Denver good guy Gabriel Ebert is not the villain | Arts & Entertainment

Lakewood-raised actor Gabriel Ebert and celebrated New York director Danya Taymor just accomplished something no romantic couple had pulled off in 66 years. They both earned Tony Award nominations for their work on the same Broadway production. The last to do it were none other than Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, for “Redhead” in 1959.

“That means I’m the Gwen Verdon in the equation, and I will take that,” said Ebert, “because Danya is certainly the Bob Fosse.”

Ebert, a 2005 graduate of Denver School of the Arts, is a big part of the zeitgeist new play of 2025: Kimberly Belflower’s teen-centered “John Proctor is the Villain,” which takes its title from the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s canonical American classic “The Crucible” and gives it – and the Salem witch trials – a fresh sweep of the broomstick, so to speak. The director is Taymor, who is both Ebert’s wife and the niece of legendary “The Lion King” creator Julie Taymor.

“Yes, I did marry into a theater-royalty family,” Ebert said, “but sort of in a tangential way.”  

The cool thing is, all three have Tony Awards – just not from Sunday night. Ebert was but 25 years old when he won for his 2013 supporting performance as Mr. Wormwood in “Matilda the Musical.” His wife, who has been named Broadway’s “teenage whisperer” by the New York Times, won for directing last year’s runaway best musical “The Outsiders.” Aunt Julie won a deuce for “The Lion King” among its six wins in 1997.

Not winning on Sunday, Ebert discovered, is a far cry from losing.

“Theater is not a competitive sport, and yet, all of a sudden, when the Tonys come around, you do start to think in that way,” he said. “Of course, the true honor is just to be invited to that party.”

Being back at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday for the first time in 12 years, Ebert said, felt a lot more special this time. “I definitely felt all of the support from back home,” he said. “And I was sitting near Audra McDonald and George Clooney and all these other incredible luminaries who also did not win. That’s a part of the game.”

Back in 2013, when he did win, “it was such a shock,” he said. “I was so young, and because I grew up without a television, we didn’t watch the Tony Awards. So, when they said my name, I just got up and made my speech and went away. I didn’t realize how hard the road back would be and how precious it actually was that I got to experience that – and that I got to win.”

Wait, let’s go back for a sec. No TV? What, did you grow up in a yurt?

“No, I did not grow up in a yurt,” Ebert said with a wistful laugh. “We were tucked back in a little nook in the faraway rural town of Lakewood, Colorado. I grew up with well water and a wood stove. That’s how we heated the house. My parents just didn’t want a television in the house.

“We had one until I was about 4 or 5, and I think they were concerned with how much TV we were watching, so they took it away. My brother (Jesse) and I were mad for a while, and now I can’t tell you how grateful I am. When I get on the subway, every single person has their head down looking at their phone. Now, I think, to have been given the gift of growing up without a television was magical. I mean, I played a lot of sports. I did a lot of theater. I sang in the Colorado Children’s Chorale for years.

“I really think that it fostered a spirit of curiosity in me and it made me want to get out of the house rather than stay in it. I think it was brave of my parents. I can’t imagine being bold enough to do that myself.”

Those parents are Barry and Stephanie Ebert. He’s a minister and youth director at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood. And he’s a singer-songwriter who taught the boys how to sing harmony. Barry teaches a parenting workshop at the church, which he opens by saying, “If you’re here today looking for a way to control your child, you need to ask for a refund.”

Barry raised his sons “to become independent and think for themselves,” in his words, and today, he considers them his best friends. Jesse is living the life he always wanted as the food and beverage manager at the Winter Park ski resort. Gabe already has appeared in eight Broadway productions and has many small-screen credits including “The Mandalorian,” “Dickinson” and, at present, “Dope Thief.”

The crucible of the thing

“John Proctor Is the Villain,” which runs through at least Aug. 31 in New York, hits the Ebert men in their hearts. The play takes place in a high-school classroom in a one-stoplight town in 2018 rural Georgia. Ebert plays Carter Smith, a charismatic young English teacher who is eager to dive into “The Crucible” (which was written to be analogous to the Salem witch trials), as a way for his students to explore the concurrent rise of the #MeToo movement.

Smith’s female students see Proctor as a hypocrite who had a sexual relationship outside of his marriage with 16-year-old servant girl named Abigail – and then vilified her as an expendable whore. By focusing more on Proctor’s marital sins than his noble refusal to testify falsely against others, “Belflower is giving Proctor a #MeToo reckoning with a three-century reach,” one reviewer wrote. Ebert is down with that.

“We have never really looked at ‘The Crucible’ through Abigail’s eyes,” he said. “I think that’s what Kimberly is brave enough to do in this play. She realized that if a woman is strong enough to go into a court and give her side of the story, she is so often discounted and called a whore.

“From the beginning of the #MeToo movement, these men have said, ‘This is a witch hunt.’ Our president loves to say that all the time: ‘This is a witch hunt.’ We tend to assume a righteousness about the man in these situations, and we tend to assume a slut role, for lack of a better term, for the woman.”

What Belflower has so powerfully accomplished with her play, Ebert said, is that she’s not only writing teenage girls –  she’s taking them seriously.

“She’s given them intelligence and some huge ideas to grapple with,” he said. “I think so often teenagers are used as a punching bag to show their naivete or their general lack of understanding of certain things. But this play allows us to look at a classic piece of text and reexamine it through a teenage girl’s eyes. This play has the audacity to say, ‘Wait. This guy sucks. Why is this our hero?”

Ebert says it was an honor to be directed by Taymor “not only because I’m married to her and I love her, but because she’s excellent, she’s rigorous, she’s really loving and she’s really fun.”

The best piece of direction she gave him, he said, relates to a surprise plot twist in the play. But a fair one if you consider the play’s title, and that Ebert’s good-guy teacher character is analogous to John Proctor himself. Everybody has their secrets.

“I will say that at some point, you will learn something that will make you reconsider my character,” he said. “And if I do my job, the audience doesn’t see it coming. Some nights, when it happens, all 750 people gasp at the exact same moment. And that is so rare in the theater. There’s nothing better.

“In rehearsal, I was trying to be a clever actor and pepper in some of these little clues along the way. But my director very smartly said, ‘No, don’t play any of that stuff. Because these guys who are in these positions of power and get away with it, they don’t show you who they are until they do. So, just, keep him golden.’”

(One can only hope she then called him ‘Ponyboy’ in that exact moment.)

Denver’s place in the story

We’re not having this conversation today, Ebert said, if he’s not attending Denver School of the Arts 20 years ago.

At DSA, where students declare a major in the sixth grade, Ebert studied theater. Classmate Jessica Posner went on to be named the biggest world-changer under age 25 for opening a school in Kenya’s largest slum. Her brother, Max Posner, is a decorated New York playwright. Justine Lupe went on to star in “Succession.” Barton Cowperthwaite, a dance major, just made his Broadway debut in “The Outsiders” (again, directed by Ebert’s wife). The list goes on.

What part does DSA play in Ebert’s story?

“I mean, huge,” he said. “I feel so lucky to have gone to DSA and to be able to foster a relationship with the arts from a young age.”

Ebert had never even heard of the Juilliard School when DSA Director of Theatre Shawn Hann suggested that he apply. “I said, ‘What’s that?’” said Ebert, who became the first DSA grad to get into that prestigious college – and, later, the first to win a Tony Award. Five DSA grads have since followed Ebert into Juilliard, including Lupe. Two just got into Carnegie Mellon – the first two from DSA ever.

“It’s profound,” Ebert said while talking up the theater, language arts, music and dance departments at DSA. “Whenever someone else gets in, it lets them know that, ‘Hey, there’s a school out in Denver that is doing something pretty great, and there are the kids who come out of there have something special to offer.’

“There’s something in that Denver water. We work hard, but we try to stay humble.”

Bonus lightning round

Ebert, who is a voracious sports fan, was generous with his time and covered a lot of ground. Here are a few quick hits in the form of a sports-like lightning round:

John Moore: I understand you were in Ball Arena on the night the Nuggets won the NBA Finals in 2023.

Gabe Ebert: It’s true. I flew out for it. My brother and I were there, and it was one of the great joys of my life. It was an amazing moment to share with Jesse because we are lifetime Denver sports fans, and we’ve suffered through many a brutal season from all four professional franchises. We’ve also been lucky enough to see a couple Super Bowls and a couple of Stanley Cups. But to watch the Nuggets win the Finals on their home court, I don’t know. It was a kind of elation that I don’t think I’d ever really experienced before. As much as I am a passionate theater artist and theatermaker, I love my Denver Nuggets. And to be in the room when the confetti cannons went off is truly something that I’ll never forget.

Moore: Who are some famous people who have come to see your play?

Ebert: All kinds. The other day, someone said, “We have Justine Lupe coming to the show!” and I was like, “Oh, I went to middle school and high school and Juilliard with Justine Lupe.” Adam Driver came back the other day. He was my roommate at Juilliard.

Moore: Wait, what?

Ebert: Yeah, we were in the same class at Juilliard. We did a bunch of work together – and we lived together.

Moore: Way to bury that nugget till the end.

Ebert: Sorry.

Moore: I got to see Laura Linney play Elizabeth Proctor on Broadway in 2002, and I am so curious what she might think of your play.

Ebert: She has seen it, and she said she was blown away by it. She told me she hadn’t cried like that in a long time. I know her a little bit because she also went to Juilliard, and she was the keynote speaker at the Tony Awards nominee luncheon this year.

Moore: What did she have to say?

Ebert: The thing that was really powerful is she told us, ‘Don’t forget to enjoy this moment. You’re all Tony nominees, and for the rest of your life, you will all be Tony nominees. There are so many brilliant actors who never even get to play on Broadway, let alone get nominated for a Tony Award. You’ve done something incredibly rare. So don’t get caught up in the rat race of it all and miss the moment.’ And man, that just brought me to my knees.”

Moore: Tell me about playing Thomas Jefferson last year in the world premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Sally & Tom,” which got extended three times at the Public Theater.

Ebert: I mean, we do love us some Thomas Jefferson in this country. Suzan-Lori also loves her some Thomas Jefferson, and she gave him a lot of grace and intelligence. But she also put some of the facts in front of us – like that he had seven children with one of his slaves, and that he enslaved those children. I think her contention is that Thomas Jefferson is the founding father of America – and Sally Hemings is the founding mother. And we are all, in our ways, the children of those two people. We are a mixed-race country, born of a slave owner and a slave. And until we can look at it, then we can’t deal with it.”

Moore: I have to ask what you have gleaned from your castmate, Sadie Sink, about the upcoming final season of “Stranger Things”?

Ebert: Oh my goodness. I did not think you would go there, John.

Moore: I feel nothing but shame. Now, will you please answer the question?

Ebert: I’m going to say nothing because she doesn’t talk about it at all, and I don’t know anything about that. I just know that she’s incredible to work with. She shows up every day. She’s a total professional. She’s a great leader. She’s an astonishing artist, and it’s a privilege to work with her.

Moore: Lastly, I understand you are on a very active Nuggets text thread with Max Posner and Jeremy Shamos (“Only Murders in the Building” and a graduate of Colorado Academy).

Ebert: That is true. Jeremy is potentially more rabid about the Nuggets than I am, which is saying something.

Moore: Well, then, riddle me this: Why does Alex Caruso get away with beating up Nikola Jokic on every play just because he’s a wiry little dude?

Ebert: Tell the truth, John. You would love Caruso if he were wearing a Nuggets jersey.

Moore: I will concede the point. But until then … Alex Caruso is the villain.