Melissa Benoist, who grew up on Denver stages and flew into the stratosphere as TV’s “Supergirl,” is coming to a much bigger screen on Sunday night.

Benoist, a graduate of Arapahoe High School, will be making a virtual appearance at a star-studded cabaret concert at the Aurora Fox.

“Love Changes Everything,” produced by Ebner-Page Productions as a benefit for the Denver Actors Fund, will feature a who’s-who of local performers. But presenter Eugene Ebner-Page also has been compiling video songs and salutations from a whole host of homegrown Broadway and TV stars including Annaleigh Ashford, Mara Davi, Andy Kelso, Beth Malone, Jason Veasey and Elizabeth Welch.

But the biggest Benoist news of the week is that she will star in “Girls on the Bus,” a new series from Max that follows four female political reporters on the campaign trail. It’s based on Amy Chozick’s novel “Chasing Hillary” about her time covering Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The new Max series revolves around Benoist, who plays journalist Sadie McCarthy, described by the show as “a journalist who romanticizes the original “Boys on the Bus” – Timothy Crouse’s classic book chronicling life on the road for reporters covering the 1972 presidential election. “Girls on the Bus” follows Sadie, who we’re told “scrapped her whole life for her one shot at covering a presidential campaign for the paper of record.” Benoist’s co-stars include Christina Elmore, Natasha Benham and Carla Gugino.

The series will debut with two episodes on March 14. 

Meanwhile, Sunday’s benefit concert will be emceed by local actor Patric Case and include performances by a swath of local talent including Piper Arpan (Broadway’s “Spamalot”) and Denver Gazette True West Awards 2023 Colorado Theater Person of the Year Kenny Moten. 7 p.m. March 3 at 9900 E. Colfax Ave. Tickets $25-$50 at aurorafoxartscenter.org.

(Editor’s note: John Moore is the founder of the Denver Actors Fund.)

Coloradans are crushing it

It’s remarkable just how many Colorado-raised actors are making things happen right now in film, on TV and on Broadway. Here are a few:

• Regis Jesuit High School grad John Carroll Lynch (“Fargo”) who has now amassed 130 film and TV credits, next appears in the film “Outlaw Posse,” opening March 1. Lynch plays Carson in the western, which writer, director and star Mario Van Peebles calls a companion piece to “Posse,” which he made 30 years ago. Lynch has three other films in the 2024 pipeline: “Babes,” “She Rides Shotgun” and “The Grand Strand.”

• Jenna Bainbridge, a longtime performer with Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, makes her Broadway debut April 18 when the new musical “Suffs” – short for “Suffragist” – opens April 18 at the Music Box Theatre. When that happens, Bainbridge, a graduate of Castle View High School and the University of Denver, will become the first wheelchair user to originate a role in a Broadway musical. Ever.

• Benjamin Bonenfant, a graduate of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, was scheduled to come home and perform in the Denver Center’s Colorado New Play Summit last weekend. That is, until he got the call to make his Broadway debut as an understudy in the big-buzz London transfer of a play called “Patriots,” which has its first performance April 1 at the Barrymore Theatre. The story, set in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, tells of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire who helped orchestrate the ruthless rise of Vladimir Putin – and came to regret it. It stars Michael Stuhlbarg (“Dopesick”). Bonenfant has appeared with the Denver Center Theatre Company, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Curious Theatre, Colorado Springs’ TheatreWorks and many more.

• Aurora’s Oscar Whitney Jr., a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, will make his Broadway debut March 28 in “Hell’s Kitchen,” a new musical with a score by 15-time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys. It’s about a 17-year-old Black girl finding her voice on the mean streets of New York. (Alas, Keys is not in it.) 

• Denver School of the Arts graduate Barton Cowperthwaite will make his Broadway debut in the ensemble of “The Outsiders” when the new musical based on the classic film opens for previews March 16 at the Jacobs Theatre.

• Christy Oberndorf, a graduate of Grandview High School in Aurora and UNC, returns to Denver as Tammy in the national touring production of “Hairspray” from March 5-10.  She’s been performing on area stages since she was just a kid in the DCPA Theatre Company’s 2008 seasonal staging of “A Christmas Carol.”

• Erik C. Peterson, a 2018 graduate of Grandview High School, has been playing Scorpius Malfoy in  “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the highest-grossing play in Broadway history, since November 2022.

• Gene Gillette, born in Evergreen, is performing in a play about French avant garde theatermaker Antonin Artaud in the International Monodrama Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria.

• Steven Burge, who by day is the marketing manager for the Town Hall Arts Center and starred in the Denver Center’s “Act of God” in the Galleria Theatre, has written a play called “Bats#!t” that will be featured in the American Stage’s New Play Festival on Saturday (March 2) in St. Petersburg, Fla.

• Jesse Aaronson, a  2014 Cherry Creek High School graduate, will make his TV debut tonight (Thursday) on NBC’s “Law & Order” SVU. He made his Broadway debut last year in Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” winner of the Tony Award for best play.

• Denver East High School alumna Mary Bacon just wrapped a successful run of “The Scarlet Letter” for the Two River Theater of Red Bank, N.J. She played Goodie Hibbins. The star of that play was Amelia Pedlow (Hester), who is high-tailing it back to the Denver Center right now to play the title role in “Emma,” a high-octane adaptation of the Jane Austen classic running April 5-May 5 at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. 

• Jeremy Shamos, a graduate of Colorado Academy, and Jason Veasey, of Coronado High School in Colorado Springs (and UNC), were at last week’s Screen Actors Guild Awards as members of the nominated best ensemble from “Only Murders in the Building.”

• Actor and playwright Kristen Adele Calhoun’s new play “Black Cypress Bayou” is being staged through March 17 at the prestigious Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. It’s described as “a hot summer night in Texas and three women with a secret too big to keep.” Calhoun was the Denver’s Center Theatre Company’s Assistant Company Manager 15 years ago, and she starred in Curious Theatre’s “In the Red and Brown Water.”

Su Teatro legends in the news

Yolanda Ortega and Debra Gallegos, Su Teatro’s two legendary, 50-year-company members, were both in the news this week. On Sunday, Gallegos signed off after 17 years as co-host  of KUVO’s “Cancion Mexicana” radio program. But her time at the station goes back all the way to Aug. 29, 1985, when Gallegos’ was the first voice ever to be heard on KUVO.

Ortega has been confirmed to serve on Colorado’s State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education. Her focus, she says, will be on “providing access, opportunity and successful conclusion of education goals.”

Women’s Chorus on Benedict

The Denver Women’s Chorus posted a powerful message in memory of Nex Benedict, the non-binary teenager who died last week after being attacked in an Oklahoma school bathroom. “As an ensemble of LGBTQ+ and allied singers, we are enraged, we are heartbroken, and we are reminded of the need to keep fighting for the rights of all people even as we grapple with the grief of this loss,” the group said.

Briefly …

“Imperfect,” the widely acclaimed documentary that followed Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company through the making of its production of “Chicago,” is now available for streaming on Roku, TUBI, Google Play and YouTube (with more to come, including Amazon Prime) …

Denver stand-up comedian Adam Cayton-Holland will perform his remarkable one-man stage play “Happy Place,” based around the suicide of his sister, on March 14 at Chaos Bloom. Tickets $10 at chaosbloom.com.