Denver: The Play(wright)’s the Thing

Denver: The Play(wright)’s the Thing

At a jovial all-comers dinner Friday, Denver Theater Center’s artistic director Kent Thompson introduced all the playwrights in the throng — two whose plays have having full world premieres, four getting well rehearsed readings, several others under current commission, some alumni of previous CNPS’s, and more, and more. As they stood all around and among us, it was a dizzying array of talent, the present and future of the American theater. And later that night, when a group of them read short excerpts from current work at the “playwrights slam,” it struck me that the real drama wasn’t so much the intriguing, pungent, funny excerpts from work in progress so much as the personalities of the playwrights themselves, doing what we seldom see them do, invested in their work, performing it. The Denver Center Theater knows what theater is all about: the playwright.

— Chris Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette