2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 28

Here is a representative look at some of the many breakout performances on Colorado stages this year

Sure, it’s cheating to suggest that a man who has been directing and performing with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival for the past seven seasons had a “breakout” anything in the summer of 2025.

But c’mon: Kevin Rich both directed “The Tempest” and starred in “Richard II” – two massive stories opening a month apart.

And then there’s this: Rich is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Four days before he first stepped onto the stage as a self-indulgent (and ultimately tragic) buffoon, Rich ascended to a real-life throne: as chair of the university’s department of Theatre and Dance, which has partnered with the nation’s second-oldest Shakespeare Festival since 1958.

Rich “arrived” in 2025, even if he’s been here all along. (And by that I mean 2018.) He’s acted in many shows and directed seven festival offerings since.

“Kevin is a monster talent and a triple threat,” said Colorado Shakes Producing Artistic Director Tim Orr (also the director of “Richard II”). “He’s a hit-maker as a director, but also a superb actor. Every night, watching him do that slalom run of the deposition scene in Richard II was amazing.”

He speaks of the pivotal moment when the divinely appointed king formally surrenders his crown to his cousin, as well as all symbols of power and his very identity in a complicated act of self-humiliation.

“I don’t just admire his talent,” Orr said. “I’m deeply envious.”

Positing Rich as an “emerging” talent stands up to zero scrutiny, but no matter. He certainly stepped up in an unprecedented way in 2025, which makes him head of the class of this year’s class of 2025 True West Award breakouts – those fresh faces who announced themselves with their evident talents this year.

JYSTEN ATOM

‘The Legend of Anne Bonny,’ Shifted Lens/Two Cent Lion

I can’t resist saying it: Jysten (pronounced “Justin”) Atom went off like an A-bomb in 2025, performing in at least six local stage productions. The biggest in scope and garishness was this swashbuckling original story based on the world’s best-known female pirate.

“Working with him is a (bleeping) joy, man,” said his director, Lexie Lazear. “I just really adore him.”

Atom played a pirate captain cheekily named “Calico Jack” (take that, Johnny Depp) in the world premiere of Emy McGuire’s opus at the People’s Building in Aurora. 

“His nickname was Calico Jack because he always wore incredibly bright colors, even though most sea captains wore blue and black,” said Lazear. “He created the mythology of what a pirate captain is through his bravado and showmanship. But a man who would give up who he was and all of his life to go pirating at sea has definitely got to be a complicated person, and what I really liked about Jysten’s performance is that he brought all the layers – the comic relief and the bravado and the silliness. What Jysten gave us was both a dangerous and a ridiculous person.

“I just think he is an incredibly talented performer in part because of his obvious raw talent, but also in part due to his incredible listening skills. I just really dig him.”

Atom, originally from Toledo, Ohio, moved to Denver in 2017. His busy 2025 included playing Blake in “The Minutes” for Openstage & Company of Fort Collins, several shows for young audiences at Miners Alley Performing Arts Center in Golden, and three dramas for Firehouse Theater Company. He played Sam in ”Blues for an Alabama Sky,” Joshua in “Alabama Story,” and Derek/Zombie Butler in “Ripcord.”

JAHALIA COLEMAN

12, ‘A Case for Black Girls Setting Central Park on Fire,’ Local Theater Company

Fun thing for you to know: This wasn’t just Jahalia Coleman’s first leading role in a play.

“This was the first time she’s ever done any play,” said her director, Betty Hart. (Any non-musical play.)

The story, by Kori Alston, is about a young Black girl, named only ’12,’ who is running to explore pain through the playwright’s poetry. Which means: Coleman ran. For real. Almost from start to finish, which greatly increased the need for her to both have – and convey – physical stamina and emotional depth.

Seriously, there were three treadmills built into the stage floor, all to further the play’s central metaphor. I mean, I burned 6,000 calories just by watching. (I wish.)

To have some fun with all that running, Local conducted a contest asking audiences to guess how many steps Coleman might run throughout the full three-week “run” of the show. The total came to 74,120 – that’s more than 44 miles over 13 performances.

Coleman’s challenge, Hart said, was playing a character who is immersed in trauma but finding a way to overcome at the end. It’s a hero’s journey.

“What made Jahalia so winning in the role was her genuine love for Kori Alston’s gorgeous poetry, her willingness to be vulnerable, and the absolute delight that she had in working with everyone in this show,” Hart said. 

“She just put in everything she had in it, her whole heart, because she thought this story was worth telling. And she wanted to honor the Black girls and women who have experienced trauma. I think that’s what allowed people to go on the journey with her.”

MATTHEW COMBS

Jim Baxter, Perfect Arrangement, Firehouse Theater

Charming young actor Matthew Combs blew into town from Tennessee in 2024, and he has been leaving good vibes and positive reviews in his wake ever since.

Combs has been testing boundaries from his very first local role in Vintage Theatre’s 2024 “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” which will go into the archives as the production that introduced both Combs and castmate Clark Destin Jones to Denver theater audiences. (Jones has been on a rocket ship ever since, recently reprising his breakout role as Hedwig at Ballyhoo Table & Stage.)

Combs has been blurring distinctions between gender and sexuality at every turn. His most consequential area role so far came in June, when he played Jim Baxter in Firehouse Theater’s highly impactful staging of a 2015 Off-Broadway play called “Perfect Arrangement,” by Topher Payne.

The deceptively simple premise: Two young gay couples are posing as straight in the 1950s – but two of the four are U.S. State Department employees now tasked with publicly identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. Jim is a charming high-school teacher who has been maintaining the facade of a heterosexual marriage to the woman working for the government, while his true romantic partner is her male co-worker. Nearly 80 years later, said director Troy Lakey, it all feels so depressingly current.

“I mean, it’s not a history play anymore,” Lakey said. “People are having to hide their true authentic selves right now to protect themselves from what is happening in the government.”

Combs began the year in the ensemble of Vintage’s “Guys & Dolls,” and he just about walked away with Miners Alley Performing Arts’ road-trip comedy “Diva Royale” as a fearless Celine Dion impersonator. Ironically, the versatile Combs is also a boy-next-door leading man who right now is actually making George Bailey seem like not quite such a Christmas Eve jerk in that same company’s popular seasonal offering of “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” (losing today). Next up will be “9 to 5, the Musical” back at Vintage, opening Feb. 20.

Lakey gets why he’s so in demand.

“Everyone wants to work with Matt because every single time, he gives his 100% whole heart,” he said. “He is willing to be extremely vulnerable. He’s not scared to explore things, or to ask for genuine feedback. And he really connects with his fellow cast members.”

JAZZ MUELLER

Jimmy Ray Dobbs, ‘Bright Star,’ Candlelight Dinner Playhouse

A year ago, Jazz Mueller was a fresh-faced kid trying to come off as a menacing Russian soldier breaking up a wedding by tearing open a pillow in “Fiddler on the Roof.” (It was more adorable than frightening.)

Look at him now.

Mueller came into his own this year – over and over again, starting with his all-grown-up turn as Jimmy Ray Dobbs in the Steve Martin musical “Bright Star” at the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown.

Now, this is Meta: In rehearsal, when Mueller first sang “Heartbreaker” – a poignant ballad where Jimmy Ray lets out all his despair and regret and guilt over losing both his lady love and his child, Mueller did, in fact, break hearts. Just ask his director, Steve Wilson.

“It was just extraordinary,” Wilson said. “I think it’s the first time I ever cried when a male ingenue sang a solo. But that’s Jazz. He’s just an extraordinary young talent and a really lovely, warm, gentle, gentlemanly guy. And a really quality person.”

It was a whirlwind year for Mueller, who hails from Niwot High in Longmont, capped by his starring turn as the closeted star athlete in Bright Heart Stages’ mega-staging of the intentionally lower-cased “bare: a pop opera” at the Elitch Theatre. He also played Viigand in Bright Heart’s “Chess,” Dimity in Candlelight’s “Anastasia” and ihe s presently in the company of the Arvada Center’s record-breaking “Frozen.”

ANDY SERACUSE

Guy, ‘Once,’ Littleton Town Hall Arts Center

Andy Seracuse pulled off something pretty spectacular in 2025 by starring in two very different pop musicals at the Town Hall Arts Center, both requiring him to sing, act and play live guitar throughout both performances. He was love-struck Guy in Town Hall’s soaring ‘Once,’ the popular Irish folk-rock musical, followed by a fun titular run turn in “The Buddy Holly Story,” also at Town Hall.

Seracuse is one interesting cat.

“Andy is a wildly gifted actor, singer and musician,” said his director and choreographer, Carrie Colton. “He’s a total team player and an absolute workaholic in the best of ways.”

Seracuse is the full package as an actor-musician, she said, “in that he analyzes his music as deeply as he analyzes his text, and that really allows him to be a phenomenal collaborator with literally everyone on the team. He’s always prepared. Always happy to help and just as professional as they come. He deeply cared about the character and the show as a whole.”

Seracuse has been performing theater since his first role as a kiddie Sky Masterson in “Guys and Dolls Jr.” He’s now a founding member of a creative new company called The Third Side Theatre, which collectively writes and develops its own original plays and musicals, often employing puppetry and other old-school stage magic. Syracuse was the old man in the whimsical 2025 invention “The Old Man and the Old Moon.”

He often performs with his musician wife, Alex, who was a member of the “Once” ensemble, playing woodwinds. He also plays with his soul-pop band Hand Turkey – and if that name doesn’t pique your Spotify-listening interest, I don’t know what will. The band plays live Jan. 23 at the Oriental Theater.

JESSICA SOTWICK

Adelaide, ‘Guys and Dolls,’ Vintage Theatre

You may have seen “Guys & Dolls” before – and if you have, you probably think you have the character of Adelaide down: The adorably long-suffering showgirl fiancée who has literally made herself sick waiting out a 14-year engagement to degenerate gambler Nathan Detroit.

But Littleton’s Jessica Sotwick threw away the playbook and presented us with an Adelaide you’ve never seen before. Here, the ditzy facade is exactly that – a cover. Sotwick reveals a woman with a lot more going on upstairs in her endlessly original iteration.

“What was remarkable about Jess’ interpretation is that she was strong, she was firm, and there was no apologizing for Adelaide or her behavior,” said her director, Carter Edward Smith. “And her Adelaide was (bleeping) smart as hell.

“In our interpretation of ‘Guys and Dolls,’ the women are brilliant, and they’re running the show. I didn’t believe Jess’ Adelaide really needed Nathan for a second. I feel like she was really pulling the strings the whole time.”

Sotwick also showed her range this year. She was a designated understudy for a Sasquatch Productions staging of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” in Parker last month. One day, she was called on to play, of all people, the lugubrious foot-speller William Barfeé!

ESSENCE ANISA TYLER

Billie Holiday, ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,’ Arvada Center

Any audience member who might have thought they were in for a night of smooth blues was quickly disabused of that notion when an astonishing new-to-Denver actor named Essence Anisa Tyler blew into Arvada to perform this soul-stirring and gut-scraping cabaret play that shows a drug-ravaged Billie Holiday in the final days of her life.

Tyler made it riveting from first note to last. Here’s how director Christopher Page-Sanders describes it: 

“I found myself consistently in awe of Essence, both in the rehearsal room and in performance — enthralled by her courage, her ferocity and her remarkable ability to transform and uncover the universal truths at the heart of Eleanora ‘Billie Holiday’ Fagan’s story.”

And now, a tale that bears repeating: I now have a new all-time favorite overheard audience theatergoing moment: Leaving the Arvada Center, the lady next to me tells her friend: “I think that actor was drinking real booze – because she was clearly drunk.”

Put that on your resume, Essence (who was not drinking real booze, even if her character was chugging it like Gatorade after a marathon). She was just that good as she allowed us to witness a wasted treasure evaporate before our eyes.

It was gritty. It was unsparing. It was elegant. And it sounded oh so good.

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.

More True West Awards coverage

• 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

• Day 15: A double play for playwright Luke Sorge

• Day 16: ‘Legally Blonde’ at the Air Force Academy? Elle, yes!

• Day 17: Kelly Van Oosbree is the cat in the hats

• Day 18: Phamaly presents a ‘Pericles’ for the neurodivergent

• Day 19: Justine Lupe and Coloradans on the national stage

• Day 20: Immersive Theatre after the end of Off-Center

• Day 21: Matt Radcliffe and theater as therapy for trauma

• Day 22: Pure ‘Follies’ at Vintage Theatre

• Day 23: The play is the everything

• Day 24: ‘Assassins,’ Frozen’ lead list of impact musicals

• Day 25: Unsung heroes of the invisible arts

• Day 26: Can tiny Creede lead the country out of the divide?

• Day 27: All in the Sandvold/Harmon Pardee family