Strong weekend of theater offerings in Colorado Springs | Arts & Entertainment
Originals, classics, thrillers and rom-coms — a fine spate of theater awaits you this weekend and throughout the month.
• “In Her Bones,” by Fine Arts Center Theatre Company, runs 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through most Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, ASL performance 5 p.m. Feb. 22, through March 2, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., $27-$66; 719-634-5583, fac.coloradocollege.edu
Moving to Creede lit a fire inside Jessica Kahkoska for the San Luis Valley.
Kahkoska, a Black Forest native who graduated from Rampart High School, went to work with Creede Repertory Theatre and came away with a love for the region, its people and its history. Those ingredients make up her new play, “In Her Bones,” which will have its world premiere at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. It’s also the FAC’s first world premiere of a play.
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In the play, Mia, a college freshman from Denver, is traveling through the San Luis Valley in a blizzard to attend her grandmother’s funeral. When the weather forces her to halt her journey, she stops at a general store for sanctuary and meets Moises, the store’s mysterious owner.
The two begin a conversation that forces bigger questions and provokes memories about herself, her mother and her grandmother, sewn together with the thread of the region’s Crypto-Judaism history. Five centuries ago, the valley was home to Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition.
“Crypto-Judaism is the experience of or the tradition of practicing Judaism in a way that is private or hidden in some way,” Kahkoska said. “There’s compelling anthropological scholarship that explores if families who first came to the valley from Mexico were the same families that left Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, fleeing persecution for being Jewish. The question is if people are still practicing Judaism with varying levels of awareness today?”
Kahkoska, an award-winning theater and TV writer, producer and researcher, has worked on shows for Shondaland/Netflix, Warner Bros Discovery, Oxygen Network, History Channel, Peacock and others, written and premiered plays and musicals across the U.S., and is the archival researcher for the new Broadway show “Good Night, and Good Luck,” written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov.
“In Her Bones” began as a paragraph and research questions before she received the 2019 Powered by Off-Center Residency at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to develop the show. During her research, Kahkoska compiled more than 25 oral histories and conversations about Crypto-Judaism with people who grew up in the San Luis Valley.
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“The interviews inspired a story that includes much of the details, anecdotes and phrases in quotes, but it’s an original story,” Kahkoska said. “It’s telling the story of one family that was dealing with the loss of their matriarch and the way her daughter and granddaughter have to reconcile with the questions and other secrets, the unresolved things she left behind.”
• “On Clover Road,” by Springs Ensemble Theatre, runs 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Feb. 23 and March 2, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24, through March 2, The Fifty-Niner, 2409 W. Colorado Ave., $15-$25; 719-357-3080, springsensembletheatre.org.
In Steven Dietz’s noir thriller, a frantic mother meets with a cult deprogrammer in a grimy motel in the middle of nowhere. She hopes he can help rescue her long-missing daughter after she was brainwashed by a predatory, wannabe prophet. The situation twists and turns, revealing people aren’t who they say they are, and poses the question: How far will we go to save someone?
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In A.R. Gurney’s two-person drama, Andrew and Melissa begin corresponding with each other via birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards. Their infatuation deepens into a fraught love affair as they continue to write letters throughout boarding school, college, and the ups and downs of life post-college, in-between marriages to other people, war, addiction, estrangement and politics.
• “Love Stories: 2 One-Act Romantic Comedies,” by The Butte Theater, 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 1 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 23, The Butte Theater, 139 E. Bennett Ave., Cripple Creek, $19; 719-689-6402, buttetheater.com
In Anton Chekhov’s one-act farce “The Proposal,” a rich young man plans to propose to his neighbor, but after a series of arguments about their families’ wealth and status, the relationship seems doomed.
“Welsh Honeymoon,” by Jeannette Marks, chronicles the honeymoon of a young couple visiting Wales. Margaret, an American, loves Welsh culture and literature. David, a Welshman, has lived in America for years. They begin to see different sides of each other and their relationship.
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