David Earl Jones, co-founder of a long-gone local theater company called CityStage Ensemble and one of the most critically maligned yet fiercely defended playwrights in Denver theater annals, died Oct. 4 at Rose Medical Center after a long cardiac illness. He was 73.

His longtime collaborators and friends, CityStage co-founder Dan Hiester and actor Terry Burnsed, were at his side.

It takes a special kind of courage (or complete lack of caring) to put yourself and your ideology out there – even more so back in the robust era of local journalism when we had many dedicated, professional – and hard-hitting theater critics who didn’t always know quite what to make of Jones.

His last play ever reviewed in The Denver Post was called “Bad Money.” Sandra C. Dillard gave it zero stars out of four. (I was The Denver Post’s theater critic for 12 years – all after Jones’ time – and I never even knew zero stars was an option.)

“‘Bad Money’ may not be the worst play in the history of the world,” Dillard wrote, “but on opening night, it ran a close second.” She attacked it for its scattershot script, its direction, its nudity and its foul language.

“Jonesy,” as Burnsed called his friend, probably loved flustering that critic, he said. “He was hard-hitting, unflinching and outrageous. He reveled in being un-P.C.”

Westword’s Jim Lillie, perhaps the most feared and respected critic of his era, opened his review with this salvo: “As wrongheaded as it is well-intentioned, CityStage Ensemble’s world-premiere production of ‘Bad Money’ flounders from the very first scene and never gains much of a foothold thereafter.”

Artists who can evoke that kind of reaction from their audiences – critics or otherwise – are often simultaneously lionized as countercultural heroes by the rebel artists who stand loyally by their sides. Burnsed did, for three decades. He called Jones “one of Denver’s most provocative and celebrated creators of works for the stage” before largely withdrawing over the last 20 years.

“Jonesy will be remembered for his mordant sense of humor and his unflinching willingness to take on the difficult, the brutal, and the bizarre in his works,” Burnsed said. “U.S. combat troops in Vietnam, Mormon polygamist sects, serial killers, white supremacists, corruption and disenchantment in sports, fanaticism in U.S. history – all these were the stock-in-trade of this brash, outspoken, loud, thoroughly American writer.”

Jones was a charter member of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s first Playwright’s Unit under inaugural Artistic Director Edward Payson Call, who produced a staged reading of Jones’ play “White Kids.” That’s where he and Hiester banded together to create CityStage at Jack’s Theatre on Platte Street, where Jones’ plays were performed for 15 years.

But he was a major voice throughout the metro area, with productions at the Dairy Arts Center, the Touchstone, the Phoenix Theatre, Metro State University and the Changing Scene.

“David’s plays have always addressed the underbelly of the good side of American life,” Hiester told Lillie for Westword in 2000. One such work was a 1992 boxing play called “Sonny” about the tragic life of heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, who lived in Denver in the mid-1960s. It starred the intentionally lower-cased donnie l. betts, now most highly regarded as a film and stage director.

And local critics were just as often kind. Months after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, CityStage was presenting Jones’ terrorist play “Order,” which Dillard called “a timely, no-holds-barred examination of the kinds of men who join (supremacist) groups.”

In his final years, Jones was working on an unfinished play about the abolitionist John Brown.

“Certainly, his courage and honesty are qualities we could use a big dose of right now,” Burnsed said.

A memorial service will take place at a later date.

Shepard’s parents coming to Arvada Center

Today (Thursday) is the 25th anniversary of the day Matthew Shepard died in a Fort Collins hospital. His parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, will be speaking directly with Arvada Center audiences following the 2 p.m. performances of “The Laramie Project” on Oct. 28 and 29. The talks begin at 5 p.m. Admission is free.

After their son was killed, the Shepards founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation to create open dialogues with a diverse range of people to eradicate hate. For info, go to arvadacenter.org.

Only Coloradans in the building?

“Only Murders in the Building” is set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but the just-completed Season 3 had a distinct Colorado flavor to it. Jeremy Shamos, a 1988 graduate of Colorado Academy, played the downtrodden brother to murder victim Paul Rudd’s Ben Glenroy. Shamos is a Tony Award nominee who also played Craig Kettleman in the seminal TV series “Better Call Saul,” and appeared on Broadway in “Only Murderers” star Steve Martin’s play “Meteor Shower.”

Jason Veasey, a graduate of Coronado High School in Colorado Springs and the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, played Jonathan, understudy to Glenroy in the musical “Death Rattle Dazzle.”

And we can sort of claim Wesley Taylor, who took Denver by storm for three months starring in a sit-down play called “An Act of God” at the Galleria Theatre. He played Cliff, a producer of the musical with a hilarious but wholly too affectionate relationship with his mamma.

Briefly …

Former Colorado state senator and representative Penfield Tate III, also a two-time Denver mayoral candidate, has been named chair of History Colorado’s 13-member board. That makes him the first person of color to serve in that role in the organization’s 144-year history …

Production has begun on the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s “Coach Prime,” a documentary series that follows University of Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders. The Colorado Economic Development Commission approved a $500,000 Colorado Film Incentive for Season 2 back in March. The Colorado Office of Film, Television, and Media anticipates the economic impact from Season 2 could reach $9 million …

Phamaly, Denver’s venerable, disability-affirmative theater company, has announced that its big 2024 summer musical at the Denver Performing Arts Complex will be “A Chorus Line,” which will no doubt reveal new truths about the classic tale’s razor-thin line between perfection and utter failure …

Boulder’s Bluebird Music Festival (not to be confused with Denver’s Bluebird Theater) has announced that Jeff Tweedy of Wilco will join Langehorne Slim and a headliner to be announced next April 20-21 at Macky Auditorium. Info at bluebirdmusicfestival.org …

Su Teatro Managing Director Mica Garcia de Benavidez, daughter of longtime Artistic Director Tony Garcia, is directing her first mainstage production, “The Wolf at the Door,” opening tonight (Thursday) and running through Oct. 29.

Denver Center seeks volunteer ushers

And finally: Did you know the ushers who work at the Buell Theatre for concerts and national touring productions of Broadway musicals are paid, part-time employees of the city – but those who work the locally staged productions in the four theaters in the Bonfils Theatre Complex are volunteers?

The venerable (and nonprofit) DCPA Theatre Company just closed its first production of the 2023-24 season, and it finds itself short about 100 volunteers. Those who can commit to one shift every other week during the theater season not only get to see the shows for free but they qualify for certain discounts, like enrollment in education classes. Go to denvercenter.org to register.