Littleton’s Joshua Bess is on the kind of career trajectory that would have jetted most rising local actors out of Colorado “ages” ago. (It’s a pun. Wait for it.)

The 2012 Columbine High grad recently played Roger in the 20th anniversary touring production of “Rent,” and both Jesus and Judas in different major stagings of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” On May 1, Bess made his network television debut in an episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” called “Shock Collar.” (For you Peacock streamers, that’s Season 26, Episode 20.)

Next, he’ll play the suicidal enigma Connor Murphy in the Muny Theatre’s upcoming staging of “Dear Evan Hansen,” which is a seriously big deal. The Muny is about to open its 107th season in St. Louis and first since winning the Tony Awards’ annual regional theater award. The thing about the Muny is that it’s an outdoor summer theater company that can accommodate 11,000 people every night. That’s bigger than Red Rocks.

But that is so next month. (Ish. July 28-Aug. 3.)

For the next two weekends, Bess is back in his home state playing bad-boy playboy Stacee Jaxx in the nearly new Veritas Productions’ big-buzz (and stupid fun) staging of “Rock of Ages” at the PACE Center in Parker. (Yes, “Ages.” That was the longest wait for a pun payoff in written history.)

The good news for theatergoers: The stage musical is better than the Tom Cruise movie. (Trust me.) The bad news: Bess is ghosting the show after July 13 for St. Louis. (It runs through July 20.) But unlike the foxy dirtbag he plays in the musical who dumps doe-eyed Sherrie from the classic Steve Perry song (and gets her fired), all involved with “Rock of Ages” are fully apprised and supportive. The best news, Bess said: His final-week replacement, Logan Traver, “is Broadway-caliber – the whole cast is,” he says.  

“Rock of Ages” is a “so-dumb-its clever” jukebox musical parody that threads classic rock songs from the 1980s into a deliciously inane plot about the gentrification of Hollywood Boulevard. The score features songs from Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi and more, all delivered with sass and a wink toward wit and tolerance.

This is a show, Bess said, for people who think they hate live theater. Because the people who typically wouldn’t be caught dead at most musicals are the very same people who come to “Rock of Ages” in leather, spikes and aerosol-propulsed hair. The ones who will sing along loud and without shame. Who will clap, sway and spontaneously get up and dance. And if you know what’s good for you – you will, too.

“You will no doubt have an amazing time,” Bess said. “It has a lot of heart and hilarious jokes. The performances are funny, and the voices are just incredible.”

Still, I had to ask. Bess is in national demand. He doesn’t need to be cutting it so close with his gig commitments by performing in a (very good) locally staged musical in Parker. So, why is he doing this?

The answer is simple: Kelly Van Oosbree. His multiple award-winning director. She owns him.

Van Oosbree took possession of the title on Bess in 2012 when he was a senior at Columbine. That’s when she cast him in his first role outside of a school production, and she did not start him off small. She picked him to play rebel Ren McCormack (the Kevin Bacon role) in Performance Now’s “Footloose.” Twelve years later, this “Rent”-boy’s rent just came due.

“The main reason I took the role was Kelly,” Bess confessed with a laugh. “She’s probably my favorite director of all time. I owe her everything. Now it’s just one of those things that when Kelly asks you to be in a show, you say yes. You don’t say no to that.”

(“Motorin.’ What’s your price for flight?”)

Bess expected Van Oosbree to ask him to play Drew, the sweet but even dumber than a box of rocks love interest to Sherrie. “But when she approached me about playing Stacee, I was over the moon because that’s the part I’ve always wanted to play,” Bess said, “and it’s so different from anything I’ve ever done before.”

Seconded. Jesus, Stacee Jaxx is not.

It is not lost on Bess that this incredible roll he has been on of late began after being hit with the worst setback of his life: The death of his mother, Laura, in February. After taking a break from auditioning, he’s been on the receiving end of one blessing after another. He’s taken none of them for granted. And he’s not at all unsure of who’s really pulling the strings.

“After my mom’s passing, the first audition I finally did was for ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’” he said. “I remember feeling like it was just a bad audition. I wasn’t even called back for it. So when my agents called and told me that I had booked the role, just from that one tape, I was like, ‘No way.’ That’s unheard of. And so it felt very divine.”

Even if Stacee Jaxx is not the kind of boy Laura Bess raised her son to be, “she’d be so stoked about this, because she’s my biggest fan, no matter what,” Bess said. “She was just proud to see her son up there on that stage, and she would be in the front row at any show that I was doing.”

It pains Bess that his mom will not see him in “Rock of Ages” or “Dear Evan Hansen.” But a friend gave him another way of looking at things.

“He was like, ‘Well, in a way, now she has a front-row seat to every performance,’” he said. “So it really does feel that way, and I definitely feel her presence there.”

More Colorado representation

Longtime film and TV star John Carroll Lynch, a graduate of Regis Jesuit High School, is prominently featured in the trailer for “Sorry, Baby,” the highly anticipated feature-film debut for writer, director and star Eva Victor. The tagline sounds ominous enough: “Something bad happened to Agnes.” But it appears from the trailer that whatever that was, Lynch didn’t do it (for once.) The first three random reviews I pulled up hail the film as “a diamond of a screenplay,” “a tremendous artistic triumph on the healing power of friendship,” and “an utterly unique cinematic experience.” And you never know. Maybe Lucas Hedges did it …

When the credits roll for Stephen King’s thoughtful, genre-busting film “The Life of Chuck,” that’s Boulder’s own Gregory Alan Isakov singing “The Parting Glass,” which makes for just the perfect aural nightcap …

Kirk Montgomery, a beloved entertainment anchor at KUSA Channel 9 from 2001-14, has been named the new morning and noon anchor at WINS-TV in Lansing, Mich. …

Dave Logan, the esteemed successor to the legendary Bob Martin and then Larry Zimmer as KOA Radio’s “Voice of the Broncos,” just celebrated his 35th year at 850 AM. A phenomenal achievement in this rotating-door world of ours.

And, finally: Just for fun

 It remains oh-so-cool that New Jersey-born actor Tawny Cypress, who plays Taissa on Showtime’s trippy supernatural mystery TV series “Yellowjackets,” moved to Conifer in 2022, joining her sister about 30 miles southwest of Denver. “Oh, my God, how could you not?” she told me at the time. “The air, the scenery. I live in the mountains. I can’t get enough of it. I never want to leave.”

She has not. In fact, last weekend, she was joined in Conifer by visiting “Yellowjackets” co-star Jasmin Savoy Brown, who plays the teen version of Taissa. Cypress posted a pic of the two on Instagram with the caption: “Look who detoured to my ranch on her way across the country? … And she got to kiss an alpaca!”