2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 27

Daughter of powerhouse parents Erik Sandvold and Martha Harmon Pardee making a name for herself at Curious Theatre

As a seasoned Denver stage veteran, Martha Harmon Pardee is objective enough to say of her ex (ish)-husband’s performance in Curious Theatre’s “Eureka Day”: “He smashed it. I was screaming with laughter.”

Erik Sandvold played Don, a mild-mannered and perpetually calm administrator of a private boarding school who prioritizes consensus and harmony above all else – until a mumps outbreak turns his school’s absurdly liberal parents into feral beasts.

Just one thing.

“I made a joke,” Harmon Pardee continued. “I said to Erik: ‘You’re not allowed to get any acting awards for that performance, because you were just being you on stage.’ He IS that character.”

Well, this is awkward. Because here we are honoring Martha Harmon Pardee, Erik Sandvold and their 27-year-old daughter, Tuuli Sandvold, with today’s 2025 True West Award for their separate knockout performances in three very different area stage productions this year.

Harmon Pardee played the principled hero of Kenneth Jones’ play “Alabama Story” for the Firehouse Theater Company.

Emily Wheelock Reed was the determined State Librarian of Alabama who fiercely defended a 1958 children’s book called “The Rabbit’s Wedding” that depicted a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit – which had apoplectic (racist) politicians and everyday (racist) citizens of Montgomery alike calling for the book to be burned.

Sandvold, a longtime member of the Curious Theatre Company acting ensemble, walked away with “Eureka Day,” Jonathan Spector’s savagely satirical takedown of political correctness and wokeness.

The wildcat wild-card of 2025 was their daughter, whom I would be introducing to you as ‘Hellcat Heli” if she still went by her given first name. Instead, she goes by “Tuuli,” which is derived from her middle name: Tuulikki. “It means ‘Windsprite’ in Finnish, which … hello?’” her mother said. “A high wind could take her right off.”

Tuuli is a fearless Los Angeles-based actor who came home this fall to star in a tense, noirish two-actor drama called “Job” at her father’s Curious Theatre Company. She played Jane, a high- (high!)-strung Gen Z’er who has arrived at a therapist’s office for some mandatory mental-health counseling after having had a very public and very viral breakdown at her job for a big, unnamed tech company (let’s just say Google). And … she’s brought a gun. This is a dangerous generational play that promises to leave no button unpushed.

“I saw it three times and, yeah, I thought she was (bleeping) amazing,” proud mama said. “She was always absolutely in the moment, and I thought her chemistry with (castmate) Michael Morgan was ridiculous. I mean, I was gobsmacked.”

Her daughter is also “such a weirdo,” she added with all affection, “because she didn’t even tell me she was auditioning. Needless to say, I was thrilled because it meant she was going to be home for a long time.”

Director Josh Hartwell wasn’t completely sure about casting her as Jane at first, “but only because she was going to be our only virtual audition,” he said. “And she was our last scheduled audition in a day filled with wonderful actresses. But Tuuli nailed the part from her very first line, and I immediately didn’t care that I was watching her audition onscreen. She could not have been more delightful to work with.” 

Marriage with a modern twist

Sandvold and Harmon Pardee don’t have a modern marriage so much as a realistic one, given the economic realities of trying to live in Denver in 2025.

They wed in 1993, which now puts them at 32 years of marriage. The thing is, they broke up in 2014, but never got a divorce. Nearly 12 years later, they still live on different floors of the same house they shared for the 20 years they were together because – well, perhaps you know how expensive it might be for a family to maintain separate households in a city like Denver.

“Well, nothing has ever really run normally in our household,” said Harmon Pardee. “I mean, it’s weird, but it’s not weird. It’s practical in terms of money. We coexist just fine. Do I wish it were different? Absolutely. But it’s the only option right now, so it’s OK.”

They have two adult daughters, Adelaide and Tuuli. All four work in the arts. Adelaide is the faculty liaison for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s YOLA – the Young Orchestra of L.A. Erik is  basically a full-time actor. Martha is a full-time administrator at Wellshire Presbyterian Church and teaches at night, so she takes acting jobs as her schedule allows – which isn’t often. They are both longtime narrators for Talking Book Publishers Inc., a service for the blind. Pardee is one of the most-recorded narrators in the country, with more than 3,000 fiction and nonfiction books to her name. 

“Erik is the one who works the most,” she said, with recent credits including a delicious turn this year as the foul-mouthed, heroin-snorting Grandpa in the Aurora Fox’s “Little Miss Sunshine.” He also regularly shows up in a variety of locally produced TV commercials. “I just don’t have the freedom to do as much,” said Harmon Pardee, whose last stage appearance was two years ago in the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s “Coal Country.”

But she found it impossible to say no when local director Melissa Lucero McCarl came to her with “Alabama Story.”

“It’s always great to be able to work on something that’s meaningful and horribly timely,” she said. Horribly, “because we are going backward. We are going backward in terms of all of the civil and societal and bodily autonomy rights we thought we had. There’s censorship. There’s banned books. There’s all that right now. Who would have thunk it?”

There was never much doubt Tuuli was going to follow her parents onto the stage. “From the time she was a tiny child, Tuuli was the family clown,” Harmon Pardee said. “I mean, she would just do hilarious stuff all the time.”

When she was 7 or 8, she auditioned to play Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol” at the Aurora Fox. “She wanted that role so bad that when she went to the audition, she wrote down: ‘I will cut my hair to play Tiny Tim.’ So there was that degree of commitment already.”

As a sophomore at Denver East High School, Tuuli was the captain of the speech and debate team, and she won an individual state championship in drama. So, the dye was cast.

Then it was off to Northwestern University in Chicago, where both parents attended, but not at the same time. They actually met in 1991 at the home of Frank Georgianna, who was conducting auditions for a play called “The Film Society” for the Boulder Repertory Company.

“It turns out, Tuuli had three of my same professors at Northwestern, which was crazy, and her acting teacher had worked with Erik at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival,” Harmon Pardee said.

Tuuli graduated summa cum laude (with highest honors) in the saddest of places – ”our living room,” her mother said, “because it was 2020.”

The best part about growing up Sandvold? Says Pardee: “Our children were always around really interesting, fun adults who are creatively charged people.”

But, one thing Harmon Pardee stipulated:

“Tuuli has never asked me for any advice or guidance as an actress,” she said. “On the contrary, she was always very protective of her process. Her success is due solely to her own abilities, regardless of having two actor parents.”

Tuuli has been living of late with Adelaide in Los Angeles. I only knew Adelaide as Addie growing up, so I asked Harmon Pardee if that’s Adelaide as in the character from “Guys & Dolls.” I meant only to clarify the spelling, but Harmon Pardee quipped: “No, John, I did not name my daughter after a hooker.”

Sandvold and Harmon Pardee both have individual acting resumes that go on for days. But they only rarely intersected simply because the basic parental strategy for actors is that when one works, the other does dinner and bedtime.  One exception was in 2010 when they were both cast in a bittersweet play called “Up” at Curious. It’s about a self-absorbed dreamer who has been blessed with a family – and yet, it’s not enough.

Their many separate career pinnacles would have to include Pardee’s snarling portrayal of Martha in Paragon’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and Sandvold’s role as a wartime German transvestite in Curious’ one-man tour-de- force, “I Am My Own Wife.” He’s also frequently worked at the local mountaintop, aka the Denver Center Theatre Company.

Harmon Pardee has, in recent years, taken on real-life pillars Sandra Day O’Connor and Texas Gov. Ann Richards. Firehouse Theater Company producer Helen Hand hopes having an actor of Harmon Pardee’s caliber and experience will continue to elevate Firehouse’s overall game. In return, Harmon Pardee offered: It’s possible that Helen Hand is the loveliest person on the planet.”

Meanwhile, I figure I’ve seen Sandvold perform in, I don’t know … 50 plays over the years? Give or take, that’s what? 300 scenes?

But this year, “Eureka Day,” Scene 3, ranks No. 1. “The online scene,” as it is known, delivers a shockingly funny comedic sequence featuring a livestreamed parental forum that devolves into total hilarious chaos. It’s a key scene in the play that demonstrates the full, “Lord of the Flies” breakdown of civil discourse online among otherwise presumably civil and thoughtful people. Sandvold’s comic timing, in concert with real-time projections from Topher Blair and Wayne Breyer, made it an instant classic.

“Eureka Day,” like “The Minutes” before it, was Curious’ emphatic answer to those who say live theater is the exclusive playground of progressive ideologies. Because this play, and this scene in particular, savagely mock a liberal leadership style that is so focused on inclusivity and consensus-building that it becomes paralyzed in the face of genuine crisis. Sandvold was, as his ex (ish)-wife says, “Smashing.”

‘Iiiiiii am feeling like this format is not facilitating us all bringing our best selves to this conversation.” – Don, ‘Eureka Day’

The key to a successful modern life in the Sandvold-Harmon Pardee household, she said, is to set strong and pragmatic guidelines and boundaries. No. 1: “Don’t be ugly about anything,” she said.

“It’s not like we hang out. We don’t eat dinner together. We just both live in the same house and sometimes there’s some crossover colonoscopies, for instance, because you can’t drive yourself home.”

Judging by the humans they have produced, it’s working.

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?