Next year’s offerings will span the globe

At a time when safety is the norm in arts programming, the Denver Center Theatre Company has announced a 48th subscriber season that will be its most eclectic and unexpected in decades.

Dublin, London, Mexico, the Trail of Tears and an Irish bog? This season is (literally) all over the map.

The familiar begins with Shakespeare’s shipwreck comedy “The Tempest” and pretty much ends with Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of the classic thriller “Dial M for Murder.” The company’s annual homegrown Broadway musical will be the fated Irish-Czech folk romance “Once.”

The Denver Center’s commitment to telling stories from a variety of cultural perspectives will be very much in evidence by both Karen Zacarías’ “Destiny of Desire: A Telenovela Play with Music,” and a visiting production called “And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears.” That’s a traveling, one-actor piece written and performed by DeLanna Studi for Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts in North Carolina.

Denver audiences were introduced to DeLanna (a Cherokee performance artist, writer and activist) and her famous uncle Wes Studi (the first Native American to receive an Academy Award for acting) when they appeared together here in a developmental reading of a play called “Reclaiming One Star” at the company’s 2020 Colorado New Play Summit. That’s a week where the company commits its full developmental resources to four works in progress, culminating in public readings.

DeLanna Studi, Artistic Director Chris Coleman said, dreamed of one day tracing the footsteps of her ancestors along their path of forced relocation, and finding a way to share their tragic and triumphant legacy with audiences around the country.

Most every year, the Denver Center Theatre Company’s season announcement includes two world-premiere stagings of promising new scripts that it previously featured at its annual Colorado New Play Summit.

This year, Coleman surprised everyone by handing golden tickets to two unusual stories from the 2025 Summit.

One is an intentionally lower-cased play called “bogfriends,” written by the intentionally lower-cased jose sebastian alberdi. It’s the story of three couples from across time connected by a single Irish bog. From the official play description: “When something buried deep in the bog unexpectedly surfaces, these six souls are bound together by love, loss – and ancient peat. In ‘bogfriends,’ the question of whether we can live with the rot of the past becomes comically, achingly real.”

Then there is the tantalizing title: “How to Conquer America: A Mostly True History of Yogurt,” by David Myers. It’s accurate. The (mostly true) play is about the ambitious research assistant who created the ad campaign that transformed yogurt into a lucrative American phenomenon in 1975. Or, as the marketers say: “It is a heartfelt, dairy-filled take on the American Dream.”

Each year the company also stages a seasonal take on “A Christmas Carol,” which is only offered as a separate buy because it is always the most popular offering of any Denver Center theater year.

This past weekend, Coleman addressed all of the competing considerations that go into making a season when he spoke at a national conference of the College Fellows of the American Theatre at the Curtis Hotel:

“To see a season at the scale you could see at the Denver Center, you’d have to travel to Chicago or Houston or San Francisco,” Coleman said. “So it comes with the responsibility to really think about the course of three or four seasons: What kinds of experiences can we offer somebody who’s traveling here from Cheyenne, or Utah or Southern Colorado?

“I’m also really aware that 31% of Denver’s population is Latino – and primarily Chicano. So, that is always in my head. We have conversations with the Latino community, and the Black community. We are beginning conversations with Middle Eastern communities here. We’re always getting feedback from audience members about how much they are interested in engaging in a political conversation of the day – and how much are they interested in forgetting it. I honor both of those impulses, because I have them myself.”

Taken as a whole, Coleman believes he has crafted a season ”defined by artistry and beautifully crafted storytelling.”

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected].

Denver Center Theatre Company 2026-27 Subscription Season

• Sept. 11-Oct. 4: “Destiny of Desire: A Telenovela Play with Music,” By Karen Zacarías, directed by Marcela Lorca, Wolf Theatre
• Oct. 2-Nov. 1: “The Tempest,” by William Shakespeare, directed by Chris Coleman, Kilstrom Theatre
• Jan. 15-Feb. 21, 2027: “bogfriends,” by jose sebastian alberdi, directed by Joshua Kahan Brody, Singleton Theatre
•  Feb. 5-28, 2027: “How to Conquer America: A Mostly True History of Yogurt,” By David Myers, directed by Margot Bordelon, Kilstrom Theatre
• April 2-May 2, 2027: “Once,” by Enda Walsh, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, directed by Chris Coleman, Wolf Theatre
• April 16-May 23, 2027: “And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears,” by DeLanna Studi, directed by Corey Madden, Singleton Theatre
• April 30-May 30, 2027: “Dial M for Murder,” Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by Nancy Keystone, Kilstrom Theatre

Added Attractions

• Nov. 25-Dec. 27: “A Christmas Carol,” Wolf Theatre
• Feb. 20-21, 2027: Colorado New Play Summit