West Award-winning local director Kelly Van Oosbree.

“She cast me as Ren in my first professional production,” Bess said of Performance Now’s “Footloose” back in 2012 at the Lakewood Cultural Center.

“Even my Columbine drama teacher, Tracy Schwartz, came,” he added. “It certainly was an exhausting and thrilling weekend.”

Follow that story: Parking at the DCPA

Last week we told you that parking at the Denver Performing Arts Complex garage was going to be bad for the next 14 weeks, but even we didn’t know how bad it’s going to get.

How bad? Colorado Ballet, one of the arts complex’s core tenants, is recommending that its patrons arrive a full 90 minutes prior to curtain time to allow for potential delays.

Until May, access to one of the parking lot’s two entrances will be closed for access upgrades that should make getting in and out much more quick … eventually.

Follow that story: Ginger White Brunetti

You may have read here how Ginger White Brunetti was rather unceremoniously swept aside by incoming Denver Mayor Mike Johnston after a stellar run as executive director of Denver’s Department of Arts & Venues.

Well, Denver’s loss is Aurora’s gain. White Brunetti has been named Director of Library & Cultural Services for the City of Aurora, where she will oversee educational and arts programs at the Aurora History Museum, Bicentennial Arts Center and the Aurora Fox Arts Center, as well as at multiple library branches. The department has 90 full-time employees and an $11 million budget. For Denver, White managed a $100 million operating budget and a $188 million capital budget.

“Ginger’s expertise, coupled with our already vibrant arts and culture scene and globally diverse community, will bring Aurora to a level we haven’t seen before,” said Aurora Deputy City Manager Laura Perry.

Follow that story: The Leon is saved

Last week, we told you that the nonprofit Leon Gallery needed to raise $20,000 by March 15 to stay open. Well, the paint has already dried on that crisis. In less than one week, more than 300 people donated $23,000 to save the nonprofit gallery at 1112 E. 17th Ave.

“It has been absolutely tremendous to see how much love there is for our gallery space and our programming,” said co-founder Eric Robert Dallimore.

As thanks, the Leon will open a special exhibit on Feb. 10 dedicated to Denver painter, sculptor and printmaker Eric Anderson, whose work is often focused on refuge, empathy, hierarchy and impermanence.

Donations will continue to be accepted at donorbox.org.

Follow that story: Barton Cowperthwaite

The feel-good story of this or any other year continued today when Denver School of the Arts graduate Barton Cowperthwaite started rehearsals for what will soon be his Broadway debut – in the ensemble of the musical adaptation of “The Outsiders,” which opens for previews March 16.

In November, Cowperthwaite, 31, had a lemon-sized tumor removed from his brain. After what he calls “an unimaginably difficult close to 2023,” he said, “Feeling ready!”

Briefly …

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis awarded the Citizenship Medal last week to six noteworthy Coloradans: Photographer John Fielder (posthumously); Women’s Foundation of Colorado CEO Lauren Young Casteel; Steamboat Ski Resort CEO Rob Perlman; student Osvaldo Garcia Barron; civil-rights leader (and youngest member of the Little Rock Nine) Carlotta Walls LaNier; and John Street, CEO and co-founder of PAX8 …

There are surprisingly intimate concerts, and then there are, “Wait, did that really happen?” kind of nights. Like Sunday, when Amy Ray, co-founder of Indigo Girls, played with her band for 200 people at the Fort Collins Armory on Sunday night. “If It All Goes South” is Ray’s 10th solo album. Her Indigo Girls partner, Emily Saliers, is continuing to develop a new stage musical called “Starstruck” with Colorado’s own Tony Award nominee, Beth Malone (“Fun Home”). The whole “Starstruck” team, including workshop star Marc Kudisch, just appeared together at an off-Broadway theater company’s season-launch event on Monday, so a premiere announcement for “Starstruck “ seems imminent   …

A new national touring production of “Shrek the Musical” is going out on the road, and we now know it will have a Denver stop from March 14-17 at the Buell Theatre …

And finally …

Kolacny Music Company Universal Music. Rockley Music Center. Now Schmitt Music Company is closing in Englewood after 35 years. Is the era of the bona fide bricks and mortar music store really over?