Whether you’re “in the vein” (sorry!) for a ridiculously funny play, or willing to give up your “kingdom for a horse”- laugh, (sorry again!) Buntport’s RICHARD’s the one for you!

     Lucky for us, Buntport’s shows are never what anyone can possibly imagine.

      So…

Imagine yourself in a seat in a school gym where self-absorbed pundits eat strawberry snacks. 

     In a nut shell, The Richard the Third Society is having its meeting in the school gym this time. Having invited special guest, Philippa, a novelist and famed reporter on the finding of Richard’s bones neath a parking lot, this society of Richard enthusiasts is set for a grand interview.  

     Played with delightfully absurd propriety by Hannah Duggan, Phillipa goes from prim to explosive in a nano-second when sports activity from the other side of the gym interrupts her coy presentation.

     There’s also a wondrous representation of Queen Margaret by the dynamically gifted comic, Erin Rollman. In eye-popping period robes, headgear and pointy shoes, this actor punctuates the evening with hilariously engaging trivia involving  everything imaginable, from Victorian undergarments to a discussion of accents!

Arriving late for the festivities, George, the president of these Richard enthusiasts, played with preening narcissism by Erik Edborg, spars with every man ‘Also George,’ (Brian Colonna) who does everything from setting up and tearing down, to writing of the minutes once the meeting is over.

I hope I haven’t said too much about this 50^thoriginal play by these intrepid players. By now everyone knows that Buntport is a national treasure. All four of these astoundingly talented actors are famous for keeping us guessing as to which comic universe we’ll be exploring next.

Get set to be wondrously entertained!!! 

Oh, and let me know if the Bard actually did malign King Richard. I mean, Really!!! Isn’t everyone ‘discontent in winter?”(not sorry.)

– David Marlowe April 11th, 2022 Marlowe’s Musings

Hoo-boy, OK, where to start?

So in Richard, its 50^th original production, Buntport Theater Company transformed their space in Denver into the gymnasium of the Apple Valley Junior High for a gathering of the Denver chapter of the Richard III Society. With half a basketball court and hoop, divisional championship flags and brightly painted walls, the stage was set as the audience filed in to take our seats in what amounted to the bleachers section. (This is really well done, so much so that for a moment I was thinking, “Gee, I don’t remember Buntport being in a school.”)

And here I thought I was going to be seeing some kind of medieval court sendup or something, which is my bad for making any assumptions about what Buntport is up to. When last we met, it was in their parking lot last spring for a dizzying trip to Mars in Space People in Space. Now back inside, finally, the focus is on a decidedly niche, nerdy little group of Richard III enthusiasts who are excited to have a special guest in the form of screenwriter and lightly qualified historian Philippa Langley (Hannah Duggan).

Erik Edborg (l) and Brian Colonna as the Georges

But first, society president George (Erik Edborg) and his counterpart and secretary Also George (Brian Colonna) must deal with their newest and most disruptive member, played with trashy panache by Erin Rollman. Dressed for the meeting as Queen Margaret of Anjou, Rollman’s character is both bull-in-the-china-shop and skunk-at-the-garden-party for the two Georges. Festooned with an outrageous hairdo (think Princess Leia caught in a pair of fishing nets), full-on robes, super-pointy red shoes and a bloody prop head hanging from a string around her shoulder looking like something from the Spirit Halloween bargain bin, the Queen appears to know a great deal more about her history than the Georges. And while she’s busy braying sarcastic criticism at the guys, her cosplay reveals her own deep need to be here — for where else could she go?

Silly, yes, but the level of detail the Buntport team puts into this is impressive — a testament to their geeky devotion to the topic at hand as well as, no doubt, a lot of time and frustration pent up after two years of pandemic bullshit. Enter the lobby and two entire walls are covered with a timeline that includes everything from the death of various Richards to the births of the Buntport crew. In addition to the program, we also get “Queen Margaret’s Handout!!!” — a 12-page newsletter kinda thing that has an “overly detailed timeline” of English monarchs from the 14^th and 15^th centuries, an “overly simplified family tree of Buntport Theater,” a quick history of the graham cracker, some stuff about split-crotch drawers, a Ricardian word search, a bibliography and a bunch of other stuff that mirrors the high-speed collision of history and comedy onstage.

There really isn’t any other place in Colorado you can find this kind of original work being done, with everything created by the four actors named above as well as SamAnTha Schmitz off stage. The pure joy evident in the creation and presentation of Richard is a heartwarming reminder that it’s still possible to keep a theatrical freak flag flying — ya just gotta believe.

Hannah Duggan as Philippa

Historical discord

From the get-go, we understand that there’s plenty of friction between the Georges, with Colonna’s character focused on an orderly running of the meeting and Edborg’s more focused on satisfying his outsized ego. When we finally meet the guest of honor, Philippa, she’s already been eclipsed by the Queen, and Duggan’s character has to fight her way back to relevance with her slideshow documenting the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton underneath a parking lot in Leicester a decade ago (Philippa is a real person and this is all true, BTW).

Also George points out that they already know all about this, but for Philippa, it’s all she’s got. Meanwhile, Queen Margaret continues to grab the mic and spout all of her many and varied theories about what was really going on back during The War of the Roses and the 100 Years War — none of which I will make the slightest attempt to document here. Rollman is all over the place, at one point standing next to me in the audience chomping on Goldfish while ranting about accents and later spearheading the climax of what’s clearly the craziest fucking game of basketball every staged in the vicinity of Lipan and W. 7^th Avenue.

To keep up, Philippa resorts to DaVinci Code-style numerology and BS letter pairings to “Dan Brown the shit” out of the proceedings. Still gamely trying to keep things on track, Also George nonetheless starts to run with the crazy as George goes all in and the two ultimately end up limping about as they suffer from jock itch and athlete’s foot. No worries, it all sorta makes sense at one point.

As Richard lurches toward its conclusion, the audience is left addled and spent — but in a good way. At 90 minutes sans intermission, it’s a shot-out-of-a-cannon experience that shouldn’t be missed.

Watching this familiar cast put themselves out there time after time in so many funny, wildly original shows is one of the brightest spots on the Denver theatre scene. Congrats to Buntport on 50 shows — we’re all looking forward to the next 50!

A sample of Queen Margaret’s handout

-Alex Miller April, 10th 2022 OnStage Colorado

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.

Get this: Five friends decide to form their own theater company right out of college. Not to “do plays.” To do their own quirky, creative, thought-provoking and completely original 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.

There isn’t even an equivalent to the Buntport model in world politics. That would be what academics call an “isocracy” – a form of government where all citizens have equal political power. And the reason you’ve probably never heard of that word is because that kind of thing would never, ever work.

Buntport somehow works. And it’s worked for more than two decades. Because they work their butts off.

This Friday, Buntport opens its 50th original, full-length play, called “❤️ Richard.” (Yes, they have created so many play titles with words that they are now resorting to emojis.)

To put that into context, let’s consider some of the more prolific playwrights of all time. Spanish author Lope Félix de Vega de Carpio is said to have written as many as 1,800 plays – but he doesn’t count given that, 400 years later, none of us have ever heard of him.

Shakespeare, we’ve heard of. He’s dubiously credited with writing 37 plays (although, granted, they are long enough to constitute 137.) Neil Simon wrote 30. August Wilson wrote 10.

The Buntport collective of Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg, Erin Rollman and Samantha Schmitz have created 50 new plays at a pace of about three a year. Not to mention about 120 additional original episodes of two popular live sit-com serials they have staged over the years called “Magnets on the Fridge” and “Starship Troy.”

When the conversation turns to the development of new plays in Colorado theater, it often skips right over Buntport – when in fact, the conversation should start with Buntport. And they have done it all with modest resources, but just enough support to consistently pay themselves a modest, full-time wage, making them among a handful of Colorado theatermakers who have made their careers doing what they love, without having to take on second or third jobs.

They are living the dream. A very tired, but happy dream.

“When looking back on our own history, even we are surprised by the sheer amount of work we have developed and produced,” said Rollman.

When you think of it, creating a nonprofit, artist-led company model that works differently than traditional theaters is pretty punk rock. ”I never would have thought this when I was a younger person, but looking back now and realizing that we’ve completely bucked the system for so long does seem like the most punk-rock thing we could have ever done,” said Colonna.

Buntport’s origin goes back to 1998, when seven pals from Colorado College began creating collaborative works ranging from political satire to absurdist comedy with ingenious intellect, often all in the same plays. In 2001, they turned an empty warehouse at 717 Lipan St. into their permanent home. (The company name, by the way, is a mangled reference to the Bush presidential retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine.)

So what is it about Buntport, exactly?

Don’t ask them. They have no self-awareness that they will cop to. But we already know that working in this unique way only could have succeeded if all the players shared the same general aesthetic, sense of humor and lack of evident ego.

“Having no hierarchy is actually a feminist concept, as is the overall approach and leadership,” said Evan Weissman, one of two founding company members who have moved on from having daily involvement in Buntport, in his case to form an innovative nonprofit civic health club called Warm Cookies of the Revolution. “From start to finish, from how shows are pitched to the writing, the characters, the acting, the design and the marketing, it is evident that Buntport is – mostly accidentally – counter-cultural, feminist and artist-led.”

Also feminist: For being such a fixed company of players, Buntport has been remarkably open to welcoming collaborative guest artists and partnering with local arts groups. One was Gary Culig, who played Franz Kafka in the truthfully titled “Kafka on Ice.” He has a pretty good idea why the Buntporters are so beloved by artists and audiences alike.

“Buntport puts the play in play,” Culig said. “They’re truly having so much fun up there, and that rubs off on the audience. They’re also so good at creating such brilliantly magical moments — usually something really simple but super-clever and ingenious. I know I’ve gasped more than once watching one of their shows because I was surprised or caught off-guard by a moment of true theatricality. And they usually achieve that magic with such simple things they get at the hardware store or scavenge from a thrift shop. It’s like the best parts of children’s theater – but for adults.”

It’s always difficult to describe with any degree of predictive accuracy what a new Buntport play will turn out to be like. But we do know that “❤️ Richard” is loosely based on the actual discovery of King Richard’s body under a parking lot in Leicester, central England, back in 2012. And that the story involves a meeting of the Richard III Society – a real-life group dedicated to reclaiming the sullied reputation of the humpbacked king. And that it’s set in a high-school gymnasium.  

Like always, the Buntporters don’t know if you’ll like it. But they hope you do.

Given that the Buntporters are only entering the start of their middle ages, they were asked whether they make try to make it to 100 plays someday.

“I mean, we’ll try, I guess,” said Rollman, without an ounce of guile.

If they do or they don’t, here’s one thing Edborg is proud to own: “We’ve done something that is pretty frickin’ rare,” he said.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING

We asked area creatives, “What is it about Buntport?”

• Thaddeus Phillips, international theatermaker: “Buntport is a national treasure. But because they don’t ‘play the game’ and they make 100 percent original plays, they are they are largely ignored from a national perspective. This is because theater in the U.S. is 99 percent based on just remounting plays that had success in New York rather than unique ensembles like Buntport creating utterly original work. For more than 20 years, Buntport has created an unreal and unrivaled body of work. Buntport is, without any question whatsoever, one of the most unique and vital ensembles in the U.S.”

•GerRee Hinshaw, host of The Bug Theatre’s monthly “Freak Train”: “Besides the lovely, interesting and talented people the Buntporters are, I think the magic is in their approach to idea generation and then getting those ideas to their feet. I have a secret wish to take a hiatus from my job and just hang with Buntport and observe their creation process for a year, like a Buntport Artist’s Retreat™.”

• Adam Stone, musician and multimedia artist: “From top to bottom, every aspect of Buntport is informed by their generosity and thoughtfulness as community members and human creatures.”

• Emily K. Harrison, Artistic Director of the intentionally lower-cased square product theatre: “The thing that delights me about Buntport’s work is that it’s consistently clever and unpredictable and unpretentious. It’s not traditional fare, but it never falls into the trap of inaccessibility. Buntport doesn’t talk down to their audience. Their work manages to be incredibly smart and totally relatable, even when it’s about something seemingly lofty or artistic. They aren’t precious. Ever. That’s so refreshing. I don’t think Colorado realizes how lucky we are to have them.”

• Lisa Young, founder of IDEA Stages: “I can’t even tell you the number of times they literally made me pee my pants laughing.”

-John Moore April 7th, 2022 Denver Gazette

Some twenty years ago a group of ex-students from Colorado College founded Buntport, a unique Denver theater company that is opening its fiftieth group-created original production, Richard, this weekend.

The troupe has held innovative productions from the start. The earliest Buntport offeringincluded visiting fellow student Thaddeus Phillips presenting two Shakespeare plays, King Lear and The Tempest, in a solo, one-evening performance. Lear’s daughters were represented by inanimate objects — a plastic flower, a high-heeled shoe. The ocean at the heart of The Tempest was a kiddie pool. The theater’s cavernous warehouse home was bitterly cold, but when someone cranked up the heat, the sound drowned out Phillips’s words.

The prevalent viewer response to the production was a mixture of bemused admiration for a brilliant and entirely original evening, as well as a persistent question: “How long could this crazy organization survive?”

A long time, it turned out.

Richard will take place in a cleverly configured and decently heated and/or cooled space in front of an ever-expanding audience of Buntport devotees. The play was inspired by England’s Richard III, a king whose image has been indelibly shaped by Shakespeare’s play, named for the king. Richard III depicts the king as a physically and mentally twisted goblin of pure evil, guilty of the murder of two young princes who stood in the way of his succession to the throne, along with many others. Not everyone buys this characterization, however. There’s a dedicated group called the King Richard III Society that’s been struggling for decades to clear the monarch’s name, and whose dedication helped lead to the discovery of Richard’s corpse — missing its feet — buried under a parking lot in the town of Leicester.

What Buntport will do with this strange history is anyone’s guess. The program description is typically brief: “Richard is a comedy about Richard III enthusiasts, Victorian undergarments, and the lying liars that make theater.”

Buntporter Erin Rollman adds a touch more: “It’s a comedy that explores art as propaganda and the tenuous relationship we seem to have with history. It takes place at a meeting of Richard III enthusiasts and hopefully reminds people that there is an agenda in storytelling — including in our own.”

After watching Buntport’s productions through two decades, most of us have some idea of what we’re in for. These artists are experimenters, influenced by Eastern European theater, among other forms, and intensely creative in their use of props and fluid arrangement of sets. They are also often inspired by some odd tidbit of news or observation: Are there really people paid to deface your books so you’ll look well-read, and who are they? What was Tommy Lee Jones doing standing in line for the opera Turandot in Santa Fe? Why was a well-known clown imprisoned in London for saying the words “roast beef” on stage? Famous literary names often appear in the plays — Mary Shelley, Alexandre Dumas, James Thurber, Franz Kafka. And there has also been a mystical, beautiful rendition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, sans kiddie pool.

The group is comprised of Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna, Rollman, Hannah Duggan and SamAnTha Schmitz, who doesn’t appear onstage but is involved in every aspect of the work — financial, managerial and artistic. We know by now that all the actors are terrific performers, each with their own particular and eccentric style. Duggan tends to carry a hilarious sense of aggrieved injustice with her onto the stage, mixed with a crazed originality. No one who saw her as Lavinia in the company’s insanely comic version of Titus Andronicus trying to speak while her severed tongue — represented by a strip of red felt — dangled from her mouth. Brian Colonna is as convincing playing an aristocratic Englishman as a singing lab rat. We’ve seen Edborg portray a pedantic art critic, a sadistic hare and a puppet. In every role he tosses aside convention to create someone or something both completely fantastical and fully embodied. As for Rollman, she can inspire gusts of audience laughter as easily as she can stun everyone into a deep sad silence or a profound realization.

We asked each of these creatives what they felt they’ve achieved during their years together.

“I think I’m drawn to shows that include moments of magic,” says Colonna. “When the unexpected happens and it’s truly transporting or even transformative for the audience.”

Asked to describe Richard, he says, “It’s about art and making it, and the effect it has on the world.” He pauses, then asks, “Are all our productions about that?”

As for Duggan, “The purpose of any entertainment is to give people a second to live a life outside of their own heads.”

Looking back on twenty years of close collaboration and experimentation, problems and successes, grants, awards and critical praise — followed by over two years of dealing with COVID — we wondered what the Buntport folks would tell their younger selves now.

“Take care of the people around you,” says Colonna. “The journey isn’t really about you. It’s about everyone else.”

“I would tell myself that expectations only lead to disappointments, and have fun,” comments Duggan.

Rollman says, “I’m not sure I have any more clarity on life or theater now than I used to. Sometimes, no matter how much experience you have, it feels like you are reinventing the wheel. I guess that’s a good thing to tell my younger self: Try not to get frustrated; it’s all part of the process.”

For Schmitz, the question brings up a memory. “I wrote a letter to the other members of Buntport when I was graduating college to ask for a job,” he recalls. “It said I couldn’t think of any job I’d rather have than making theater with them. I still feel that way. To my younger self, I might explain that it will at times be exhausting, and sometimes she’ll want a regular job that stops at 5 p.m., but that twenty years later we will still be showing our work to audiences that love it, and that was the goal.”

Edborg adds, “I would tell my younger self, ‘Be patient! You’ve got a good thing going.’”

-Juliet Wittman April 6th, 2022 Westword