Now in its 22nd year, Boulder’s Imagination Makers Theater Company does something rare and wonderful for kids: It gives credibility to their own sweet, immature voices. Instead of force-feeding them drama created by adults who think they know what kids will like and understand, this troupe plucks its productions from…

Denver’s nomadic CityStageEnsemble could almost be counted among the city’s disenfranchised: After losing its permanent home a few years ago, the company founded by Dan Hiester and David Earl Jones went into hibernation. But now CityStage is back to pick up the pieces, with or without a venue. And if…

Eric Saperston certainly isn’t the first person to ever climb into a vintage VW bus with his dog to follow the Grateful Dead on tour. But the upshot of his travels, which began in 1993 and continued for seven amazing years, turned out to be a different story altogether –…

Faithful followers of Sex in the City must suspend their belief in return for the emotional paydirt: Though adorable Sarah Jessica Parker and her licentious single cohorts flounce their way through various escapades of the heart (and other body parts) each week, the comedy always seems to come to roost…

Growing up non-Mormon in Salt Lake City in the ’60s and ’70s, Denver artist Kirsten Easthope was not a social butterfly. Though her artistic talents gained her a modicum of popularity in school, she admits to having had few close friends. “You just didn’t belong, no matter how nice you…

Classically trained actor Joshua Kane must have sold his soul for his voice: It’s a booming, heart-stopping theatrical instrument, even over the phone from New York. And it’s not like Kane and Beelzebub are complete strangers. One of Kane’s one-man stage shows, Date With the Devil, recalls “the many voices…

Environmental sculptor Shan Wells grew up in southwestern Colorado, immersed in nature and the immediate landscape — which has become his artistic medium — all his life. It shows in the work: In Wells’s visual world, stones, leaves or flower parts might be arranged in patterns on the ground, sandstone…

It’s no wonder the home-improvement business is going like gangbusters: People seem to be digging in and staying home these days. So, of course, they want to improve their abodes, which are becoming less and less like crash pads all the time. But even when you do the work yourself,…

Andy Friedman is no wannabe musician. But he’s taken a common hidden ambition to a new level, with a freaky twist: The freelance New Yorker illustrator and cartoonist (under the pseudonym “Larry Hat”) wants to play the blues, but the way he does it is a bit unorthodox. Friedman’s $12…

It’s Saturday, September and sunny: my last chance this year to trot my sorry belongings out to sell in front of our Englewood house. Early in the game, a Spanish-speaking mom shops for her adorable, plump little niña with big brown eyes. She holds up a pricey velvet top spattered…

Stan Brakhage, a longtime Boulderite acknowledged as one of the great innovators of modern avant-garde cinema, recently retired from his respected berth at the University of Colorado. And even though he packed up his film cans last week and headed for Victoria, British Columbia, his legacy here won’t fade to…

They’re the size of baseball cards, but unlike that variety of hit-or-miss collectible, art trading cards are never assigned a monetary value. Within the size limitations of the cards, however, anything goes, and anyone can participate, either through the mail or at ATC centers, where folks get together in person…

Though there’s no sensible way to fathom the first anniversary of unfathomable events of September 11, we’ll somehow all have to remember how and why things changed in America one year ago. For most, the day will carry with it a weight of reflection that’s distanced from the buy-sell-or-trade mentality…

Most rock bands come and go. Others stick around for a decade or more, and a few, such as the Stones and the Who, seem to have been touring since the invention of fire. But no band has transcended the bounds of space and time in quite the same way…

How many times was Peter Sagal told he has the perfect radio voice before he became host of National Public Radio’s weekend news quiz game Wait Wait…Don¹t Tell Me!? Exactly none, he says, mellifluously. In fact, smooth-talker Sagal’s elegant vocal cords had never set foot, so to speak, in a…

Saint-makers tend to be as humble as their subject matter. “It’s a calling,” says Catherine Robles-Shaw of Nederland, a santera who makes her own historically correct gessoes and varnishes to finish delicate retablos, bultos and altars carved from native woods. “It’s the stuff of my life.” Littleton native Jose Raul…

You fly halfway around the world clutching a snapshot in your hand, with little more to go on than a full money belt and an infinite collection of worries and hopes: It’s becoming a common experience for the growing wave of American families opting for foreign adoptions in China. And…

When the back-to-back UFO Canine Frisbee World Cup Tournament and Quadruped Canine Frisbee Disc Competition get under way on the Arapahoe Community College campus this weekend, free-flying Fidos from across the nation will be going for the gold, competing in a sport that’s uncommonly joyful and a blast to watch,…

A library book is a book with history. Check one out: Unless it’s a rare pristine volume that’s just hit the shelves, you know it’s been around — smudged covers, annotated margins, coffee stains and all. But still, you have to wonder what line a library book must cross to…

They came, they pooped, they conquered. If you live along the Front Range, you’ll probably roll your eyes upon learning that the Canada goose was once hunted nearly to extinction. But it’s true: The honkers almost disappeared until their ranks were replenished in the ’60s through captive-breeding programs. In Colorado,…

Never mind setting foot in her shop: You know something’s up when you eyeball Pat Garcia’s business card, which announces “Pat Garcia, Crazy Person.” But once you do check out Blu Zebra, Garcia’s three-month-old garden of whimsy on South Broadway’s funky urban-retail strip, you realize it’s a divine sort of…

We may remember this as the summer without sparklers and Black Cats, but that doesn’t mean we can’t indulge in a few cheap thrills. The Boulder Film Alliance is coming to the rescue with firecrackers of another kind, all wrapped up as a summer fling with some of cinema’s darker…