Kelly Van Oosbree is the cat in the hats

By John Moore December 16, 2025 | updated 7 months ago

2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 17

Prolific director and choreographer is the artistic director of two local companies at the same time

Kelly Van Oosbree swears it’s not so much ambition as it is “an Iowa work ethic.”

Call it what you will, but Colorado’s most prolific director and choreographer worked in 2025. A lot. Again.

“I only know how to work hard, and I know that comes directly from my parents, who are just the hardest-working people who walk this planet – and they’re not stopping,” she said.

Dad has been an electrical contractor these past 40 years back in 2,500-strong Emmetsburg, Iowa. Her mom runs the Main Street community theater, which has been known to push the envelope with plays by Christopher Durang and Tracy Letts.

“I kind of see where I’m going,” Van Oosbree said.

On to the next thing.

All roads this Colorado theater year seemed to run from Brighton to Colorado Springs. That’s the path Van Oosbree took and re-took while working on 11 plays and musicals this year, putting about 25,000 miles on her once-new hybrid Hyundai Tucson along the way.

Make that another 11 plays and musicals – which is about her average for the past three years.

If you have worked on or around a Colorado stage in that time, chances are you worked for Van Oosbree. And if you count them all up, three years of shows comes to about 1,000 of you.

At one time, 2025 was going to be the year this do-it-all wife and mother of a special-needs son was going to try letting up on the gas a bit. Instead (and to completely butcher the metaphor), she doubled down. Literally doubled – at least in terms of job titles.

The cast of Give 5 Productions' 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch,' directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (John Moore, Denver Gazette) — The cast of Give 5 Productions’ ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch,’ directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (John Moore, Denver Gazette)

Van Oosbree entered the year as the 17-year artistic director and board president of Brighton’s Platte Valley Players, a rising community theater company based about 25 miles northeast of Denver that in January rebranded to Platte Valley Theatre Arts. That shift did not change the company’s core mission, but Van Oosbree hopes the new name “captures the heart of who we are — a small company with big ideas and a deep commitment to being a professional, joyful and purpose-driven presence in the community.”

In September, she did something that’s almost unheard of: She accepted an offer to become the artistic director of Performance Now, a solid, 24-year-old community theater that pretty much anchors the Lakewood Cultural Center with big, family-friendly musicals that often sell out their entire runs.

Without giving up the old job.

By year’s end, Van Oosbree had either directed or choreographed shows at Platte Valley, Performance Now, the new Ballyhoo events center in northwest Denver, the Aurora Fox, the PACE Center in Parker and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where her ongoing “Mary Poppins”plays through Dec. 28. She also worked in a guest stint with the Denver Center Theatre Company as the assistant director of a very high-profile “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Jeffrey Parker in Platte Valley Arts' 'Frankenstein,' directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography) — Jeffrey Parker in Platte Valley Arts’ ‘Frankenstein,’ directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography)

“What impresses me most, especially over the last couple of years, is how many genres Kelly has branched off into – and yet, she has found success in every one of them,” said actor Jeffrey Parker, her frequent leading man, this year in a visceral re-boot of “Frankenstein” in Brighton that gave literal voice to the Creature.

The range is kind of astonishing. The slate began with a “Fiddler on the Roof” that subtly but purposefully reminded the Performance Now audience that the characters they have loved for decades who populate the 1904 story were forcibly removed from disputed land we know of today as modern Ukraine. It reminded me of a similarly provocative move Van Oosbree made in 2023 when she moved her telling of “Man of LaMancha” from a medieval Spanish prison to a modern-day homeless encampment.

Joel Silverman in Performance Now's 'Fiddler on the Roof,' directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography) — Joel Silverman in Performance Now’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography)

Van Oosbree never wants her audience to completely leave the outside world outside. (Well, except maybe for “Mary Poppins.”)

The nod to Ukraine was subtle and likely went unnoticed by many in the audience. “But obviously that story has to do with people who are being oppressed because of who they were as opposed to just the land they were on,” said Van Oosbree, who says her “subtle tweaks” were meant “to pay homage to the continuous fight that the Ukrainian people happen to be dealing with right now. My hope was we just might be able to get people to recognize it even just a little bit.”

Her 2025 included an over-the-top, crowd-pleasing jukebox musical that pokes fun at big-hair 1980s nostalgia (“Rock of Ages”). “The Cottage” was a playwright’s stab at writing an old-school comedy of manners in the vein of Oscar Wilde. Her year ended with a remount of last year’s lightning-in-a-bottle hit “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” and (at the complete other end of the spectrum), her delightfully grand “Mary Poppins.”

In between were several titles for young audiences and even the soapy romantic musical adaptation of “‘The Bridges of Madison County.”

There’s no question Van Oosbree can live pretty comfortably in the skin of any kind of show. (She’s even got Shakespeare coming right up in the spring.)

The upshot of two boss jobs? It’s like she gets to live two creative lives at once. Performance Now has reliably delivered family favorites in Lakewood since 2001. Platte Valley gives Van Oosbree a chance to make her community more active participants in our communal world through her art.

The cast of Platte Valley Arts' 'The Cottage,' directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography) — The cast of Platte Valley Arts’ ‘The Cottage,’ directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography)

A powerful example of that commitment is coming up next month. “Hold These Truths,” a play by Jeanne Sakata, a drama based on the true story of Gordon Hirabayashi, a Japanese American who defied the odds – and the U.S. government – by challenging the injustice of Japanese American internment during World War II. It plays at the Brighton Armory from Jan. 30-Feb. 7.

In a year when already approved National Endowment for the Arts grants were widely being pulled out from under nonprofits’ noses, Van Oosbree managed to secure funding from an NEA initiative specifically targeting projects that shine a light on the history and legacy of Japanese Americans.

“That’s particularly relevant to the Brighton community, given its deep cultural and historical ties to that legacy,” said Van Oosbree. “In a time when civil liberties, immigration and racial justice remain at the forefront of the national dialogue, these narratives offer vital perspectives on resilience, identity and the power of individual conscience.”

The point, as always, for Van Oosbree: To spark meaningful conversations.

For all of that and more, Van Oosbree is today’s recipient of a 2025 True West Award, which is the Denver Gazette’s attempt to tell or re-tell 30 of the most interesting stories of the Colorado theater year. Parker heartily concurs with today’s choice.

The cast of Platte Valley Arts' 'The Bridges of Madison County,' directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography) — The cast of Platte Valley Arts’ ‘The Bridges of Madison County,’ directed by Kelly Van Oosbree. (RDG Photography)

“She’s not just my friend – she’s one of my heroes,” he said. “And she’s my favorite director to work with. She looks at story in a way that no one else I know does, which is this combination of actor insight, audience perception and directorial concept – all centered around whatever the true heart of the story is.

“She’s more than competent in stagecraft and the technical elements. And then on top of that, she’s also this killer choreographer. You just don’t see that every day.”

But it’s important not to reward volume for its own sake, as volume is rarely an accurate barometer of creative success. It just so happens, Van Oosbree batted to a very high average this theater season.

Still, I asked her if the pace she has set for herself these past few years is sustainable, especially now that she is the artistic leader of two companies separated by 30 miles both in literal geography and artistic mission. She pointed out that, unlike many creative leaders of nonprofit arts organizations, she was able to quit her old 9-to-5 job a few years back to focus fully on her family, and the business of making stories.

“I’m very lucky in that I have a very supportive family,” she said. “But also, I kind of just go like the Energizer Bunny. I don’t know if it is foolishness, but I think I still do a pretty good job of always being in the moment and being prepared.”

Most impressively, Parker said, “she leads by example by being the hardest-working person in the room.”

She’s quite fond, he added, of invoking a quote often attributed to Mary Poppins herself, Julie Andrews: “Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.”

Just watch her go.

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.

Kelly Van Oosbree at work. (RDG Photography)

Kelly Van Oosbree/2025

Directed and choreographed: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ (Performance Now Theatre Company); ‘Rock of Ages’ (Veritas Productions and Parker Arts); ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ (Give 5 Productions)
Directed: ‘The Cottage’ (Platte Valley); ‘Schoolhouse Rock Live’ (Aurora Fox); ‘Frankenstein’ (Platte Valley); ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ (Platte Valley); ‘The Tomato Plant Girl’ (Platte Valley); ‘Mary Poppins’ (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center)
Co-directed and choreographed: ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (Platte Valley Theatre Arts)
Assisted Directed: ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ (Denver Center Theatre Company)

Kelly Van Oosbree/Coming up

Directing ‘Mary Poppins’ for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center through Dec. 28, fac.coloradocollege.edu
Directing and choreographing ‘South Pacific’ for Performance Now from Jan. 9-25 at the Lakewood Cultural Center, performancenow.org
Directing the internment play ‘Hold These Truths’ for Platte Valley Theatre Arts from Jan. 30-Feb. 7 at the Brighton Armory, plattevalleytheatrearts.org
Directing ‘Into the Woods’ at the University of Denver’s Byron Theatre, Feb. 26-March 8
Directing ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ for Platte Valley Theatre Arts, May 8-16 at the Brighton Armory, plattevalleytheatrearts.org