Diamonds are forever: Buntport commits to next 25 years of stage fun

2025 COLORADO THEATER PERSON(S) OF THE YEAR

Colorado College pals made a bold move in 2025 to buy the Denver warehouse that has been its home for quirky, smart theater since 2001

YEAR 25 • PRESENTED BY DENVER GAZETTE SENIOR ARTS JOURNALIST JOHN MOORE • PHOTOS BY REBECCA SLEZAK

Here’s the thing about the Buntpoort Theater collective: There’s nobody like them. Not in Denver. Not in Colorado. Not in the United States. And they’ve been showing bedazzled audiences exactly why for 25 years now.

Or did you not just see them address the silliest aspects of both pet morbidity and the importance of well-chosen underwear in a Halloween reprise of the purr-fectly titled audience favorite “Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat”?

We learned in 2025 that these clever college pals, these creative unicorns, these quick-witted writing wizards who have collaboratively brought an astonishing 55 silly, smart, absurd and always original plays and musicals to theatrical life (along with hundreds of hours of other original programming) since 2001, are going to keep on doing what they do straight up until their performing days are over – hopefully many, many years from now.

Because in 2025, as the five remaining members of the original artist-driven ensemble straddle both sides of age 50, the Buntporters made a bold move to launch a $2.65 million capital campaing and buy the entire warehouse building that always has been their creative home at 717 Lipan St.

The purchase will allow the company to expand from its existing one-third of the 10,000 square-foot corner of the warehouse to full occupancy of the entire building, which will allow it to expand its commitment to community by making badly needed backstage space available to untold numbers of area arts organizations that need it.

At a time of their lives when others might be starting to wind things down, “we’re doubling down,” said ensemble member Erin Rollman.

“It’s a big deal for us to be doing this. It’s like we’re saying, ‘We’re going to be

here, and we’re going to have a place for other people to make work. We think it’s a big thing. And we’re happy if other people also think it’s a big thing, too.”

My, how lucky we are in Denver to have them.

On the just-completed Colorado Gives Day, Buntport’s fiercely loyal fan base sent the company an emphatic, $55,000 message of support for their capital campaign. And with that, the Buntporters crossed the halfway threshold, with $1.33 million now committed toward their five-year goal.

For the estimable ensemble’s entrepreneurial efforts to both secure their building and ensure they will be making fun stories for their audiences to enjoy well into old(er) age, the collective is today being named the Denver Gazette True West Awards’ 2025 Colorado Theater ‘Person’ of the Year.

“All of this makes me so happy, because I feel like Buntport is everything that the best theater should be,” said Regan Linton, former artistic director of Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theater Company, and in 2025,…Q.Q artistic collaborator with Buntport on her new play, “The Menagerist.” “I just think they do theater the way it should be done. And I think they’re one of Denver’s best-kept secrets.”

Members of the original Buntport Theater collective gathered on Dec. 6, 2025, for these photos featuring, clockwise from top letL Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Matt Petraglia, Samantha Schmitz, Erin Rollman and Evan Weissman.(Rebecca Slezak for the Denver Gazette)

The core company – Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Samantha Schmitz and Rollman, maintain a kind of delightful oblivion to the extent of the impact they have had on the local cultural landscape all this time. Or that they are now starting an empathic new phase that’s unheard of at this stage of any independent arts organization’s ecology and lifespan.

“Just today, I was asked: ‘Does this feel like as much of a completely ‘new phase’ for the company as it sounds like?”‘ said Rollman. ‘I said ‘Yeah, it does.’ But the part that feels crazy to me is that we’re too old for a new phase. I’m thinking, ‘I’m 50 – who the hell do I think I am?”

Colonna believes this milestone moment is an opportunity for the company to both reflect on the journey so far and gear up for what’s next.

“You know, from the start, we were told that the Denver theatergoing community wouldn’t really be supportive of original work,” he said. “But everyone has been so helpful to us from the very beginning. I mean, we had a meeting with (legendary theater producer) Henry Lowenstein on, like, Day 4 that we were in town. He was very practical and took us through numbers and told us, ‘This is how you get audiences.’ It was all very helpful.”

From left: Samantha Schmitz, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Matt Petraglia, Evan Weissman, Hannah Duggan and Brian Colonna pose during a photo shoot at Buntport Theater on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 in Denver, Colorado. The company has made it for 25 years showing only original works and is being recognized as the Denver Gazette True West Awards’ 2025 Colorado Theater ‘Person’ of the Year. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Gazette)

But this next leap requires the full faith and financial commitment of the theatergoing community itself, and that has these generally facile quipsters struggling to adequately convey their gratitude.

“People are being very generous with their money, and it’s really they who are buying the building, not us,” Colonna said. “That support is mind-blowing. When people tell us, ‘We have really fond memories of being here, so we are sending some money your way,’ that feels both humbling and exciting, because it’s an acknowledgement of all the time that has passed, and the work that has gone into it. But it also makes us excited for the work that is yet to come.”

FULL STORY ON BUNTPORT BUYING BUILDING

The Buntport Theater collective – Hannah Duggan, Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Edgar Allan Poe and Samantha Schmitz – are doing something rare: As they enter their 25th season of producing all-original stories, they are buying their home, expanding their space and welcoming the rest of the space-starved larger theater community to come along. JOHN MOORE/DENVER GAZETTE

How did this happen?

Everything about the Buntport story is unheard of in the performing arts. Because everything about Buntport is as original as the company itself.

(The name, by the way, is a mangled reference to Kennebunkport, home of the Bush family presidential retreat in Maine.)

Imagine you’re a wide-eyed theater kid graduating from college (let’s say Colorado College!) 25 years ago, and you want to keep the good times rolling until the world inevitably forces you to settle down and get a job. So you and your six closest theater pals start a company. Nothing unusual there.

Only, you will never perform an existing play, ever, for the rest of your lives. So long, Shakespeare, Williams and Mamet. Instead, you are going to write and perform everything yourself. Not only that, you are going to go about it as a completely egalitarian mini-society where everyone in the company is equal. There will be no boss. Everyone will contribute to the writing.

Everyone will have a say in the direction. Everyone will build the sets and hang the lights. Everyone will be paid the same. And at the end of the day, everyone will take turns cleaning the toilets and taking out the trash.

And it will work.

From left: Samantha Schmitz, Matt Petraglia, Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman, Brian Colonna, Evan Weissman and Hannah Duggan pose during a photo shoot at Buntport Theater on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. The company has made it for 25 years performing only original plays in creates in collaboration, and is being recognized as the Denver Gazette True West Awards’ 2025 Colorado Theater ‘Person’ of the Year. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Gazette)

We’re talking low-key, yet truly radical collaboration here, the kind of social experiment that has been repeatedly proven to be unsustainable. Except here.

There are plenty of companies around the country that create original plays. But they don’t average two to three full, original works every year for a quarter century. And they don’t do it with artistic continuity over decades.

Elsewhere, ensemble members come, they go, and new members take their places. “But we’ve never heard of another company that does things quite the same way we do,” said Colonna. “I do think it is probably unique.”

Think about a comedy factory like Second City in Chicago. It’s had hundreds, maybe even thousands of members. Buntport has had seven.

Marriage is no excuse for getting out. No, the only way out of Buntport is to have a kid. (Two of them, Matt Petraglia and Evan Weissman, have.)

The Buntporters are ridiculously smart people, so they were bound to lose a few to an outside world that – news flash – generally compensates workers better than a grassroots, self-sustaining local theater company.

Erin Rollman, Samantha Schmitz, Erik Edborg, Evan Weissman, Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan and Matt Petraglia pose during a photoshoot at Buntport Theater, Saturday, December 6, 2025 in Denver, Colorado. The company has made it for 25 years showing only original works and are recognized as Colorado Theater’s final “Person” of the Year award. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Gazette)

Petraglia left in 2007 and is now raising a family in Greeley while working as a QC Chemist at IEH Laboratories. Weissman, also a married father, left Buntport in 2012 to become the visionary founder of Warm Cookies of the Revolution. That is a unique “civics health club” that has encouraged more than a million people to participate in important local issues in fun and meaningful ways. They both remain part of the company’s essential DNA.

“First and foremost, these people are the most creative and interesting and inspirational people in my life,” Weissman said. “In the time that I was here, I learned about getting along with people and how you build things together. My time here gave me the confidence to think that I might be able to do something new and weird and different. I never could have been a major part of any kind of art-scene world if not for Buntport.”

“If I may,” Rollman interrupted,”… you would be a shell of a human being if not for Buntport.”

(Editor’s note: You should know that, as in most families, any hint of public earnestness is immediately pounced on like blood in the water.)

“Oh yes, thank you – the words wouldn’t come,” said Weissman, instinctively jumping on the bit. “Yes, ‘shell’ was the word that I was looking for. If not for Buntport, I would be a shell of a human being.”

Matt Petraglia, Samantha Schmitz, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Evan Weissman and Brian Colonna pose during a photo shoot at Buntport Theater on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. The company has made it for 25 years performing only original plays in creates in collaboration, and is being recognized as the Denver Gazette True West Awards’ 2025 Colorado Theater ‘Person’ of the Year. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Gazette)

After the laughter subsided, Petraglia dared to take on the same question.

“So this was a very large part of my beginning of life right after college, and it definitely shaped who I am,” he said. “Whenever I see stories about Buntport in the media, I’m extremely proud to say, ‘I used to work with them.’ I’m so glad I get to bring my kids to shows at Buntport. My parents still love to come. I’ve taken my daughter to see ‘The Lion King,’ but even more so, she wanted me to bring her back to Buntport to see ‘The Book Handlers’ a second time. She loved that show. I don’t know why. I mean – it’s so much talking!”

For the record: “The Book Handlers” was a satirical comedy about anti-intellectualism where quirky office workers took unread books from wealthy people and made them look well-worn, thus creating the illusion of the elite being cultured without the effort of actual reading. You know, a children’s story.

“We sent Matt a ransom note in the mail saying that if he didn’t donate money to our capital campaign, we were going to leak (an incriminating) photo of him to the lifestyle editor at the Greeley Tribune,” Rollman said. “And his daughter immediately was like, ‘Was that from Buntport?’ She wasn’t fooled at all.

Founding Buntport Theater Company member Matt Petraglia returned Dec. 6, 2025, to join his pals in a photo shoot to commemorate the ensemble being newly named the Denver Gazette’s 2025 True West Awards Colorado ‘Person’ of the Year. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Gazette)

Lights, camera … jostling!

When the seven original members of the Buntport collective gathered a few weeks ago for a photo shoot, we walked into the company’s newly expanded backstage space, which is already being used by other arts organizations, notably the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company and Batala Colorado (the Denver chapter of a global Afro-Brazilian drum band).

The Buntporters weren’t told exactly why they were being asked to come here on a Saturday afternoon to take this group photo. But, no matter. True to their whimsical artistic inclinations, they devoted several days to carefully creating something of a Shakespearean forest in their new backstage space

-you know, to give the photographer an interesting visual landscape. To boot, they were all wearing matching track suits inspired by a local punk band called Spells.

It could not have been more appropriate that they anchored this arboreal setting with an anachronistic but highly practical couch, front and center. It wasn’t “the couch” that this team made into a character of its own many years ago when it staged a wildly popular ongoing sit-com satire of “Seinfeld” called “Magnets on the Fridge” that ran for years.

There’s just something about Buntport and couches that go together. Buntport has built its identity around its casual, intimate and accessible, couch-like vibe that reflects their non-traditional approach to just about everything.

The company doesn’t determine a fixed ticket price, instead encouraging audiences to pay whatever the spirit moves them to pay. If the seats are all

filled (as they often are), they make big, fluffy pillows available for overflow audiences to sit a little more comfortably on the floor. It’s a very basement vibe. Buntport is a place to chill, watch creative stuff without pretense and laugh.

There was a lot of laughter during this photo shoot. Within minutes, and without prompting, the gang was tossing Petraglia into the air for their amusement and the photographer’s pleasure, as if they had all seen each other yesterday.

As for being newly named the Colorado Theatre Person of the Year, the company seems genuinely touched because hopefully, Rollman said, that means it’s being a good neighbor. Everything about the “next phase” is tied into being a good community partner for all.

“It would not be as fun for us to get to take a step like this without bringing other people along with us,” Rollman said. “Frankly, I don’t imagine we’ll use the extra space for ourselves very much – if ever. But that other people get to use it makes us happy. Because we all know that there aren’t enough rehearsal spaces in this town. And we believe that thing. You know: ‘All boats rise,’ whatever that is.”

(Sorry, one last interjection: That’s “A rising tide lifts all boats.”) And, thanks to Buntport and its supporters: Boats are lifting.

Now, the plan is simply: Onward: “Stay the course,” said Duggan. “It’s all on track. Ten thousand points of light.”

Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist john Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 31 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

John Moore December 31, 2025 The Denver Gazette

Westword- Buntport Theater Is Buying Its Building

The theater is more than doubling the total square footage of space available for rehearsals, storage and productions.

Buntport Theater is starting its 25th season with a lot of room to grow. The theater now has more than double the space available for rehearsals, storage and productions, thanks to a new deal in which it is leasing to own the building where it has been renting space for more than two decades.

Company members were surprised when a “For Sale or Lease” sign popped up in front of the building at 717 Lipan Street. The theater collective, which has been bolstering Denver’s theater scene since 2001 with quirky and original plays and musicals (like its upcoming revival of Edgar Allen Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat), had tried in the past to purchase its part of the building without luck.

Company member Erin Rollman says that at one point, the group had the right of first refusal written into the contract so that if the landlord decided to sell the building, Buntport would have some protection and control over the situation. “It’s hard to be a renter,” Rollman laments. “We’ve been in the same space for 25 years, but you don’t feel total security. At any time, we could be moving somewhere else.”

That became a real possibility when a development company made an offer on the building. “We felt like they were going to raze the building and we were going to be kicked out,” Rollman says. “We were like, ‘We probably only have two years here at most if we let this happen,’ so we had to scramble and figure out a path to getting it ourselves.”

That path opened up with what Rollman calls an “angel investor” who bought the building as a stopgap; Buntport Theater is now leasing to own the building and just launched its 25th season with a five-year capital campaign to raise more than $2 million to support the purchase, renovations and other related costs.

Over $1 million of that goal was already raised before Buntport went public with the campaign, as company members reached out to individuals who had supported the group in the past. According to Rollman, the members plan to apply for grants as well, but “that process is just longer than being able to have conversations with individuals.”

The five members of Buntport are running the capital campaign to keep administrative costs minimal, allowing donations and grant funding to go directly to the purchase of the building.

Buntport Theater previously occupied about 3,500 square feet of the converted warehouse space just south of downtown Denver; now the company will take up the whole 10,000 square-foot building, with plans to add a rehearsal space for the community, more storage areas, a sewing room, a woodshop and more.

Kristen Fiore Oct 13th, 2025 Westword

The Denver Gazette-Buntport Theater buys the house and welcomes all comers

Popular indie company opens its 25th season with today’s launch of a five-year, $2.65 million capital campaign to purchase its building

For 25 years, the five members of Denver’s quirky, creative and accidentally entrepreneurial Buntport Theater collective have not stopped working long enough to look up. If they had, they might have noticed before April that their landlord had hung a for-sale sign on the warehouse where they have created and staged 55 fully original plays and musicals since 2001.

“That’s how we found out,” said ensemble member Erin Rollman. “Brian (Colonna) walked in and said, ‘What the (bleep)?’”

The dramatic backstory here is worthy of its own stage play.

Over the past 25 years, Buntport has transformed its one-third of the 10,000-square-foot building at 717 Lipan St. into a trusted home for its absurdly smart and funny stage inventions like, say, “Kafka on Ice.” That one title pretty much says it all about both the company’s aesthetic, and its singular place in the local and national theater ecology. But the company canon also includes more than 500 one-off performances of long-running “live sit-coms,” recurring children’s stories and more.

Meanwhile, the rest of the building has been occupied by Economy Greek Foods, a restaurant wholesaler that used most of its space to store massive industrial refrigerator-freezers.

“I think they went bankrupt,” Rollman said. “They disappeared in the middle of the night.” Then came the for-sale sign.

Owner Jimmy Katsaros put a deal together to sell the entire building to a housing developer – but, not so fast. Back in 2001, a heroic Buntport friend (and attorney) named Ryan Christ insisted on the inclusion of a right-of-first refusal clause in the lease – and Buntport just exercised it.

That’s right. Buntport is opening its 25th season with today’s launch of a five-
year, $2.65 million capital campaign to purchase the entire building and open it up as an arts hub for the entire community just south of downtown Denver.
This is one case where what’s good for the company is good for the larger community as well, “and that’s the most exciting part of all of this,” said ensemble member Erik Edborg. Buntport is essentially tripling its physical size, which makes room not only for additional storage, a wood shop, meeting room, sewing room and a kitchenette, but also a large new rehearsal room will be made available at low cost to small companies in desperate need of a place to play.

Buntport’s existing theater will also have more room to grow now, and plans are in the works to create housing for visiting artists in a home the company owns across the street.

The capital campaign is called “Buntport’s Big Ask,” of which $1.1 million already has been committed. That puts them 42 percent of the way there. Only, gulp, $1.54 million to go.

“Certainly, that number makes me want to poop right now,” Colonna said.

Method to their madness

You have to understand that, as artists and humanoids, the Buntport Five – Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Edborg, Rollman and Samantha Schmitz – are a band of adorable goofs who insist that all of this is accidental – the 25 years of critical success, the 150 awards, the 300,000 audience members, the 125 visiting artists. That they have no real ambitions or particular business acumen.

They’re being self-deprecating, to be sure. But, then again … are they?

_{Buntport Theater’s Erik Edborg and Brian Colonna celebrated the acquisition of a company copy machine by turning their fun into a flyer for the group’s new capital campaign. JOHN MOORE/DENVER GAZETTE}

When they first realized the neighboring business had been abandoned, they were most excited by the copy machine that was left behind. “We’ve never had a copy machine!” exclaimed Colonna. “Everyone wants a copy machine!” exclaimed Edborg.

Duggan called the phone number taped to the front of the machine and was told: “The gentleman who bought it has not paid us for it, but we will be pursuing legal action with him. So I guess you have a copy machine.”

You can bet the rest of that day was spent with cheeks pressed against glass and vision-threatening strobes of copier lights. Because when you are a Buntporter, that’s how you celebrate acquiring a $2.65 million building.

‘I’m 50!’

At both sides of 50, Colonna says, these endlessly creative storytellers “are in the prime of our working lives.” They just aren’t feeling any lingering grand professional national aspirations. Never have. Next year, they are finally taking one of their hit shows to New York. Not off-Broadway. To Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.

Acquiring the building is pretty good assurance that the collective will likely stay intact through retirement, which for them means some long-sought stability. A small sense of comfort and security that is generally unheard-of for members of small, self-starting arts groups.

These ones just really want to try the bread sticks.

But there was one prevailing and shamelessly altruistic motivation for all this that they will cop to.

“What really pushed us to look into buying the building was everybody got excited by the idea of helping other people,” said Edborg.

No, really.

Opening the new space to other companies will immediately help to ease the growing problem of smaller arts organizations having a place to perform but not a place to rehearse. Take the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, which has been on a tear of late staging some of the most compelling plays of the year. Its actors have rehearsed in a church, in a supporter’s living room, in the lobby of a buddy’s office and in a church.

“We’re kind of the rehearsal-space nomads of the theater community,” said
Managing Director Mark Ragan, whose company will become the first official tenants of Buntport’s new backstage rehearsal space in just three weeks.

“The whole idea of having a permanent rehearsal space that you can use – one that you’re paying another theater company for, and thereby helping them to pay down their own loan to purchase the property? There couldn’t be a more perfect solution,” Ragan said.

_{The Buntport Theater collective, from left, Erik Edborg, Samantha Schmitz, Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan and
Erin Rollman, all graduated from Colorado College and have now been creating award-winning stories together
that are cerebral, silly and utterly singular for 25 years. JOHN MOORE/DENVER GAZETTE}

A singular origin story

Here’s the thing about the Buntport Theater collective: There’s nobody like them. Not in Denver. Not in Colorado. Not in the United States. In 1998, seven Colorado College friends decided to form their own theater company. Not to “do plays.” To do their own plays. Without a designated playwright, director or boss of any kind. Everyone in the company is equal. Everyone is paid the same. Everyone writes. Everyone builds the sets. Everyone takes out the trash.

Contrary to what I have asserted in print before: They do not shower together. (That was literary license.)

Buntport has cultivated a feverishly loyal audience base by creating collaborative works ranging from political satire to absurdist comedy, all with rigorous intellect. The company’s name is a mangled reference to the Bush presidential retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine.

They are now only five because, apparently, the only way out is to have children.

It is impossible to overstate how rare it is for a fixed ensemble to move through their entire adult lives making art together, through life changes, financial challenges and shifting relationships. The average lifespan for new theater companies in Colorado isn’t even two years. It often isn’t even two shows. Colonna is sure that the 2001 version of him would never have believed he’d still be making theater with his friends in 2025. They’ve certainly made it through an unexpected confluence of ephemeral circumstances.

Buntport made news a decade ago when all of them became full-time employees of the company, each earning equal salaries of $30,000 a year. Today, their princely pay is $43,000 before taxes. That might make Buntport something of a collectivist utopia, but still, that is an insane way to live. According to a recent study by a financial website, you would need to make $65,000 just to cover the basic costs of living for a single person in Denver.

“It’s just so expensive to live in Denver right now,” Colonna said. “I can tell you that we wouldn’t make this theater company if we were starting out now. It would just be impossible.”

So how do they do it?

“None of us have kids,” said Rollman, “and we are all living in housing with somebody else. Hannah is living with lots of somebody elses.” Added Duggan: “I think the only way anyone in the country can truly make ends meet is with a double income.” Some of them got lucky and bought houses before the market exploded. (Anyone remember HUD homes?)

As a group, they look out for each other. They check in to make sure no one’s credit cards get out of control. And when life hits one of them hard, they help each other out.

“We talk constantly about our pay structure,” Colonna said. “The truth is, it’s
a struggle every year.”

_{First public look at the additional backstage space the Buntport Theater collective has gained by buying the
warehouse it has performed in since 2000. The purchase triples the company’s space. JOHN MOORE/DENVER
GAZETTE}

How do they do it?

Buntport has gone its own way from the start. And now it is, to its own greatest surprise, showing a way forward for others. At a time when the neighboring, venerated Curious Theatre has put its historic Acoma Center home up for sale in a risky attempt to get out from underneath its debt, Buntport is bucking the trend by, in Colonna’s words, doubling down.

“I think this is good news for the entire Colorado theater community because, from the pandemic on, all we’ve had to confront is bad news,” said Ragan. “What Buntport is doing is amazing and wonderful.”

Buntport mounts about three shows a year while also partnering on a variety of creative side projects with other arts organizations including Stories on Stage, the Denver Art Museum, Augustana Arts and more. Buntport also hosts film, visual art, dance, meetings, workshops, birthdays, weddings, funerals and more. Schmitz figures the average Buntport audience member visits the warehouse six to 10 times a year.

But how does this company work? Unlike all others, starting from the ethos of writing and performing all of its own work. That’s the hardest kind to market and sell. But Buntport only spends about $1,200 to mount a new show.

That is not a typo.

They can do that only because Buntport is the rare company that truly is its own nonprofit business – meaning their largest expenses are not show specific. They are collective costs, like salaries. And in a world where a $100 theater ticket is no longer uncommon, Buntport remains committed to a “pay what you can” pricing structure, which generally means about $23 per ticket.

Buntport’s operating budget is about $300,000 a year, said Schmitz, a figure that will grow to $550,000 for the duration of the capital campaign because, for the next few years, the company will have to raise money both the operate as usual and pay down the capital campaign simultaneously.

Schmitz says it takes about $10,000 a month to keep the doors open. And now those doors are going to be open to a lot more people. That, Edborg said, means something.

“To me, the message here is that you can make your own stuff, even if it seems like there are no other resources out there,” he said. “Yes, it will be hard, but you can do it – and not necessarily in the way that it’s traditionally done.”

The $1.54 million task at hand, Colonna said, “is pretty exciting. It’s just daunting.” But If this experiment is successful, he added, “it will be proof that theater making in Colorado is strong and flourishing.”

And that And that makes Rollman a little emotional.

“People might think it’s cheesy, but I’m genuinely the most excited about the way that we can positively impact other theater companies and other artists,” she said.

“I think, in the end, this community is what we all have. That’s what is going to get us through anything. And I think people still need and want to be together in a physical space watching and sharing stories. That’s what it is to be human. And I think that’s what this is about.”

Colonna: “It does sound cheesy when you say it.”

Rollman: “Thanks, Brian.”

Edborg: “It got me, Erin. … It got me real good.”

John Moore October 10, 2025 The Denver Gazette

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation- Making Space: Buntport Theater’s Blueprint for Artist-Led Theater

On a weekday afternoon this spring, the building that’s home to Buntport Theater was alive with motion. Ensemble members were reassembling the set for “The Book Handlers,” a remount of its surreal 2018 play about office workers, while shouting jokes across the warehouse.

For a company best known for its zany, erudite comedies, like “The Death of Napoleon,” which imagines the former emperor refusing to get on his teeter-totter, or “Eyes Up, Mouth Agape,” a riotous send-up of the 2004 Dave Matthews Band Poopgate incident, it was a bit disorienting to sit down and talk seriously about space, scarcity and what it means to build something that lasted 25 years in a city that’s seen numerous other theater companies vanish.

Even though I was shown to a folding table — a fridge stocked with honor-system drinks and a cluster of chairs that normally serve as seating in the main theater nearby — it felt less like a business meeting and more like stepping into the communal living room of Denver’s most enduring theater collective.

“We were lucky to find the space when we did,” said Brian Colonna, one of the seven founding company members. “If we were an ensemble trying to find this space now, I think it would be out of our reach financially.”

Back when Buntport started performing shows in the empty warehouse space on Lipan Street in 2001, the company didn’t know they were securing an uncommonly stable rental agreement. Gaining a home didn’t just give the group a place to build sets or store costumes—it afforded them room for deep collaboration necessary to stage strange, specific work that can’t be rushed.

“It allows us to create the kind of theater that we create, which does require some experimentation,” said company member Erin Rollman. “We don’t do things in a traditional manner; we know what we want, but until we’re really in the space, putting it up, nothing’s set in stone. It would be difficult to make our shows if we only had five days in a rented space.”

The ensemble first formed in Colorado Springs at Colorado College in 1998, where they trained as generalists in theater— acting, directing, designing and writing together—which laid the groundwork for their all-hands-on-deck approach. When Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Rollman, SamAnTha Schmitz, Matt Petraglia and Evan Weissman relocated to Denver from the Springs, they weren’t searching for a traditional theater space with a fixed stage.

“We wanted something malleable,” Rollman recalled. “A big, open area we could reshape with every show. We were negotiating a space on Colfax and Marion, but that landlord wanted a morality clause—no nudity. We didn’t want to be nude, but we weren’t going to tell others what they could or couldn’t do on stage, so that deal broke down.”

A real estate agent led them to a newly built warehouse near what would become the Santa Fe Arts District, then a mostly industrial area with few cultural landmarks. “It had high ceilings, no windows, which sounds depressing, but it’s great for theater,” Rollman said. They’ve been leasing there ever since, and maintain a strong relationship with their landlords.

Now, 24 years into their collective experiment in ensemble-led theater-making in Denver, Buntport has created more than 50 original plays and over 100 episodes of live, collaboratively created sitcoms like “Starship Troy” and “Magnets on the Fridge.” They won a Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Arts & Culture in 2010 and have long been a critical darling of Denver’s creative scene.

But alongside their accolades and inventive productions, one of Buntport’s most impactful contributions may be how they’ve used their building. “We’ve opened up our space to other artists since the very beginning,” Rollman said. “We knew other people didn’t have space, so when we weren’t producing work, we wanted other people to be in the space.”

Over the years, they’ve hosted everything from art installations to comedy shows to experimental theater to workshops for DACA recipients to renew their paperwork to weddings. During the pandemic, when their programming slowed, they reduced rental rates from $250 per day to $50 per day.

“For a while, the space was free, but we had to charge a little bit to help cover our heating and cooling,” Rollman said. “It’s hard to be the people who throw up another barrier to somebody producing work. We joke, although it’s a true statement, we aren’t very good business people.”

“We are bad capitalists but okay business people,” Schmitz clarified.

“It’s been here for 25 years, so I guess the proof is in the pudding,” Rollman said. “But we’ve always said we don’t define success in the traditional American way, where it’s always up, up, up—we think plateauing is cool. We’re comfortable doing the work we love and making room for others to do the same.”

For small companies and solo artists used to hearing that other venues cost upwards of $300 a night, Buntport’s affordability can be a game-changer.

“While everything else has gotten more expensive in Denver, Buntport has stayed affordable,” said Ron S. Doyle, co-host of The Narrators. The live storytelling show, which loosely centers on a new theme every month, has been performing monthly at Buntport since 2014.

“There’s a huge need for more accessible venues in Denver like Buntport,” said Julie Rada of Grapefruit Lab, a local multimedia performance group that frequently stages its shows in the venue. “The team is great about working with artists with limited resources.”

What Buntport has maintained creatively is exceedingly rare. When Petraglia and Weissman left the company, The group chose not to replace them—partly out of practicality, as it allowed the current ensemble to stop working full time outside the company, partly out of creative cohesion.

“It would be hard for someone to join now,” Schmitz said. “We’ve worked together for so long, we have our own language.”

That intimacy, though artistically potent, can present hurdles. “Buntport is a company that’s been around for a long time, making incredibly innovative work that’s better than 90% of theaters in this town” said Regan Linton, a theater artist who uses a wheelchair and worked with the group on “The Menagerist.” But, “working with the ensemble was a really rewarding experience, but figuring out the best way to collaborate took some time.”

Post-pandemic, Buntport’s efforts to open space to others have only intensified. “A way to address diversity is to stay out of artists’ way and let them have space to have their voices heard,” Colonna said. “Our ensemble works with others, but we aren’t casting people.”

These days, Buntport is operating near capacity. Most weekends are booked, and cancellations are rare. “We are pretty booked up, which is the sad part,” Rollman said. “We have a list of people who, if there are any cancellations, want to make stuff.”

That demand is both validating and daunting, especially given the group’s limited capacity to grow as renters in the space. Their rental calendar is a balancing act between their own shows and guest productions.

And while they’ve made their warehouse feel like a permanent home, the reality is more fragile: they’re still renters. Despite a strong relationship with their landlords, a change in ownership or circumstance could upend everything, forcing the company back into the kind of nomadic model they started with more than two decades ago. It’s a possibility they’ve begun to consider seriously.

“Our ability to build in the space and make shows is a pillar of our working style, but it’s not a luxury that a lot of others have,” Colonna said. “If we didn’t have this space—it’s kind of bleak to think about. We’d try to give it a go, but it would be a major difference. Other people have scaled for that in the way they approached their process, but it would be difficult for us at this point in our careers to make a change like that.”

Toni Tresca July 17, 2025 Bonfils-Stanton Foundation

Denver Gazette – Buntport Theater, the ‘Glass’ is more than half-funny

Buntport Theater, an enduring ensemble of five wildly creative storytellers from Colorado College, has produced more than 50 full-length, original plays from scratch over the past nearly 25 years.

Know that it is exceedingly rare for any theater company to survive long enough to produce 50 plays of and kind. The kind that most produce have been written by somebody else and ordered out of a catalog. These people do it all themselves.

A recent highlight was a lovably odd 2023 play called “The Death of
Napoleon: A Play in Less Than Three Acts” – which imagined the tiny,
contemplative French emperor spending his final years in exile
playing solitaire, arguing with insects and refusing to get on his teeter-totter.

That is quintessential Buntport. (I want there to be a name for that. Perhaps “Kennebuntport.”)

Buntport never gets old largely because its often steps out of its nonexistent comfort zone by collaborating with other artists in the community. Tonight, they are opening “The Menagerist,” a new play they co-created with Regan Linton, former artistic director of Denver’s disability affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company. Linton, a graduate of Denver East High School, was paralyzed in a car collision while in college.

Buntport, Linton understates, “is one of the most unique theater companies in Denver.” Linton, in turn, “brings a level of professionalism to Buntport – finally,” ensemble member Brian Colonna joked.

In January, Warner Brothers Studios celebrated its 100th anniversary by
commissioning six contemporary short film adaptations of its most iconic films. Linton was one of them, and she chose ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,” now streaming on Max (formerly HBO).

”The Menagerist” is a satirical take on Tennessee Williams’ classic play and, not for nothing, Linton herself starred as Laura Wingfield in a 2012 grad-school production of ”The Glass Menagerie.” This, she says, is not that.

“‘The Menagerist’ is a comedy about being stuck in a tragedy with your annoying unicorn friend and a handful of imaginary spoons,” said Linton, who promises “an absurd, irreverent, delightful theatrical romp with a smidge of sentimentality.”

But there is a point to all this stillness. “Our whole starting point was talking with Regan about being stuck playing Laura in plays like ‘The Glass Menagerie’ as an actor with a visible disability,” Colonna said. ”The Menagerist” runs through March 29 at 717 Lipan St. with ASL Interpretation performances on March 22-23 and Audio Description performances on March 23-24. Go to buntport.com.

John Moore- March 6, 2025 The Denver Gazette

Two people face off, their hands up to the sides and they are both talking in a comically threatening way. One of them is in a wheelchair and wears black and white. The other wears a white body suit with an inflatable rainbow unicorn pool float around their body. In the background there are two people not paying attention to the center stage ruckus.

On Stage Colorado – Rinse & repeat with Buntport’s ‘The Menagerist’

The troupe’s new show partners with Regan Linton for a word or three about disability in theatre.

In its latest new work, Buntport Theater’s usual gang of five is joined by Regan Linton in a bizarro-world take on Tennessee Williams’ memory play The Glass Menagerie. In the original, the character of Laura is partially disabled, and that element is amplified tenfold in The Menagerist.

Linton, the former artistic director at Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre, takes to the stage in her wheelchair to portray Laura — as well as the actor portraying her in a series of rehearsals for a production of The Glass Menagerie. The conceit running through the script is that disabled actors are often pigeonholed in a narrow set of roles or, worse yet, disabled characters are played by abled actors.

While most Buntport shows are created and performed by the core group — Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Brian Colonna, Erin Rollman and (off stage) SamAnThat Schmitz — they do occasionally partner with other artists. With Linton, they found the perfect collaborator for a play about disability and theatre — not to mention a fine actor to inhabit the role.

The action is centered around a continuous replay of a scene in the original where Laura receives a “gentleman caller,” played here by the ever-versatile Colonna. Edborg is Laura’s brother Tom, who acts as narrator while sporting a thick layer of T-shirts — each with a message of sorts about the next scene. Duggan, often the biggest presence onstage in any Buntport show, takes a bit of a backseat here as the mother Amanda.

(L-R) Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan, Brian Colonna, Regan Linton and Erik Edborg in ‘The Menagerist.’ | Photo: Gail Bransteitter

Having the most fun is Rollman, who portrays one of the glass figurines in Laura’s menagerie. As the prized unicorn doomed to have its horn broken off by Jim, Rollman is the life of the party in a white bodysuit and unicorn floatie.

Buntport is never shy about in-your-face stage action, with inventive lo-fi effects, props and costumes to illustrate its comedic productions. That’s all part of The Menagerist, and there are indeed plenty of laughs along the way. But while the message about creating legit opportunities for disabled actors on stage and elsewhere is an important one, the repetition of that message is, well, repetitious.

Somewhat reminiscent of last year’s 125 No’s — where a Hollywood tale of Green Garson taking that long to get a one-word line just right — Menagerist is an exploration of a theme with many takes. The risk is always in taking something like this too far, and this one simply goes on for too long. At times it dips into screed territory, with the disability message being hit so many times that it loses impact.

Since the focus is only on the one scene with Jim, it doesn’t get into how disability representation has (or hasn’t) evolved. Had the script not been so married to the framing device of the repeated scene, there may have been more opportunities to expand on those questions while mixing up the action a bit. As the show inched past the hour mark, I found myself eyeing Edborg’s torso to see how many shirts he might have left under there.

For a theatre as lean, inventive and courageous as Buntport, I’m always willing to overlook some rough edges. There’s no doubt The Menagerist touches on some important questions not only for disabled actors but others who may not fit preconceived notions related to age, race, gender or whatever else. Combining all that with comedy is a lot to take on, and the execution isn’t quite there. But for admirers of the theatre, it still contains plenty of those Buntportian elements that keep fans coming back for more.

-Alex Miller, March 14th, 2025, On Stage Colorado

Two people dressed in black in a black room are facing each other expressionless. The one on the left is wearing a bridge that was built around their waist. The one on the right is wearing a colorful bus built around their waist. Sitting below them on the floor is another person wearing all black with a white boat built around their waste is smiling and waving to the camera.

Boulder Weekly- The Crappening

Buntport Theater’s new play is a delightfully disgusting dive into Chicago’s messiest moment

Leave it to Denver’s Buntport Theater to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the grossest accident to make national headlines. The experimental company continues its tradition of flushing traditional theater norms down the drain with Eyes Up, Mouth Agape, a riotous take on the infamous 2004 incident involving 800 pounds of shit and a Dave Matthews Band tour bus.

As the bus crossed Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge, it discharged sewage, showering an open-air tour boat below — a nightmare scenario of terrible timing. The driver of the bus was eventually fined $10,000 for polluting a waterway and sentenced to 150 hours of community service and 18 months of probation. The band paid the State of Illinois $200,000 and donated another $100,000 to environmental groups.

In a 2009 interview, Matthews told a radio host, “It would be funnier if it was anyone else but me. … I’ll apologize for that as long as I have to.”

Shit gets real

Buntport’s five-person ensemble, who co-wrote this original play with guest artist Emily K. Harrison of Boulder’s square product theatre, embraces this grotesque story with the same joyous absurdity that has defined the theater group since 1998, diving into the event’s fallout with wry humor, clever design and a slight wink to the audience.

Rather than reenacting the hilariously improbable incident, the creative team wisely focuses on the aftermath, as told by the key “players” involved: the bridge (Erik Edborg), bus (Brian Colonna) and boat (Hannah Duggan), all of whom are anthropomorphized by actors dressed in black with playful models of these objects hanging around their abdomens.

The play’s imaginative set includes a strikingly tall, stylized representation of the Sears (er, Willis) Tower on one side, as well as a central projection screen that anchors the action and displays live footage from multiple onstage cameras. This combination of detailed costumes and real-time projections creates the impression of watching a bizarre but strangely captivating talking-head documentary come to life.

This decision to stage the incident as a series of post-mortem interviews heightens the farcicality while emphasizing the undeniable pathos of each player’s situation. Each character comes to life through interviews conducted by a frantic, truth-seeking documentarian, played with manic energy by Erin Rollman, who passionately (if curiously) seeks deeper meaning in the event.

The documentarian, standing in for both the Buntport team and the audience, questions whether this incident holds any deeper meaning or if it’s just an excuse for poop jokes. It’s a question the play never definitively answers, but one that allows for gleeful exploration of its own silliness.

Wit and waste collide

While Rollman’s documentarian orchestrates the proceedings, it’s Duggan and Colonna who steal the show as the hapless boat and the unapologetic bus.

Duggan’s boat, dubbed “Chicago’s Little Lady,” is fiery and bitter, delivering her grievances with biting wit. After enduring what was, quite literally, a crappier day than most, she is understandably salty, lamenting her fate as an essential cog in Chicago’s relentless tourism industry, forced back into duty almost immediately after the cleanup. Duggan’s sass and indignation make her both sympathetic and sharply funny.

Meanwhile, Colonna’s bus is a delightfully slippery character, playing the devil’s advocate in defense of the (supposedly) innocent Dave Matthews Band. His character exudes confidence and comes prepared with an “alternate bus theory” that blames Linkin Park’s tour bus instead. Colonna’s bus is as smooth-talking as a seasoned politician, spinning his own narrative with impressive dedication, despite the smelly evidence.

A bridge too mild

While Duggan and Colonna bring energy and memorable comic timing to their roles, the performances and writing around the Kinzie Street Bridge and the Sears/Willis Tower (Harrison) are less effective. Edborg’s bridge, though intentionally passive and mild-mannered, struggles to maintain the comedic momentum of the show. His dry delivery occasionally works, particularly with his joke about how he is better known for the 1992 Chicago flood than this, but the character often feels like an afterthought to the show’s zany energy.

Similarly, Harrison’s Sears Tower provides some clever laughs, particularly with running jokes about refusing to be referred to as the Willis Tower and her character’s desire to turn the entire ordeal into a musical. The jokes become repetitive, but the writing eventually culminates her arc with a spectacular payoff: a hilariously outrageous musical number that turns “Poopgate” into a chaotic spectacle of song and dance.

Eyes Up, Mouth Agape doesn’t attempt to offer a profound message or extract deeper meaning from Chicago’s most infamous moment of public defecation. Instead, it revels in its own ridiculousness, finding comedy in the unlikely convergence of a bus, bridge and boat — and the unforgettable shit that ensued. The show’s refusal to take itself too seriously is what makes it work, offering up escapist, crass humor in a time when laughter feels more necessary than ever.

As we enter four more years of Trump’s America, it is nice to have a place where we can laugh at life’s unexpected chaos, no matter how messy it is.

-Toni Tresca, Nov 13th, 2024, Boulder Weekly

OnStage Colorado- Buntport’s gross-out comedy is its funniest in years

‘Eyes Up, Mouth Agape’ a twisted study in perspective — and poop

Once upon a time, on Aug. 8, 2004, Chicago’s Little Lady had 800 pounds of liquid human waste dumped on her as she passed beneath a bridge.

The perpetrator was a Dave Matthews Band tour bus, and the contents of the coach’s septic tank passed through the metal grates of the Kinzie Street Bridge and onto an unsuspecting group of people on the tour boat. They were looking up, mouths agape, at Chicago’s skyline when they were defiled and befouled in the most appalling manner.

Blecchhh!

For most, this 20-year-old incident is best forgotten. But for Buntport Theatre Company, Denver’s all-originals troupe, it sounded like a good idea for a play. It’s gross, for sure — a poop, pee, vomit and fart joke spectacular that gleefully flouts good taste while delivering perhaps the most laugh-out-loud funny Buntport show in recent memory.

This one has a few departures from a typical Buntport production — if such a thing exists. For one, all of the characters are inanimate objects. The bus is played by Brian Colonna; Chicago’s Little Lady is, of course, Hannah Duggan; the bridge is brought to moribund life by Erik Edborg; and Erin Rollman is a filmmaker doing a documentary about The Dave Matthews Bus Incident. And while those four typically comprise a Buntport cast (with SamAnTha Schmitz offstage), Eyes Up includes guest Emily K. Harrison as the guitar-strumming Sears (Willis) Tower.

Mounting pressure

The other big difference is the addition of music, which isn’t a typical component for Buntport. High atop the set and wearing a headpiece suggesting the top of the Sears Tower, Harrison adds musical flourishes throughout while there’s even a bit of a choreographed number toward the end.

Eyes Up also includes a live video element that’s become something of a signature for Buntport. Rollman sits upstage with three cameras, which she alternately turns on the bus, the bridge, the boat and the building with the stream appearing onscreen — just like a documentary cutting to separate interviews. It’s a neat way to present a film documentary onstage, even though the actors are compelled to sit in the dark when the camera is trained on other subjects. (It also has the added benefit of allowing actors to face away from the audience while still having their face in shot.)

What follows is a series of interviews that start off pretty tame and then escalate into all manner of whining, finger-pointing and recriminations as the objects recount the DMB bus incident from their own unique vantage point. Buntport went all out on the costumes, with Duggan, Colonna and Edborg in all-black body suits and wearing their well-designed object around their waist.

Rollman’s character goes from the calm, agnostic documentarian to an active, opinionated participant as the objects drive her to distraction with their internecine squabbles and criticism leveled at the filmmaker herself. Even the Sears Building goes from impartial observer to a judgmental, god-like figure inserting itself into the action.

As the documentarian digs deeper into their accounts, we see more and more of the personalities. Colonna’s bus is clearly the main culprit, but his character starts spinning the story like a PR crisis pro, deflecting the blame and even at one point trying to pin it on the tour bus of the band Linkin Park (the ol’ second bus theory).

The Little Lady grows increasingly fired up as the real victim here (never mind the passengers). It’s another great performance by Duggan, made even more impactful because the mere sight of her as the daintily named boat is simply hilarious — and in stark contrast to the character’s strident assertions of its victimhood.

Meanwhile, both of them discount the role of the bridge since the vile excreta passed right through its grates. Edborg is perfect as the Kinzie Street Bridge — a morose, sad-sack character whose deadpan delivery neatly complements the more frenetic bus and boat.

I’ve seen many Buntport shows over the years, and I’ve grown quite accustomed to the core four actors and the type of material they create. It’s kind of like having a corner diner where the staff never changes, they know how you like your coffee and even if the daily special isn’t exactly your cup of tea, you know it’s always something good. In Eyes Up, Buntport serves up something with a bit more over-the-top spice while Harrison adds a fresh voice and guitar to the melee.

Eyes Up, Mouth Agape is definitely the most disgusting play I’ve ever seen, and a bit of a challenge to my general prudishness around the scatological. But if you can get on board with the “everybody poops” mindset and the utter hilarity of the situation as recreated by the Buntport crew, you’re in for a very funny and utterly unique night at the theatre.

-Alex Miller, Nov 5th, 2024, Onstage Colorado

A man in a sweater and a cap holds up a 2D fish on a line, as though he has caught it. In front of him is a vintage microphone and, in the distance, another man sits, dimly lit and staring at the first man.

Marlowe’s Musings- 125 “NO”s

Lightly skimming over an armature of Sartre’s “NO EXIT,” Buntport Theater’s production of ‘125 “No”s’ is, in this reviewer’s interesting point of view, their best in years. It’s FUNNY and PROVOCATIVE! All four of Buntport’s intrepid actors get lots of superb lines and a plethora of plum moments! A make-up artist (Hannah Duggan), a special effects man (Erik Edborg), an extra who worries if he will be natural enough onscreen in the role that he performs naturally in everyday life (Brian Colonna), and a script consultant insistent on keeping good morals always onscreen (Erin Rollin) are living a just offstage purgatory! All four of these brilliant comics co-write, co-direct and co-design their original work.

Inspired by a quote on a poster in the lobby of a movie theatre that announced that Greer Garson had to do 125 takes of her saying the word “No”in the 1947 film, “Desire Me,” this original production shines!!!

Besides the stunning performances of the onstage actors you can also expect to be dazzled by the offstage voices of such Denver favorites as Jim Hunt( Director), Josh Hartwell (assistant) and Diana Dresser (Greer Garson).

This existential comedy is absurdist theatre at its best!

Run to get tickets!

– David Marlowe March 4th, 2024 Marlowe’s Musings

A 1940's woman is standing an old fashioned looking microphone that is hanging from the ceiling. She is holding both her hands up in exclamation about how wonderful an onion sandwich can be. Above her, hanging, as if suspended mid air, are three similar painted 2- demensional onions.

OnStage Colorado- Buntport explores the absurd with ‘125 “NO”s’

Or what happened when Greer Garson just couldn’t get that one line right

In their never-ending quest to take the tiniest shard of a story and turn it into a play, Buntport Theater set its sights on a long-ago anecdote involving a film star from the 1940s and her very bad day on set at the hands of a jackass director.

What would it look like, the Buntportians wondered, if we could get a look just off set to see how people were reacting to the director hassling Greer Garson to get a one-word line — “no” — just right over 125 takes? In 125 “NO”s, the usual lineup of Buntport actors — Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg and Erin Rollman — takes us on a weirdly entertaining trip to explore the situation.

The soon-to-be bomb is MGM’s Desire Me starring Garson and Robert Mitchum. Crew members Walter (Edborg – lighting) and Bertie (Duggan – costumes) are joined by a local fisherman named Vincent (Colonna) and Rollman as Ruth, the censor. Vincent is there because he’d rescued Garson in a real-life incident in Monterey when she was knocked off a rock by a freak wave. To thank him, the film crew added him as an extra playing … a fisherman.

Colonna is quirky and endearing as the starstruck Vincent. But we soon find he’s no ordinary fisherman, with plenty of opinions about everything from Sartre to human anatomy. (At one point there’s quite a bit of discussion regarding the philtrum — the two ridges just below the septum.) Vincent also spends a fair amount of time practicing how to walk like a fisherman. It’s a goofy gag that somehow underscores the character’s seriousness about his extra role. It also serves as one of many physical bits to provide action amidst a good deal of philosophical discussion.

As Bertie, Duggan is in her element as the brassy everywoman who’s just doing her job despite the bullshit happening on set. She gets plenty of laughs, as does Edborg’s Walter. He’s that “you want it when?” kinda guy who’s happy to snark at the powers-that-be from the blue-collar vantage point.

Along with Vincent, the other wild-card character is Ruth, the on-set censor on the lookout for anything she deems naughty. Prim, proper and annoying in a stuffy tan skirt and jacket, she could be played just for the stereotype she is. But Rollman is a gifted comic actor who introduces several layers to Ruth, including a dizzying array of bizarre vocal and facial expressions.

Buntport works in a black-box setting with minimal set pieces. For this one, they included an interesting gimmick that involved a collection of objects lowered from the ceiling by strings operated by the actors. Signs, faces, movie posters, a fish — all kinds of stuff —descend at appropriate times. These include four old-timey microphones — one for each player — that are used for monologues on a variety of topics.

It’s a clever device that adds some business in an otherwise very wordy play.

One other unusual aspect of the show is the addition of some non-Buntport actors — albeit in recorded fashion. While we never see the action on the set, we do hear the voices of the director (played by Jim Hunt), Greer (Diana Dresser) and an assistant (Josh Hartwell).

For those accustomed to more structured scripts with rising action, climaxes and all that, you may be mystified by the Buntport approach. But for those willing to embrace absurd flights of fancy that veer well outside the lanes of what you might expect, 125 “NO”s is a kick.

-Alex Miller, March 2, 2024, Onstage Colorado