It’s no secret that the performing arts have been on the rocks trying to bounce back from the pandemic shutdown. The year 2024 saw at least five Colorado theater companies go dead or dormant, and it ends with several more on the ropes. (On the bright side, nine foolish (I mean fearless) small startup groups entered the turbulent theater ecology.
) But what was true in 1600, 1800 and 2000 remains true today: The way for any theater company to stay relevant is to ...
stay relevant. While producers tend to get creatively cautious during times of retrenchment, several bold artistic troubadours forged on with meaningful plays that were challenging, original, illuminating, infuriating, or, in some cases, just plain fun. They each, in their ways, were high-impact.
I’m not saying “An Enemy of the People” was the “best” play of 2024 (that was the Denver Center’s “The Lehman Trilogy” by two continents and three centuries), but it was perhaps the play that made the highest impact. On me, anyway. No one wanted to see political theater in the run-up to the election.
Too much piling on to our real daily lives. Still, the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company's Mark Ragan smartly adapted Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece into an allegory for our times, and with just enough distance that it was both plain and palatable for us to fully see that what’s happening today has always been happening somewhere. 'People will eagerly embrace lies.
They will fall headlong in love with them – .