2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 15

Luke Sorge wrote two new plays that premiered on different metro stages at the same time – a playwright’s quiniela

Lovable Luke Sorge is a typical young father who gets up early to do all the necessary family business with his wife and impossibly adorable 3-year-old daughter before heading off to work at the Anythink Library in Thornton.

Repeat.

Like a lot of dreamers, Sorge harbors a wistful aspiration – the kind a lot of parents happily put on hold during the busy, blessed parenting years. Sorge’s not-so-secret Walter Mitty fantasy is to have all that and just maybe one day be a produced playwright, too.

Hah. As if!

But I say “not-so-secret” because, in Sorge’s case, that dream is actually playing out in real time, for all to see. Really, all you have to do is buy a ticket to his next play.

Sorge accomplished something in 2025 that (it is believed) only one other local playwright has ever done. Sorge wrote two plays that were picked up for their world-premiere stagings by two different theater companies in 2025 – and were performed across town on different stages at the same time. One show literally closed the day before the other. (The other was Josh Hartwell in 2017).

“That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” said Warren Sherrill, who in April directed Sorge’s breakout play “National Bohemians” at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden. Also cool – or at the very least, weirdly cool – the director of his other play, “Taco Town,” was Wolf J. Sherrill – who, I have borne personal witness to, is not the alter ego of Warren. He’s, like, a totally different Sherrill with a first name starting with W.

“Luke is a true artist,” said Warren (the Sherrill of record here). “He really knows how to challenge himself, how to dig deep, and how to not just play to the norm.”

Turns out, as a writer, Sorge has the discipline of a world-class athlete – something that was no doubt ingrained in him as a member of Broomfield High School’s 2004 state championship basketball team. These days, Sorge has only the tiniest pockets of time to himself. That just comes with the dad territory. But his wife, actor and producer Adrian Egolf, marvels at how he maximizes that time.

Dude is just always writing. Up at 5:30. Lights a candle. Fires up a customized Spotify music playlist. Boom. Two pages banged out before dawn – just to get the motor revvin’ and the cranial juices flowing. It’s his coffee. (And so is his coffee.)

Most days, he’s at work by 8:30. On days when he can start later, he’s going all early morning Hemingway at a random coffee shop.

Sherrill has seen Sorge’s discipline in action first-hand. They both double as actors, and in 2016, the two co-starred in a Harvey Fierstein story about straight men in 1962 who regularly stole away to a secret Catskills resort to indulge their hidden joy for cross-dressing.

“Every second Luke was not on stage rehearsing, he was literally seated in the wings writing. (In a dress.) Then I did another show with him in Boulder, and it was the same thing. I’d run into him in a Starbucks before rehearsal, and he’d be sitting there with five journals laid out and he’s just going at it.”

He’s just completely committed to it, Egolf said. “It is his passion. It’s who he is, and it’s who he wants to be for his daughter. He wants to be that person – a writer. And I think, through and through, that’s just who he is.”

Most who know Sorge know him to be a genuinely nice and nurturing guy. He had an ideal, loving “Leave It To Beaver” kind of childhood,” his wife said wistfully – and that totally tracks. The characters he invents? Not so much.

Detour: I wrote a play myself back in 2016. It’s narrated by a soft and squeezable 16-year-old boy who lives on the family roof to escape the world’s shouting below. He’s called “Benny Bunny.” And from the start, he’s been (played by) Sorge. Funny thing is, we hauled that play out one more time for a reading this past January. But we’re all nine years older. This time, Sorge played Benny’s daddy.

But those who know Sorge as more of a bunny than a bully were in for a surprise if they attended Miners Alley Playhouse’s considerable staging of “National Bohemians.”

It’s the story of two estranged adult brothers who return to their tiny hometown in the Chesapeake Bay during a hurricane only to find that oldest brother (John) has taken their mother out of her local care facility and is planning to “put an end to her suffering” – which draws his adopted daughter into the fray. As you might expect: Legal ramifications, financial implications and family secrets are all uncovered — as well as John’s true motive.

The production came with heart and a side of claws. Journalist Juliet Wittman said the beer-chugging brothers’ raging inside “challenges the thunder outside.”

It takes a talented playwright, she went on, “to take on a topic that has troubled humankind for centuries, plumb the depths and still joke about the kind of knot you need to hang yourself with – but Luke Sorge is more than up to the challenge.”

Audience member Gin Walker said Sorge’s dialogue “was so real, it hurts.”

The staging revealed a consequential playwright laser-focused on introducing characters who ostensibly should love each other but more often use familiarity as a weapon. He’s similar in that vein to playwrights like Tracy Letts and Edward Albee, who explore fractured families with surgical precision.

This play, which sported a truly A-list cast that included Miners Alley Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Len Matheo in his first acting role in 10 years, was warmly received by audiences and reviewers. The play’s six Henry Award nominations from the Colorado Theatre Guild made it (tied for) the most-honored play in Colorado for the 2024-25 theater season.

“I think the reason Luke gets away with it is because he writes his characters with such sensitivity and nuance that the audience will ultimately forgive them for how badly they treat each other,” said Sherrill, “and that’s the hardest freaking thing for a writer to do.

“Luke takes you to a point where you finally go, ‘I get it. I understand these people, and now I’m rooting for them for some weird reason.’ I wouldn’t say he makes them likable, but he makes you understand them, and when you can understand a character, you can root for them.”

And then there was (needle scratch) “Taco Town,” a “workplace hostage comedy” set in the fryer room of a Broomfield fast-food joint. (You know. One of those.)

With “Taco Town,” Sorge introduces a smarmy boss who’s such an over-the-top “a-hole” (seriously, that’s the play’s official description of the character), you’re willing to go along with the bad behavior that ensues.

The world premiere was staged by Red Rocks Community College – which is not say it was a college production, per se. Red Rocks is run by the college but operates as a full community theater that welcomes actors and creative staff from throughout Colorado.

In the playwriting biz, they say the hard part isn’t getting your play staged for the first time. It’s getting it staged for the second time. So it is a very big deal that “Taco Time” already has landed No. 2  (Aug. 7-Sept. 13 at Miners Alley).

It’s not yet nearly as fully formed as “National Bohemians” just yet, which should make the return trip to “Taco Town” next year that much more interesting to see how far it has come.

Thrilling new voices

Denver has long had a strong and supportive local playwriting community, thanks to companies large and small that commit to the important (and often overwhelmingly expensive) task of telling new stories. One of our smallest companies, Two Cent Lion, told two of the biggest and freshest new stories of the year through a queer lens, each announcing a young, uncommonly poignant and at times profound new playwriting voice.

The first was “The Tragedy of Medusa,” by Olivia Buntaine, which reimagined the completely jacked and way-too-often repeated Greek myth of a strong woman who is punished by being turned into an isolated monster. (Hello Elsa? Elphaba?) Medusa’s terrible crime? Having been raped by Poseidon.

Buntaine (named this very morning the new artistic director of the queer Two Cent Lion Theatre Company) gives the snake-haired Medusa a voice like we’ve never heard before – and a long overdue hero’s journey.

“Just because we haven’t heard Medusa’s thoughts doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them,” said Buntaine, who considers it her mission to give voice to women and marginalized identities throughout the classical canon.

That was followed by Two Cent Lion and Shifted Lens Theatre Company’s co-production of “The Legend of Anne Bonny,” a massive musical undertaking brazenly imagined by Emy McGuire, a Mullen High grad who began adapting Anne Bonny’s life for the stage at age 17.

“What began as pirate fan fiction six years ago has since become an ode to queerness, womanhood and my own time living at sea,” said McGuire, a published author at age 23 whose new novel “No One Aboard” was released Dec. 2. (It’s a mystery about a family that has gone missing aboard a luxury sailboat).

Bonny operated in the Caribbean in the 1720s and became one of the most famous pirates in history, largely due to her gender and fierce reputation in a male-dominated world.

Three cheers for new plays by local writers, and the companies that stage them.

Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

Luke Sorge/Fully produced plays

• “Zen & the Art of Profit,” Miners Alley Playhouse, 2021
• “After the End,” The Catamounts, 2024
• “National Bohemians,” Miners Alley Playhouse, 2025
• “Taco Town,” Red Rocks Community College, 2025

Select world premieres by Colorado playwrights 2025

An incomplete list of full-length world-premiere plays by Colorado playwrights in 2025:

• “A Town Called Harris,” by Jessica Austgen, The Catamounts at Harris Park Schoolhouse
• “The Reservoir,” by Jake Brasch, Denver Center Theatre Company
• “An Echoing Spring,” by Mike Broemmel at various locations 
• “The Tragedy of Medusa,” by Olivia Buntaine, Two-Cent Lion at the People’s Building
• “The Menagerist,” co-created and performed by Regan Linton and Buntport Theater
• “Jedidiah Blackstone,” by Jeff Campbell, Emancipation Theater at the Clayton Early Learning Center
• “The Princess and the Goblins,” by Kellie Fox and Brian Dowling, Third Side Theatre at the People’s Building
• “Collecting Myself,” by Paula Jayne Friedland,” And Toto Too at the Rolling Gnome
• “Zyanya: Always and Forever,” by Micaela Garcia de Benavidez at Su Teatro
• “Miss Manhattan,” by Graham and Kristina Fuller, 19K Productions at the Dairy Arts Center
• “Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words,” by Carol Levine and Tammy Meneghini, BETC at various locations
• “Don’t Stop Believin’,” by Magic Moments at Kent Denver School
• “The Legend of Anne Bonny,” by Emy McGuire, Two Cent Lion and Shifted Lens at the People’s Building
• “Do You Want To Go?” by David Nehls, at Vintage Theatre
• “Stocking Stuffers,” by David Nehls, at Miners Alley Playhouse
• “National Bohemians,” by Luke Sorge, Miners Alley Playhouse
• “Taco Town,” by Luke Sorge, Red Rocks Community College

More True West Awards coverage

• This Used to Be: Where Grace Kelly lived in Denver

• 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano

• Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’

• Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact

• Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side

• Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77

• Day 6: Mirror images: Leslie O’Carroll and Olivia Wilson

• Day 7: Philip Sneed will exit Arvada Center on a high

• Day 8: Ed Reinhardt’s magic stage run ends after 27 years

• Day 9: Costume Designer Nikki Harrison

• Day 10: DU’s tech interns getting the job done

• Day 11: Husbands, wives keep home fire burning

• Day 12: Denver School of the Arts’ Drama Dash

• Day 13: Theater as a powerful response to violence

• Day 14: Elitch Theatre no longer a ghost town