The Colorado theater community is mourning a titan named Titus.

Yes, Titus was a dog, and he went out the way every actor would want to exit the stage: performing until and on the very last day of his life.

In 2010, actor Geoffrey Kent won a Denver Post Ovation Award for his comedic performance in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” And he did it largely on the 7 1/2-pound back of his Long-Haired Chihuahua, who died April 10 at age 16.

Kent played Grumio, slapstick servant to Petruchio. One critic wrote at the time: “Kent outdoes himself with clownish abandon and gleeful sarcasm; his smart repartee with the audience is a delight.”

That smart repartee was essentially the shameless exploitation of his adorable blonde mini-hound for laughs. Titus, mentioned in Shakespeare’s play as Petruchio’s unseen spaniel, was added to a chase sequence during a dinner scene. It was certain to work each night because Titus was essentially tethered to his owner by an invisible leash.

“He would follow me everywhere,” said Kent.

Speaking of leashes: In one scene, Grumio led a gossipy servant (played by Jamie Ann Romero) across the stage on a leash behind him as she led Titus on a leash behind her – to the great guffaws of delighted audience members.

“But Titus,” Kent said, “mostly lived in my pants.” And by that, we mean his leather pants. Titus was like the passenger in a motorcycle sidecar – if that sidecar were in Kent’s pants.

Titus even taught this wizened theater journalist a thing or two about stagecraft. Like the definition of a “codpiece” – a term it never occurred to me to learn until Kent entered the Mary Rippon Amphitheatre stage with a dog in his pouch. Sorry, “codpiece.” That’s essentially a flap-sack located at the crotch.

Codpieces were popular in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, Kent said, so that men could relieve themselves without taking off their tights. Pretty sure no one else filled them with a tiny dog.

“They say never be onstage with children or dogs because they are more interesting than you,” he said. “Whenever Titus was on stage, no one was looking at me.”

No, we were looking at the dog in his crotch.

Titus has a resume other actors would envy, including the Colorado and Utah Shakespeare festivals, the Arvada Center, Aurora Fox and Buntport theaters. Even a few Colorado Lottery TV spots. How cool is Titus? He was the lead singer of an imaginary indie-rock band called “Howling at Ambulances.”

But now, said Kent, “It feels like I’ve been amputated.”

Titus, who had been living with Stage 4 kidney disease, was put to peaceful sleep April 10, just hours after appearing in a morning student matinee performance of the Aurora Fox’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

Titus, ever able to act against type, was playing a puppy (!) named Sandy, who, at the climax of the story, is presented as a gift to a traumatized 15-year-old boy whose father (spoiler alert) has stuck a pitchfork in the neighbor’s dog. The play featured Kent’s wife, actor Jessica Austgen, as the boy’s mother. She laughed through her tears describing the moment.

“It was like the dad was saying, ‘Sorry I murdered the neighbor’s dog, kid: We got you this geriatric chihuahua,’” Austgen said.

Titus, named after the vengeful general in Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, was born in November 2008, adopted by Kent a month later and took to the stage soon after. “Like all good actors,” said Kent, “he got his start in children’s theater.” In 2009, he played Terrifi-dog, sidekick to Kent’s Captain Terrific character in Buntport Theater’s children’s serial “Trunks.”

Titus garnered critical praise in 2017 as Henslowe’s dog, Spot, in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s “Shakespeare in Love.” Actor John Preston learned quickly, Kent said, “that if any joke bombed, all he had to do was bring out Titus.”

Wrote a Utah critic: “There’s a running gag about how much Queen Elizabeth and audiences in general love a play with a dog. What’s ironic is the audience oohed and awed every time the dog made an appearance on stage — so apparently it’s true, dogs are a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.”

In 2020, when the Arvada Center launched an innovative series of Zoom plays broadcast from its actors’ homes, Austgen had no choice but to write Titus and his late canine brother, Dexter, into the stories. “Because there would be no way to keep them from barking,” she said. Titus made a memorable turn as Jack Reacher sporting pilot’s goggles in a play Austgen wrote called “The Family Tree.”

As an actor, Titus was both super chill and fiercely protective. Theater is playacting, and whenever something looked real, Titus thought it was real, and he would react accordingly.

Kent, who has taken Titus along with him pretty much everywhere he goes on the road, remembers rehearsing as Marc Antony in Utah Shakes’ production of ‘Antony and Cleopatra.” “When I killed myself in rehearsal, Titus thought I was dead in real life,” Kent said. “He came running up to me and wouldn’t let anyone touch me, so the scene couldn’t continue. That was really magical.”

Titus possessed many of the qualities that all good actors aspire to. He made full eye contact. He was fully invested in every scene. And he memorized his blocking. Austgen saw that play out in “The Family Tree.”

“At the end of our scene, if I leaned forward enough and blew on his nose, he would automatically kiss me on the nose – every single time,” she said.

The licking was legendary. Although this might sound problematic to say in 2025, if we’re being honest, Titus simply could not keep his tongue in his mouth. As odd as this might be to say about a dog: He really was a people person.

Was there occasional lack of professionalism? Sure. It’s possible an office in the Denver Center’s education building might retain the lingering aroma of a gift Titus once left behind. And it’s true that when he landed a commercial for the Colorado Lottery that shows him emerging from a pile of cash, he might have so overindulged in the steak at the Craft services table that he lost a day of shooting. Who among us hasn’t overindulged?

Titus took a turn for the worse the evening before last week’s student matinee of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” Kent and Austgen conferred with professionals and made the eviscerating decision to ease his passing the next day. That morning, Titus was active and engaged, so the couple decided to go ahead with the 10 a.m. performance, which would require only that Titus be gently handed to the boy and briefly held. Austgen didn’t tell her castmates of the plan for Titus until after the show ended.

“That meant Titus got to feel all the love he always got from them,” she said, “and we got to pretend to have one last normal day.”

After the show, the cast was told about the impending, compassionate death of one of their own. Each got to say their goodbyes. Titus was given all his favorites: Steak, bacon and ice cream. “He didn’t leave a human being’s arms that entire day,” Austgen said. “And then … he took a nap.”

But in the great theater tradition of the show going on, there was the issue now of the production’s final four performances. There would be no time to incorporate a live replacement.

“Instead, we had to act with a stuffed animal from Target and the sound cue of a puppy squealing,” Austgen said. But her fellow actors “really sold it,” she added. They held the toy as if it were Titus himself, and the audience was none the wiser. Or, if they were, it didn’t stop them from audibly awwing the moment.

“That was a real exercise in acting professionalism,” Austgen said.

Titus lived to be 112 in dog years. No one in the theater lives to be half that age without making some enemies along the way – but Titus was beloved by all. Kent and Austgen have received more than 750 condolence messages in the past week.

“Anyone who met Titus loved him instantly, and that is an immediate reflection of the love we all carry for Geoff and Jess,” said Romero, Titus’ leash partner in “The Taming of the Shrew.”

“What I will cherish most was watching Titus bound down a hallway to greet me, his larger-than-life ears, his upturned smile, his expressive eyes, his kisses and little snorts and whimpers as we said hello. Whether it had been a few days or over a year, that greeting was always the same.”

He had a heart bigger than any 7 1/2-pound body ­– or Elizabethan codpiece – could ever contain.