Buntport Theater is always up for a new challenge. With “Indiana, Indiana,” the endlessly witty collective takes on acting. Real, character-driven acting – while telling an uncharacteristically melancholy family tragedy.

It’s a departure for this proven team known more for awing audiences and its unique brand of smart, irreverent humor.

“Indiana, Indiana” is something else indeed. Something dark and lovely. Sad and wonderful.

At the same time, “Indiana” marks a welcome return to Buntport’s presentational roots, every few moments conjuring another bit of its simple, signature stage magic.

Based on Laird Hunt’s elegiac, nonlinear novel, “Indiana” is about a simple old man named Noah who spends his late years drifting through his memories. There are those before Opal, and those after Opal. The sad circumstances of his detachment from a wife with an affinity for flames are worthy of John Irving.

What makes “Indiana” so intriguing is its approach to the chaos of memory, and Buntport’s approach to staging it.

The set is initially draped in a white sheet. Grainy, mood-establishing home movies play not on the wall but more askew: on the floor. The sheet is pulled to reveal an entire wall of stacked Mason jars, as if lining a Midwestern general store. Each jar is randomly filled – with straw, buttons, love letters and even bones. Each represents a memory from Noah’s life. Accessing a needed one here after so many decades looks akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

We see Noah’s story in bits, just as this old-man mind remembers them – hazy, incomplete, fragmented and unreliable. We’re in the land of “50-percent clarity,” we’re told – Noah remembers half the story, and we get only half its meaning.

He’s played with sad sobriety by Evan Weissman. Coaxed into talking by caring neighbor Max (Brian Colonna), we go back and forth in time to meet his teacher father (Erik Edborg) and devout mother (Hannah Duggan). With Noah’s eyesight failing, Max also reads aloud old letters from his beloved, Opal. These letters come with corresponding home movies, cleverly projected on everything from a woman’s apron to the back of an umbrella to the side of a washing machine.

In these murky journeys into the past, we discover Noah is a seer, a gift he’s reluctantly used to help cops solve crimes but has never been of any use to himself. His flashes come with crackling sounds and bursts of light, like a synapse not so much firing but short-circuiting.

The unfolding mystery of Noah’s current solitude culminates with a visit to his wedding, during which two glowing Mason jars, one blue and one red, swing from attached cables.

It’s an ambiguous but strangely moving effect.

“Indiana, Indiana” is in league with the Denver Center’s “Plainsong” and its coming sequel, “Eventide” – both based on novels that are as much read to an audience as performed. But Buntport’s creation shows just how beautifully real theatricality can be intermingled into such storytelling.

This brief journey is much to process at once, but it’s all captivatingly staged, and the story arcs satisfyingly.

While it might help to have read the novel, “Indiana” succeeds on it its own theatrical terms. Yes, it’s strange. Some might think there’s not much sense to it.

But, as we’re told along the way, “There might be!”

-John Moore, September 12, 2009, Denver Post

There’s a word for the adroit, unpredictable symbiosis that turns a Ukrainian short story into a theatrical mud bath, adapts a confusing Shakespeare tragedy into a musical comedy or propels an episodic Colorado novel into the Twilight Zone.

“Many times, the act of ‘Buntporting’ the show happens after we’ve made the choice to deal with certain material,” says Buntport Theater actor Brian Colonna, reflecting on “Indiana, Indiana,” the singular novel that inspired the latest Buntport collaboration. It opens on Friday.

“We’ll say, ‘You gotta put some Buntport in.’ This novel is so beautiful and strange already. The nonlinear story line begs for some Buntporting, as well.”

Buntport: It’s a verb and a noun. In the Buntport Theater’s eccentric stagings, the actors have slogged sloppily through a mud pit, offered a goldfish playing Ophelia in “Hamlet” and staged an Ice Capades-inspired interpretation of some particularly bleak Franz Kafka material.

Their latest challenge is translating University of Denver professor Laird Hunt’s dark, poetic novel “Indiana, Indiana” into a theatrical drama.

The novel maps the fitful interior and exterior landscapes of protagonist Noah. Its deliberately cryptic content – Noah’s memories focus heavily on what his father calls “fifty percent stories” that omit half of the tale – and nonlinear structure could have been written specifically to be Buntported.

“When you’re reading, you can sit on it for a second while you put the puzzle pieces together, so the challenge was how to put it on stage without making it too artsy,” said ensemble member Hannah Duggan.

“We don’t want people going ‘Wha . . . what?’ We’ve tried to stay true to the book.”

“Plus we thought it would be nice to actually meet a living author,” said actor Evan Weissman.

“People like to hear songs they know, set to different words. That’s a given,” said Duggan. “And when it comes with really bad dancing and colorful costumes, you just can’t beat it.”

That’s a wry reference to Buntport’s longtime reliance on public-domain works, a dictate of the company’s lean budget. (It also avoids possible rows with authors surprised by particularly elastic translations of their work.)
The innovative, collaborative Buntport Theater company dates back to 1998. Then, seven Colorado College alums – Colonna, Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Duggan, Matt Petraglia, SamAnTha Schmitz and Weissman – began creating what Denver theater critic John Moore once called “the most quirky, creative and thought-provoking new material in Denver.”

Thanks largely to the runaway success of “Titus Andronicus! The Musical!” – which was staged four times with long and often sold-out performances before the company retired the hit in 2007 – Buntport earned a reputation for edgy comedy. That’s a mixed blessing because its productions aren’t always cheeky and blithe.

The company’s adaptation of “Indiana, Indiana” steps outside Buntport’s unique mixture of intelligence and silliness and incorporates multimedia elements.

“There may be a moment or two of levity, but it’s generally a dramatic show,” Weissman said.

“I don’t think it’s the type that will have people laughing out loud,” Rollman said.

“Indiana, Indiana” maintains Buntport’s tradition of collaborative theater. Although most members of the company have met Hunt, the novelist wasn’t involved in translating his novel from paper to proscenium. Opening night will be as surprising to Hunt as it will be to people who never heard of his book.

“The adaptation takes on a life of its own, and we have to respect that, while always making sure that we’ve maintained the feeling of the original,” Rollman said.

“Anything can be Buntported. You just have to figure out how.”

August 30, 2009, Claire Martin

You might expect, even hope, for Buntport Theater’s first full foray into musical theater to be an act of all-out comic subversion. Instead, the unusually titled “Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.” is a surprisingly heartfelt and fun homage to the form.

Well, wait a minute. There is that song where the postal inspector tortures a naughty employee with an electric dog collar. And there’s the letter carrier who decides the “bird dirt” on her windshield is the sure sign of a coming epiphany. And there’s that, shall we say, detonative climax. (Sorry, but the last word of the title is a dead giveaway.)

Even still, yes, “S.S.S.B.” is a surprisingly heartfelt and fun homage to the form. Really.

It’s just not fully realized.

Buntport, a highly regarded ensemble that stages only original works it creates in collaboration, embraces whimsical musical conventions. But it takes the genre in its own distinct misdirection, too – one Buntport fans should relish, while hard-core musical geeks may find it just a bit out of reach.

As its quadrangular title suggests, “S.S.S.B.” is not so much an arc as a square: It’s four distinct stories tenuously connected by a postcard, making for an evening of right angles, at once exciting and discombobulating, peppered with starbursts of creative fancies.

Recalling both the whimsy of “Avenue Q” and the melancholy of Buntport’s own “Winter in Graupel Bay,” “S.S.S.B.” explores loneliness and the fragile interconnectedness between neighbors – while singing unabashedly fun synth- pop songs by Adam Stone to taped Casio accompaniment.

The horizontal set is a block of four home fronts that spin around and transform into cars, offices and even rooms inside homes!

The story plays out like a film that follows an object rather than a single character.

The tale jumps the shark when masochistic postal inspector Richard (Brian Colonna) busts Jason for his peeking too far into these letters, performing a strange torture song that’s perhaps a nod to the dentist from “Little Shop of Horrors.” We never fully recover from that abrupt change in tenor, but the journey of the postcard – depicting a man sitting alone by a lake – goes on.We first meet letter carrier Susan (Erin Rollman), who bursts into “Bird Poop Angel,” a clever nod to “Pippin”like “Corner of the Sky” show tunes. Shy Pete (Evan Weissman) drops unaddressed postcards into a big blue mailbox. But Susan, not knowing they are meant for her, delivers them to the dead-letter office. There, office drone Jason (Erik Edborg) revels in the stories told within all this misdirected correspondence.

This staging constantly straddles the line between brilliant and incongruous. That is, until Hannah Duggan sends the show into the stratosphere. In the final chapter, she plays Daphne, a shifty gal with a nasal affliction that makes her snort like a pig. Not to give away why, but when Daphne breaks into the song “My Bomb and I” while stuffed in a box and waiting to be mailed, brilliant wins out.

But at 70 minutes, “S.S.S.B.” is too short and doesn’t ever congeal into a meaningful whole. Characters are introduced and dropped. There are too many loose ends. Much is never resolved.

Buntport always drops little smart bombs into its shows, too, but here the high jinks compete with the highbrow. You can do a musical that’s about the search for meaning and connection without indulging so much in Tennyson, Kafka and Shakespeare.

This is a musical, after all, and I know one thing about musicals: Most are pretty dumb. What works so well here is the impossible perkiness; the sweet, unexpressed crushes; the dorky personal-pronoun ballads; the peppy group show tunes.

“S.S.S.B.” marks the continued evolution of a fearless, funny and fiercely intelligent ensemble. (One that, it turns out, has been hiding some surprisingly nice singing voices.)

Just stick to the cheese – and skip the spontaneous combustion.

—John Moore, March 6, 2009, Denver Post

Buntport Theater is taking its first full original musical seriously. They’ll tell you so . . . just as soon as they finish their smokes.

As one actor is interviewed, he apologizes for speaking so softly. “That’s because we’re professionals,” he says with mock earnestness, “and we must protect our voices.”

Just how soberly are Denver’s popular insurrectionists taking (on) the musical form in “Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.,” their 26th original production?

“The very first number has a woman singing about bird poop on her windshield that she believes is in the shape of an angel,” said actress Erin Rollman. “So right from the get-go, you can see that things are a little bit off.”

But lest you think Buntport has set out to merely parody the most easily parodied of American art forms, know that this acclaimed collective harbors a dirty little secret.

“The truth is, we do like doing musical numbers, because they are fun and stupid,” said Hannah Duggan. “We are not at all musical-theater performers – but maybe we all secretly wish that we were.”

This is a sore subject for Brian Colonna. In his senior year of high school, he was asked not come to back to music rehearsals. Why?

“They seemed to think it was not a winning battle,” he said. To which Rollman interjects: “It’s important to note that in Spanish class, Brian was also asked to stop speaking Spanish. True story.”

For a decade, Buntport has made its theatrical name by primarily staging intelligent, quirky variations on known titles like “Something Is Rotten” (for “Hamlet”). But while “Seal” is its first full, unabashed musical, fans have come to adore the company’s sporadic and often unexpected forays into song and dance. Kitschy, awkwardly performed, note-imperfect song and dance.

“People like to hear songs they know, set to different words. That’s a given,” said Duggan. “And when it comes with really bad dancing and colorful costumes, you just can’t beat it.”

Here’s a look back at some classic musical moments in Buntport’s history:
“Titus Andronicus: The Musical.” Immediately after Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, has her tongue chopped off, Duggan breaks out into an aria version of Britney Spears’ “Oops, I Did It Again,” sending blood spurting out of her mouth. It’s funny, Rollman said, because it’s horrible.

“The juxtaposition between a Britney Spears song and a moment that’s post-rape mutilation seems … an odd juxtaposition,” deadpanned Erik Edborg.

That moment is just so peculiar, Colonna added, “that you are either going to laugh . . . or hate us.”

“James and the Giant Peach.” In this classic episode of the company’s biweekly serial “Magnets on the Fridge,” the gang is driving to New York so Nathan can see his beloved New York Jets play football. But along the way, “we run into a group of really nasty marine biologists wearing shark visors,” said Rollman, setting the stage for a showdown between jets and sharks (rimshot). Suddenly, a “West Side Story”-inspired gang fight/dance breaks out, to the tune of “The Jet Song.”

“It really took people by surprise,” said Rollman, “because it’s not until the music starts that you ‘get’ just how dumb all of this really is.”

“The Nutcracker.” In an episode of the serial “Starship Troy,” Colonna plays a pilot named Zoloft (half human and half Sansmolarian). He falls asleep and has a dream in which he dances with a giant golden calculator and enjoys a sugarplum- fairy dance with Edborg and Evan Weissman.

The broken calculator gets stuck on the number 55378008. “Which, when turned upside down, says, ‘Boobless,’ ” said Weissman. Added Rollman: “We’re nothing if not classy.”

The Flobots! Long before Denver’s latest breakout band went global, they were among the Buntport faithful. They were enlisted to play for a “Magnets” battle-of-the-bands episode. The woeful Buntport combo, armed only with songs about Vienna sausages, forfeits to the rockers, and the episode ends with Edborg and the band singing a cover of “The Final Countdown.”

“All that Crap.” The last of 100 combined episodes of “Magnets” and “Starship Troy” ended with Buntport’s homage to the musical “Chicago” – and itself.

To her credit, Rollman meticulously studied Bebe Neuwirth performing “All That Jazz” on YouTube, and (tried to) steal her every move. The number included a lot of heavy lifting – though, oddly, it was Weissman being lifted, not the women.

“We tried in our best fashion to put in as many Bob Fosse moves we could, even though none of us are dancers – at all,” Rollman said, provoking Weissman’s defensive retort, “Hey . . . I’m a dancer.”

“Always wearing sweatpants,” Duggan responded, “does not make you a dancer.”

Colonna says that number ably marked the end of the company’s massive undertaking. “This was an endeavor that composed eight years of our lives,” he said. “What could possibly speak to what all of that meant? Crap!”

“Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang.” This new musical is penned by Adam Stone, who took a class taught by the Buntport collective at their Colorado College alma mater. Colonna calls Stone “a synth-pop-music machine.”

The story follows four separate protagonists, using the U.S. Postal Service as a central metaphor for mankind’s interconnectedness. The group promises Stone’s music carries the troupe far beyond its penchant for silly karaoke-style pop songs.

“This is not a spoof of musicals,” Rollman said. “But like everything else we do, how we approach our musical is maybe a little bit different.”

But the benefit of performing original music, Rollman said, is obvious: “This way, you guys don’t know what the notes are supposed to be,” she said, “so good luck with that!”

John Moore, Denver Post

For a decade, Buntport has wowed Denver audiences with its marvelous brand of transformational theater. In “Cinderella,” actors changed form before our eyes. In “McGuinn and Murray,” the set was a living character. In “Something Is Rotten,” Ophelia was played by a live goldfish.

Of this inventive troupe’s 25 collaborative creations, many based on classic literature, none seemed a better launching pad for inspiration than Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” in which gods change their human toys into animals or trees, from dead to alive, as punishment, reward or for their own amusement.

Tales of transformation by a company rooted in transformational theater? It’s a match made in Rome.

But we’re “Anywhere But Rome,” and sadly, there’s little of Buntport’s trademark presentational magic on display. This is a minimal-set show designed to travel to schools or festivals. But they ought have saved “Metamorphoses” for the full Buntport treatment. The play is laden with the kind of stage possibilities Buntport is famous for.

“Rome” is not at all an adaptation of Ovid’s epic poem. Instead it imagines the exiled poet (Erik Edborg) hitchhiking through South Dakota with two of his fictional characters: The blind prophet Tiresias (Brian Colonna) and Io (Erin Rollman), who was turned into a cow by her lover Zeus to deflect his wife’s suspicions.

Rollman’s cow is a sweet and shy creation: She’s wearing a polka-dot dress, pink boots and a cowbell, with hooves for hands and horns above her face, which she tries to cover with a ridiculous plastic mask of a pretty little girl.

They get picked up by a cheerful modern-day couple named Louis (Evan Weissman) and Carol (Hannah Duggan) with their own molten secret: Carol is starting to turn into a chicken. Together they embark on a road trip with its share of surprises (how often do you see a chicken and a cow playing badminton?).

But what follows is mostly a sparkling but elliptical conversation about things like the nature of love, body image and self-acceptance. “People don’t take kindly to difference,” we’re told – a popular theme on area stages right now.

By now, fans and critics alike are fairly predisposed to hail whatever Buntport creates. But it’s always necessary to ask, “What is this about?” and “Does it work?” It’s fun to watch “Anywhere But Rome” just to observe the Buntport creative process at work. But its ultimate purpose here remains elusive because this one is ideologically unfinished.

The ensemble offers us plenty to ponder: In Ovid’s tales, why is it that passion always triggers these human transformations? Why is it that only the two women here are changing physical form? Are not the mind and body always changing?

The driving force of this play is Ovid’s need to recall and rewrite “Metamorphoses,” which he famously destroyed in a fire as an artistic statement. But he did so only knowing full well that other copies existed. So it was an empty dramatic gesture, which makes his memory quest here one of no real consequence, as evidenced by the fact that the modern-day couple are well-versed in his work.

There are parallels and references to “Waiting for Godot,” “Alice in Wonderland,” Stephen King and more, but threads are never fully connected. And because the overall point remains so ambiguous, things grow static.

With Buntport, there’s always the expectation of one more level of deeper engagement, but “Anywhere But Rome” never quite transforms itself onto that higher plane. Why not further explore Ovid’s love-hate relationship with words? The shared status of writers and gods? That mere mortals are prone to self-destruction far greater than anything the gods can mete out?

Further questions: Why are there no gods onstage here, only evidence of their handiwork? Why have the prophet Tiresius tell Io she will one day turn into the Egyptian goddess Isis – and then not show it?

At one point, Carol quips to Ovid: “Your trying to analyze it just takes the fun right out of it!” Point taken. But that sums up “Anywhere But Rome,” for better and worse.

-John Moore, November 28, 2008, Denver Post

 

Truth, it is said, is often stranger than fiction, and this is never truer than when the inventive and irreverent minds of the Buntport Theater collaborative begin to riff on a few choice facts.

In the world premiere of “Musketeer,” these facts revolve around Alexandre Dumas, père, and his research and writing of the ever popular adventure novel, “The Three Musketeers.”

As with many great storytellers, Dumas based his work on someone else’s less effective but potentially compelling material, in this case “The Memoirs of Mister d’Artagnan,” which he borrowed from the Castellane Branch of the Marseilles Public Library. The trouble is, Dumas never returned the book.

More than 150 years later, Charlotte, a librarian at Castellane, reads that Dumas is to be disinterred from his local burial monument and tourist attraction, and hand towed to the Pantheon in Paris, where he is to be enshrined with other French luminaries.

Erin Rollman inhabits Charlotte as a compulsive-obsessive bureaucratic rules enforcer whose unyielding devotion to the library’s policies, and lack of allegiance to the laws of space- time, lead her to a confrontation with the famous author.

Like the proverbial gun on stage that must be used, Dumas’ casket is fully pimped out by the irrepressible ensemble, replete with wheels, trap doors and a fringe-trimmed awning.

All it takes is a little knock on the wooden box to wake up the dead and send us on a mercurial, back-and- forth journey between the present and 1844. It’s nice to see that after all these years in such a confining space, Dumas (Evan Weissman) is still in good spirits. We’re drawn in by Weissman’s jovial manner and urbane wit, which lend Dumas gravity and intelligence. After all, this guy’s books have outsold Victor Hugo and Voltaire.

To attempt to collect an overdue book fine of 5,784 euros from Dumas, Charlotte must get past his honor guard, three contemporary French citizens, each dressed as one of the Three Musketeers, with a personality suited to the role. One of them, Edgard (Erik Edborg), who plays Athos, is Charlotte’s former husband.

As prescribed by the novel, Edborg’s Athos is an upright, principled, even chivalrous fellow. Hanna Duggan is thoughtful, devout and serene as Simone, who stands in for Aramis. Brian Colonna is outrageous as the hot-headed, hard-drinking, womanizing Porthos.

As loyal Buntport patrons know, the ensemble’s imaginative story lines are only one facet of the creativity that regularly erupts on this stage. The entire story of “Musketeer” is enacted in front of panels that serve as projection screens for video and cinematic scenery, narrative and documentary evidence, as well as for shadow boxes employed to display a series of stunning pantomimes and some nifty sleight-of-hand.

Andrew Horwitz’s live score seamlessly enhances the action.

“Musketeer” is an impressive kickoff to the company’s eighth year, exhibiting a hard-won sophistication born from dedication to their collaborative regime. The genuine hilarity, the poignancy of Dumas’ aesthetic argument for his transgression, and the special effects make for a compelling evening.

-Bob Bows, August 16, 2008, Denver Post

Interpreting Shakespeare’s goriest play as a musical comedy is a stretch, even in an era renowned for idiosyncratic Shakespeare stagings in samurai mufti or deep space. Not only do these Colorado College alumni accomplish this admirably, but they manage so successfully that this marks the fourth time that their Buntport Theater company has mounted it.

“People seem to like it,” said Erin Rollman, who plays both Titus’ brother, Marcus, and his nemesis, the vengeful Goth queen Tamora.

Tickets to the current production began selling months ago, when rumors spread that “Titus Andronicus!” would be remounted for the final time. Earlier productions routinely sold out, disappointing latecomers who thought they could show up without reservations. Several book clubs already bought blocks of tickets as an alternative to hosting a holiday party.

“Nothing like baking children into pies for holiday cheer,” observed Brian Colonna, referring to a particularly grisly scene that rigorously interprets the adage about revenge being a dish best served cold.

Turning a Shakespeare tragedy – particularly such a confusing and multiply flawed script that scholars debate whether Shakespeare actually wrote “Titus Andronicus” – into a musical comedy was an enormous leap, particularly for a young company.

The actors who formed Buntport all graduated from Colorado College, an elite liberal arts college that breeds unorthodox intellectuals, between 1998 and 2001. The Buntport crew is so devoutly collaborative that Denver Post critic John Moore once posited that the company “writes, directs, designs, acts, builds and probably showers as one.”

Their hallmark lies in distilling an often familiar story to its utter essence whilst plundering and frolicking with its beloved details, rather like Monty Python’s anarchist grandchildren.

The decision to present “Titus Andronicus” as a musical comedy emerged during a brainstorming session. Someone suggested that it would be funny to have Lavinia – a character whose tongue is cut out early in the play – sing an aria upon being dismembered.

“We were amused and mortified, which pretty much describes the usual audience reaction,” Rollman said.

“But it IS funny. It’s hard not to laugh.”

So they allowed the aria – a Britney Spears parody as vicious as it is visual – to set the show’s tone.

Since 2002, when they debuted their version of what they delightedly call “Shakespeare’s bloodiest play,” Buntport similarly dissected “Hamlet,” “Moby-Dick” “Macbeth” (as “Macblank,” referring to the theatrical superstition that forbids naming the play offstage), and “The Odyssey: A Walking Tour.”

The results are as reachable as they are illuminating, both conceptually and concretely. Those Elizabethan frocks are made from corduroy and denim pants acquired at the ARC thrift store on South Broadway. A car radio/ashtray and a gas can serve as two puppets. A hat on a stick becomes an appreciative listener.

“You end up with integrity when you stage a show you can afford,” Rollman said.

“It doesn’t take a big budget to put on a good show. We wink at the audience. We all know this forest is just a van. So let’s be in cahoots!”

-Claire Martin, December 2, 2007, Denver Post