It’s no secret that the performing arts have been on the rocks trying to bounce back from the pandemic shutdown. The year 2024 saw at least five Colorado theater companies go dead or dormant, and it ends with several more on the ropes. (On the bright side, nine foolish (I mean fearless) small startup groups entered the turbulent theater ecology.)

But what was true in 1600, 1800 and 2000 remains true today: The way for any theater company to stay relevant is to … stay relevant. While producers tend to get creatively cautious during times of retrenchment, several bold artistic troubadours forged on with meaningful plays that were challenging, original, illuminating, infuriating, or, in some cases, just plain fun. They each, in their ways, were high-impact.

I’m not saying “An Enemy of the People” was the “best” play of 2024 (that was the Denver Center’s “The Lehman Trilogy” by two continents and three centuries), but it was perhaps the play that made the highest impact. On me, anyway.

No one wanted to see political theater in the run-up to the election. Too much piling on to our real daily lives. Still, the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s Mark Ragan smartly adapted Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece into an allegory for our times, and with just enough distance that it was both plain and palatable for us to fully see that what’s happening today has always been happening somewhere.

Ibsen’s story centers on a doctor who discovers that his town’s bathhouse (its primary economic generator), is teeming with potentially deadly bacteria. When the doc tries to close it down and declare a morally imperative health emergency, he is vilified by politicians, libeled by the corrupt local newspaper and shunned by a gullible, greedy citizenry – most all of whom place profit and self-interest above the value of human life.

Ragan calls the play “a slow-motion horror story of how fascist societies are born.” The resounding line of dialogue from the play:

“You believe that people will make the right decision when presented with the facts. But now you know another truth: People will eagerly embrace lies. They will fall headlong in love with them – and the people who tell them.”

Ibsen’s infuriatingly relevant story was written in 1882. But anyone who didn’t think it said everything about our world since the shutdown had their heads buried in a bucket of toxic slime.

Truth, it seems, is utterly meaningless.

Meanwhile, adventurous companies like Boulder’s The Catamounts continued to heed the call of audiences who want out of the traditional theater box and into the wild by staging three original and very different outdoor experiences. The most ambitious was “Impossible Things,” Jessica Austgen’s commissioned tribute to “Alice in Wonderland.” It was staged at the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Marjorie Park – which made for a meaningful memorial tribute to park founder John W. Madden Jr., who died Jan. 19.

In addition to “An Enemy of the People,” here are our representative picks for high-impact plays from the year, listed alphabetically by title:

Curious Theatre’s ‘Cullud Water’

You have to hand it to Curious Theater Company, Denver’s most substantial homegrown company of the past 30 years, sticking so insistently to its social justice mission at a time when it is in a financial fight for its very life. Erica Dickerson-Despanza’s “Cullud Water,” which takes a devastating look at the impact of the ongoing Flint (Mich.) water crisis on one lower-income, multi-generational Black family in Michigan, is not the kind of story that will break attendance records at any theater in Denver. But this staging made for a bold statement from Artistic Director Jada Suzanne Dixon that if Curious is going down, it is going down on point – and on principle.

Onstage Colorado Editor Alex Miller rightly called this powerfully performed story “a solid production of a play instantly recognizable as the kind of story Curious likes to tell.”

It was a play about a community – and by a theater company – both demonstrating strength through adversity at once.

Miners Alley Playhouse’s ‘A Jukebox for the Algonquin’

The sleeper hit of the year was this surprisingly affecting new play by Paul Stroili about residents of a senior-care Center who really, really want a jukebox. What begins as an expectedly precious introduction to a lovable group of older folks grows into a moving rumination on meaningful seniors who are not walking out the door – they’re taking center stage. And Len Matheo’s cast gave us some of Denver’s most seasoned pros at their peaks, including Edith Weiss, Chris Kendall and Dwayne Carrington.

“At its heart, ‘Jukebox’ isn’t about a jukebox, or aging or death or illness — although they’re all part of it,” Miller wrote. “It’s about friendships, passion, regret and hope.”

Denver Center Theatre Company’s ‘The Lehman Trilogy’

The best play you could see anywhere in Colorado in 2024 was “The Lehman Trilogy,” the 2022 Tony Award-winning best play about the rise and fall of the famous family and its investment firm. There are more than 50 characters in playwright Stefano Massini’s epic masterpiece dating back to 1840s Alabama – but, as the title suggests, only three actors played them. We followed them with awe for more than three hours as they deftly told us the story of three German-Jewish immigrant brothers who navigated fire, flood, war and panic to build the financial behemoth that ultimately collapsed in the2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

Margot Bordelon’s staging was all the more impressive the night I attended, as the trio stopped to accommodate an audience member having a medical emergency.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’

Shakespeare’s trifling tale of a pair of wives who punish a pompous lech for his unwelcome bravado is essentially a sit-com. And for this telling, that’s exactly how director Kevin Rich cleverly presented it. Set in the 1970s and embracing all of the era’s retro fashion and zany TV tropes, Rich produced a comedic gem that made Shakespeare feel uncommonly familiar and accessible to anyone who spent their childhood absorbing “Three’s Company” on the living-room shag carpet. His expert ensemble of clowns, led by Jacob Dresch, Sean Scrutchins, Jessica Robblee and Shunté Lofton, turned what might have come off as a bland TV dinner into a five-course comedy meal.  

Miners Alley Playhouse’s ‘Misery’

Several companies have staged William Goldman’s 2015 Broadway adaptation of Stephen King’s classic thriller about the novelist who is trapped, tortured and loved on by his No. 1 wackadoodle fan. On paper, Stephen King’s bloody-good horror novel, somehow miraculously adapted to film, should not work on a boxed, one-room theater stage. How can you possibly replicate the urgency? How can you possibly give the poor guy playing lame author Paul Sheldon anything to do but scream in pain?

And yet Warren Sherrill’s delicious production, which should have come with popcorn, worked for all sorts of reasons. Sherrill’s direction and, more specifically, his casting of the pinchably malevolent Emma Messenger as a fully understandable Annie Wilkes, the great Torsten Hillhouse as our (literally) tortured artist, and poor Mark Collins as the sheriff who, well … if you know, you know. It worked because of John Hauser’s thunderous sound working in concert with Vance McKenzie’s evocative lights that made you feel like you were trapped in the cabin, too. Sometimes the greatest testament to the importance of live theater in our daily lives is that it can be such an uproariously good time.

Other 2024 impct plays of note

• High-Impact New Play: “Stockade,” by Andrew Rosendorf, Local Theatre Company
• High-Impact Immersive Experience: “Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek,” Control Group Productions
• High-Impact Honorable Mention: Aurora Fox’s “Art,” Little Theatre of the Rockies’ “Every Brilliant Thing” (Greeley); Buntport Theater’s “Eyes Up, Mouth Agape,” Theatreworks’ “Henry IV & V,” Vintage’s “The Hombres,” OpenStage’s “Sweat” (Fort Collins), Benchmark’s “You Got Older.

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 24th year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

Unsung hero of the day

Volunteers are the backbone of the entire nonprofit industry but Artistic Director Ben Raanan says without them, the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company would crumble.

Phamaly relies on about 25 volunteers throughout any given year just to help special-needs actors with whatever assistance they might need, which can range from help putting on costumes to applying makeup to offering comfort at a time of panic.

Phamaly’s volunteer heroes include Denise Cameron, who is now completing her tenure as the company’s head volunteer, Virginia Nystrom and Kathryn Jonas.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts relies on more than 300 volunteers. Town Hall Arts Center has about 125. Here’s a shoutout to anyone who lends their time and caring to a nonprofit theater.