by Donald Margulies
Directed by Shane M. Grant

Brooklyn, New York City. Sarah is a photojournalist who's spent years documenting war zones—until a roadside bomb in Iraq nearly killed her. Now she's home, recovering in the loft she shares with James, her journalist boyfriend who left the war behind weeks before the blast. He's writing movie reviews now. She's climbing the walls. When their friend Richard stops by with his new girlfriend Mandy—younger, sunnier, cheerfully uncomplicated—it forces both couples to confront what they actually want from life. Can you build something ordinary after years of chasing the extraordinary? And what do you owe the world when your job is to witness its suffering? Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies's Tony-nominated play about love, ambition, trauma, and the cost of looking away.

Book by Austin Winsberg
Music & Lyrics by Alan Zachary & Michael Weiner
Directed by Heather Frost

A restaurant in New York City. Aaron is a buttoned-up banker who's never done the blind date thing. Casey is an artist who's done it way too many times. They have nothing in common—and about ninety minutes to figure out if that matters. As the evening unfolds in real time, they're not alone: meddling friends, judgmental parents, and a parade of exes crash the dinner table, springing to life from their imaginations to offer unsolicited advice, sing uncomfortable truths, and make everything worse. Can two people with completely different baggage find something worth unpacking together before the check arrives? A contemporary musical comedy about the terrifying, ridiculous, occasionally wonderful act of showing up for someone new.

Written by: Steven Dietz
Directed by: Rob Mess

Someone once told Becky Foster that when a woman says she wants a new car, what she really wants is a new life. Becky works at a dealership. Her husband Joe is steady and decent. Their adult son lives in the basement, diagnosing everyone with psychological disorders. It's fine. It's all fine. Then a grief-struck millionaire walks in, mistakes her for a widow, and offers her a way out. For reasons she can't quite explain—even to you, and she will be talking to you directly—Becky doesn't correct him. What follows is a double life, a pileup of lies, and a surprisingly tender question: is it ever too late to take a different road? A devious, warmhearted comedy about wanting more.

Written by: Diana Son
Directed by: M. Shane Grant

New York City, 1990s. Callie is a traffic reporter coasting through life in a cluttered apartment across from the park. Sara is a midwesterner who just moved to the Bronx to teach third grade—idealistic, focused, and everything Callie isn't. They meet because of a cat. They become friends. And then, slowly, they become something neither of them expected. Late one night in the West Village, they share their first kiss. What happens next changes everything. Diana Son's play unfolds out of order—before and after, falling in love and picking up the pieces—asking how we find the courage to become who we are, and what it costs when the world won't let us. Tender, funny, and devastating.

Original Works by Brad Rutledge & Scott Gibson
Directed by Brett Nickerson & Ian Gerber

These stories are Colorado theater—homegrown, bold, and built by the people who live here. Original work by local playwrights, performed and directed by local artists. New voices discovering their craft. Established writers trying bold ideas. Stories you won't see anywhere else.

This production is presented by the Front Range Playwrights Showcase.

by William Nicholson
Directed by Dan Schock

Oxford, 1950s. C.S. Lewis is a confirmed bachelor, a beloved professor, and the author of the Narnia books. He lectures on suffering with confident detachment—pain, he explains, is God's way of calling us to something greater. Then an American writer named Joy Gresham shows up. She's blunt, brilliant, and entirely unimpressed by his comfortable certainties. What begins as correspondence becomes friendship. Friendship becomes something more. And when Joy is diagnosed with cancer, everything Lewis thought he understood about faith, love, and loss is put to the test. William Nicholson's Tony-nominated play about the man who wrote about other worlds—and the woman who finally pulled him into this one.

by Brandon Thomas
Directed by Staci York

Oxford, 1892. Jack and Charley are undergraduates in love—with two young women who are leaving for Scotland tomorrow. They need to propose, but Victorian propriety demands a chaperone, and they can't possibly invite the girls to their rooms unchaperoned. Fortunately, Charley's wealthy aunt from Brazil is due to arrive any moment. Unfortunately, she doesn't. Fortunately, their friend Lord Fancourt Babberley happens to be nearby—in a dress, rehearsing for a college play. What follows is a runaway train of mistaken identity, romantic chaos, and one increasingly desperate man in a wig being pursued by a fortune-hunting uncle. The 1892 farce that shattered every long-run record in theater history, and still hasn't stopped being funny.

World Premiere
by Brian Dowling
Directed by Dan Schock

London, 1930s. The gaslight era is over, the Great Depression has settled in, and the legendary consulting detective of 221B Baker Street is long dead. But Dr. Watson left behind two daughters—Felicity and Charlotte—raised on stories of impossible cases and trained in the science of deduction. When a new criminal mastermind plunges the city into terror, the sisters must step out of their father's shadow and into an adventure of their own. Armed with sharp minds, sharper instincts, and methods inherited from the best, they'll prove that some legacies are meant to be carried forward. A new chapter in a very old story—and you'll see it here first.

by Patrick Hamilton
Directed by Dan Schock

Mayfair, London, 1929. Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo have just strangled a fellow Oxford student named Ronald Kentley—not for money, not for revenge, but for the thrill of proving they're clever enough to get away with it. They stuff the body in a wooden chest. Then they throw a dinner party. The guests include Ronald's unsuspecting father. The buffet is served on top of the chest. As the evening unfolds in nerve-shredding real time, one guest—a sharp-tongued poet named Rupert Cadell—begins to sense that something is terribly wrong. Inspired by the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, Hamilton's 1929 thriller is a cold-blooded game of cat and mouse where the killers hold all the cards—until they don't.

Written by: Ira Levin
Directed by: Rob Mess

Westport, Connecticut. Sidney Bruhl was once the king of Broadway thrillers—now he's a has-been with four consecutive flops and a dwindling bank account. Then a former student sends him a script so good, so perfectly constructed, that it's guaranteed to be a smash hit. Sidney's wife suggests collaboration. Sidney has another idea. What follows is a wicked game of cat and mouse—except it's never quite clear who's the cat. The twists keep twisting. The bodies may or may not stay dead. And everyone on stage might be writing the same play. The longest-running comedy-thriller in Broadway history, and every bit as devious as its reputation suggests.

by John Steinbeck
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith

California, the Great Depression. George Milton and Lennie Small are migrant ranch hands moving from job to job, carrying nothing but bedrolls and a shared dream: a little piece of land to call their own, a place where Lennie can tend rabbits and nobody tells them what to do. George is quick and clever. Lennie is gentle and strong—too strong for his own good, and too innocent to understand the trouble that follows him. When they land work on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, that dream finally seems within reach. But the world has a way of breaking the things it can't make room for. Steinbeck's devastating American classic about friendship, loneliness, and the cost of loving someone you can't protect.

Original Works by Merriman Wilde, Louis Irwin & Scott Gibson
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith, Brett Nickerson & Rob Mess

These stories are Colorado theater—homegrown, bold, and built by the people who live here. Original work by local playwrights, performed and directed by local artists. New voices discovering their craft. Established writers trying bold ideas. Stories you won't see anywhere else.

by David Crane & Larry Coen
Directed by M. Shane Grant

Set in the 1930s, Epic Proportions tells the story of two brothers, Benny and Phil, who go to the Arizona desert to be extras in the huge Biblical epic Exeunt Omnes. Things move very quickly in this riotous comedy and before you know it, Phil is directing the movie, and Benny is starring in it. To complicate matters further they both fall in love with Louise, the assistant director in charge of the extras. Along the way there are gladiator battles, the Ten Plagues and a cast of thousands portrayed by four other actors.

by Steven Dietz
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith

Scottie Ward is dying and wants one last adventure. Her daughter Beth is desperate for escape—any escape—before life passes her by completely. Her son Tim can't stop making the wrong choice at exactly the wrong moment. Tim's ex-girlfriend Claire is trying to learn how to be "present." Claire's ex-boyfriend Gary is running from everything. And two sisters named Rhonda and Bernadette keep almost crossing paths with all of them. We like to believe the universe brings people together for a reason—but what if connection is just luck, and we're missing each other by inches every single day? Warm, wry, and quietly heartbreaking.

by Lee Blessing
Directed by Veronica Straight-Lingo

E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y-N-A-R-Y. Charitable. It's the word that wins Echo the National Spelling Bee — and her favorite word, because charity is what these three generations of women so desperately need. Grandmother Dorothea, a willful eccentric who made her daughter Artie wear homemade wings, believing she could fly. Artie, who fled her mother's suffocating dreams and abandoned her own daughter. And Echo, the brilliant teenager caught between them. Blessing's luminous play about connection, forgiveness, and the terrifying courage it takes to become a family.

by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope & Jamie Wooten
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith

Four Southern women, four lives stuck in neutral. Randa's a workaholic who just lost her job and discovered she has no life. Dot's newly widowed and facing retirement alone. Marlafaye's a brassy Texas gal whose husband ran off with a twenty-three-year-old dental hygienist. And Jinx, the spunky self-appointed life coach, is so busy fixing everyone else she can't see she's the one most in need of help. Drawn together by fate and an impromptu happy hour, these ladies of a certain age bond over laughter, misadventure, and the occasional liquid refreshment. Raise a glass to this warm and hilarious reminder that it's never too late to make new old friends.

by Milan Stitt
Directed by Dan Schock

A priest sits in a jail cell in rural Michigan, accused of murdering the young nun who served at his parish. As Father Rivard awaits trial, the play moves between courtroom testimony and flashbacks that reveal the truth: two people bound by sacred vows, awakening to a forbidden love neither could suppress. Based on an actual 1911 case, Stitt's gripping drama ran nearly 400 performances on Broadway, weaving murder mystery, courtroom tension, and theological questioning into one devastating whole. The shocking climax will leave you wrestling with questions of faith, duty, and sacrifice long after the verdict.

by Oscar Wilde
Directed by Janine Ann Kehlenbach

Jack Worthing has invented a wayward brother named Ernest whose fictional troubles provide the perfect excuse to escape to London. Algernon Moncrieff has invented an invalid friend named Bunbury for similar purposes. When both men find themselves wooing women who insist they could only love someone named Ernest, the lies multiply at an alarming rate — complicated further by the formidable Lady Bracknell, a misplaced handbag, and a governess with a romantic imagination. Wilde's 1895 masterpiece is the most perfectly constructed comedy in the English language: effervescent, endlessly quotable, and wicked to its immaculately gloved fingertips.

by Outside Mullingar
Directed by Dan Schock

Anthony and Rosemary are neighbors on adjoining farms in rural Ireland, both pushing forty, both achingly alone. He's spent his whole life tending cattle, too painfully shy to reach for anything more. She's spent her whole life watching him through the window, determined to have him, watching the years slip away. When Anthony's father threatens to leave the farm to American cousins and an old land feud flares up between the families, Rosemary decides it's now or never. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Doubt comes a poetic, bittersweet romance — part Irish melancholy, part Moonstruck magic — about two eccentric souls fighting their way toward love.

by Laddy Sartin
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith

Mississippi, Freedom Summer 1964. Olivia, the Black cook at the Whitehouse Café, has shocked her small town by marching up the courthouse steps to register to vote. Now she's under attack from all sides — including Harlan, the café owner who's been like a son to her. When he accuses her of following outside agitators, Olivia does something unthinkable: she sits down at the counter where she's worked most of her life and asks to be served. Sartin's powerful drama forces everyone onstage — and off — to confront what they truly believe when belief has a cost.

by Joe DiPietro
Directed by Jim Carver

Nick is a single, Italian-American marketing executive from New Jersey who spends every Sunday having dinner with his four grandparents in Hoboken. Every. Single. Sunday. When he announces a big promotion that will relocate him to Seattle, the old folks are devastated — and immediately start scheming. Cue the guilt trips, the emotional blackmail, and an ambush blind date with a nice Irish nurse named Caitlin. DiPietro's warm-hearted comedy ran 800 performances Off-Broadway, and it's easy to see why: you'll laugh until you cry, then just keep crying.

Original Works by Nabih Saliba, Colette Mazunik & Oliver Gerland
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith, Charlie Lowery & Dan Schock

These stories are Colorado theater—homegrown, bold, and built by the people who live here. Original work by local playwrights, performed and directed by local artists. New voices discovering their craft. Established writers trying bold ideas. Stories you won't see anywhere else.

This production is presented by the Front Range Playwrights Showcase.

by Michael Hollinger
Directed by Kirsten Jorgensen Smith

Priseaux, France, 1250 A.D. The river flooded last week, nobody's heard of the wheelbarrow yet, and the local monastery's patron saint hasn't worked a miracle in thirteen years. Pilgrims have stopped coming, the coffers are empty, and a rival church now claims to have the real holy relics. Enter a larcenous one-eyed minstrel with a scandalous solution: dig up the local graveyard and sell the bones as saints. Hollinger's deliciously wicked farce asks the eternal question — can a little holy fraud serve a higher purpose? A dark comedy about the Dark Ages that proves corruption has never been so much fun.

by Gina Gionfriddo
Directed by Dan Schock

A newlywed couple plays matchmaker: wife's neurotic best friend, meet husband's strange new co-worker. What could go wrong? Everything, as it turns out. When the blind date takes a dark turn, the fallout forces everyone to confront uncomfortable questions about loyalty, class, and what we actually owe the damaged people who land on our doorstep. Is Becky a vulnerable soul in need of rescue — or something more dangerous? Gionfriddo's Pulitzer Prize finalist is ferociously funny and wickedly smart, a comedy of bad manners where the moral ground never stops shifting.

by Conor McPherson
Directed by Paul Wells

Dublin. Ireland. A man named John walks into a therapist's sparse office, terrified: he's seen the ghost of his wife, killed weeks earlier in a car crash. His new therapist Ian — a former priest who's abandoned the church, his faith, and the mother of his child — has demons of his own. Over the course of a year, their sessions become a gripping excavation of guilt, grief, and the unfinished business we carry with the dead. McPherson's Tony-nominated masterwork is quietly devastating, blending the natural and supernatural into something that will haunt you long after its heart-stopping final moment.

Original Works by Scott Gibson & Grant Swenson
Directed by Veronica Straight-Lingo & Paul Wells

These stories are Colorado theater—homegrown, bold, and built by the people who live here. Original work by local playwrights, performed and directed by local artists. New voices discovering their craft. Established writers trying bold ideas. Stories you won't see anywhere else.

This production is presented by the Front Range Playwrights Showcase.