What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do…

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EVENTS

Poetry Reading: An Evening with Abigail Chabitnoy. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 8. Live-streamed to Facebook, LongmontPublicMedia.org, and Local Comcast Channel 8/880, longmontcolorado.gov

Abigail Chabitnoy, winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry, will read from her work. The evening will also feature an up-and-coming poet and an open reading. Poets interested in participating in the open reading should email StewartAuditorium@LongmontColorado.gov.

Stories on Stage presents ‘Color Plates.’ 7 p.m. Friday, April 9, livestreaming from The Nomad Playhouse. Ticket holders will receive a link to the performance. Tickets are $15 and available at storiesonstage.org or by calling 303-494-0523

Randy Moore, Anne Penner and Geoffrey Kent will read from Adam Golaski’s Color Plates, a series of interrelated stories set in a mysterious art museum curated by a sort-of Mary Cassatt. Four rooms of Mary’s museum are open to the public. The small fictions in Color Plates will engage and challenge you to consider the intersections between art and time.

2021 Polar Plunge. 8 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 10, Boulder Reservoir, 5565 51st St., Boulder. There is a $75 minimum fundraising fee, specialolympicsco.org/event/boulderplunge

The 2021 Polar Plunge benefiting Special Olympics Colorado is back. Plunge and/or run in person at the Boulder location or sign up for the virtual plunge from the comfort of your home. Visit specialolympicsco.org/plunge to register and learn how in-person events have been modified to ensure a fun and safe event for all. All funds raised benefit more than 15,000 Special Olympics Colorado athletes (children and adults with intellectual disabilities).

Red Thread Playback Theatre presents Lost and Found Stories. 7 p.m. Saturday, April 10. Sliding scale of $5-$20, redthreadplayback.com/upcoming-shows

As a form of theater improv, people from the audience tell their true stories and Playback Theatre company members play them back. For this virtual performance, audience members are asked to think about a time when they lost or found something. Lose an engagement ring once? Or maybe you found a decades-old newspaper article about your grandfather. Maybe you lost or found your confidence. Whatever the story, Red Thread wants to help you make it come alive. Participation is not required. Only 30 people will be allowed to attend the show. 

Art Class at the Museum of Boulder with Bohemia Art: Palette Class. 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 14, Museum of Boulder, 2205 Broadway, Boulder. Tickets are $55, bohemiaboulder.com or 303-709-8450.

This art class, presented by Bohemia Boulder, is all about Colorado colors. Attendees will be able to utilize magazines, fine papers and mod podge to make a beautiful piece inspired by the Centennial State. The ticket price includes all materials and encouraging instruction.

TEDxCU 2021 — ‘Bounce.’ 2 p.m. Sunday, April 11. This is a free virtual event, but registration is required: eventbrite.com/e/tedxcu-2021-bounce-tickets

To bounce is to rebound. To bounce is to ricochet. To bounce is to react. In life, we bounce back from hard times and into good ones. We bounce to and from new experiences and remember the old. We use the bounces of our life to tell our stories. In it’s ninth mainstage event, TEDXCU 2021 explores the bounces of our world in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, as an independently organized local TED event. Event links will be emailed to those who have registered. TEDxCU is a project of the College of Media, Communication and Information and the Department of Communication, consider making a tax-deductible donation to TEDxCU when registering for free.

MUSIC

New Releases

Colorado folk artist Cole Scheifele is back with an acoustic single called “Back Then.” Showcasing Scheifele’s peaceful vocals and gentle guitar stylings, “Back Then” explores the feeling of being stuck within yourself and your own mindset. 

Fort Collins/Denver post-songwriter solo project Nadalands released The Vernal Equinox EP on March 19. John Lindenbaum weaves ethereal stories about an addict meeting a revolutionary on a park bench, a pandemic survivor’s yearning for connection on the dance floor, and the musings of a religious skeptic. Listen and buy on Bandcamp.

Live Shows

Stone Cottage Studios livestreams, stonecottagestudios.com/livestream

All Stone Cottage Studio shows this week will donate a portion of the proceeds to Colorado Healing Fund in support of the families of victims of the Boulder shooting.

Thursday, April 8 — Brad Corrigan supporting Love Light & Melody 

Friday, April 9 — Hunter Stone sponsored by Mesa 

Saturday, April 10 — Andy Sydow supporting Nature Conservancy

Boulder Theater shows, bouldertheater.com

Sunday, April 11 — Manic Focus: Night Three with PHYPHR. Tickets start at $40.

Wednesday, April 14 — Marvel Years with Funkstatik. Tickets start at $30.

Thursday, April 15 — An Evening with The Intolerables and Special Guest DJ Sully. Tickets start at $50.

Jewels of Jazz Live at Farm 49. 5 p.m. Saturday, April 10, Farm 49, 7180 N. 49th St.,Longmont. Tickets are $55 / free for children up to 16

ART

#BoulderStrong: Crochet memorial by Stephanie Buriel. Corner of Broadway and Arapahoe, Boulder

Boulder resident Ellyn Perreault had never met Stephanie Buriel before she asked the California artist to make one of her crochet artworks in memory of the victims of the King Soopers shooting. 

Perreault had only seen Buriel’s whimsical yarn art on Instagram: flowers framing the words “cancer sucks,” lips with the message “kiss this virus good-bye,” entrities to “love unconditionally.” Burial would mount her works on public fences in her hometown of Hot Desert Springs, California, post pictures to Instagram and add hashtags like #yarnbombing, #streetart and #cancersucks, which is how Perreault, a cancer survivor, came to follow her. 

“When [the shooting] happened — I don’t know why, it’s really strange — I just sent her a message and said, ‘Can you make something for this?” Perreault says. She’d planned to have Buriel send the pieces of the installation to Boulder where Perraeult would mount them.  

“And then the next day she was like, ‘I’m coming out. I’m going to help you mount it,’” Perreault says.

The 5-by-5-foot heart lined with 10 flowers, one for each victim, took Buriel about 35 hours to make, the artist estimates.

“I’m excited to be here and to do it for this community,” Buriel says. “It was just a coincidence, but I was in El Paso right after the Walmart shooting. You could feel the heaviness in the community — it was palpable, you know. I’ll never forget it. When Ellyn reached out, I loved her idea of trying to uplift the (Boulder) community after something like this.” 

The installation is mounted on the south-facing wall of The Riverside at Arapahoe Avenue and Broadway.  —Caitlin Rockett

‘Home is Where the Art Is’ by Betsy Anderson. April 8-May 9, Firehouse Art Center, 667 Fourth Ave., Longmont, firehouseart.org

With the multitude of narrative objects presented in this exhibit, artist Betsy Anderson centers the presence and perspective of women through paintings, embroidered works, pillowcases and fabric displays. The exhibit also features vintage aprons and bras altered in a reflection of their purpose. Anderson uses vintage or heirloom fabrics, then indigo and rust dyes before working in embroidery details and drawings. 

‘El movimiento sigue’ commemorating Los Seis de Boulder. Through March 14, 2022, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th St., Boulder, bmoca.org

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is now home to “El movimiento sigue,” a sculpture by Los Seis de Boulder Sculpture Project and Jasmine Baetz. “El movimiento sigue” (The movement continues) commemorates Los Seis de Boulder, six activists who died in two car bombings in Boulder in 1974. Francisco Dougherty, Florencio Granado, Una Jaakola, Reyes Martínez, Neva Romero, and Heriberto Terán were involved with Chicano Student Movement activism at CU Boulder. “El movimiento sigue” will be on view outside in front of BMoCA as the City of Boulder Office of Arts & Culture plans for its permanent placement at 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard in 2022. 

THEATER

BETC presents ‘CO2020.’ Streaming now through April 18, betc.org/event/co-2020

With every shot in every arm, it feels more and more like we’re actually going to come through the other side of this pandemic. A year ago it was hard to conceive — now here we are, the light visible at the end of the tunnel.

But the last 12 months showed us things we can’t unsee, asked us to redefine what was and wasn’t essential — who was and wasn’t essential. The pandemic laid bare the racial inequities this country is built on, the misogyny, the wealth gap, the unpaid labor.  

Stephen Weitz Ilasiea Gray and Ray Bailey

Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s newest piece of theater, CO2020, is an invitation to continue the conversations we started last year. Built around interviews with more than 50 Coloradans of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, the nearly two-hour piece of devised theater covers a broad swath of the rugged terrain that was 2020. 

“But it’s not really about the pandemic,” explains Stephen Weitz, BETC’s founder and producing artistic director. “It’s about people’s lived experience of the pandemic, about how it affected their family or their business or their church. … It was important for us to get it captured and get it out there while that was still fresh and active in people’s lives.”

Beginning in the summer of 2020, Weitz built a team of five cocreators to help conduct interviews, pour through transcripts and finally form a script that would merge the interviews into a sort of theatrical documentary combining actual interviews with re-enactments, news clips, poetry and photos — a piece of “devised” theater. 

“The profundity of the things that people are thinking about and dealing with and struggling with, and have been struggling with their whole lives, are just incredibly powerful,” Weitz says.

Participants varied in age from Boomers to Gen Z, with equally varied experiences: a police officer, comedian, former Broncos player, religious leaders, politicians, community justice leaders, professors, medical professionals, artists and school-age children, all talking about the pandemic, systemic racism, protesting and more. 

“There’s been plenty of commentary on the year 2020, but not in the way that we did it,” says CO2020 cocreator Ilasiea Gray, whose own experience as a black activist is detailed in the film. “I’m proud of the diverse participant pool that we had, especially the kids. We need their perspective on all of these things: COVID, racism, activism. It’s very different than talking to adults.”

It’s an emotional look back, finding particular poignancy in exploring responses to the deaths of both Elijah McClain and George Floyd. But the film counts blessings when it can, searching for light through the cracks of a dismal year: how people came together, how we learned to care for ourselves and each other. And there are opinions that may surprise or even frustrate, but that’s the point. 

“I think we all run the risk of getting locked in our little bubbles and forgetting how many different lived experiences and perspectives there are just within our little circle of Colorado, and our even smaller circles of cities and neighborhoods,” Weitz says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sifted through all of this material, and I’m just constantly struck by the power and depth of people’s lives.” 

—Caitlin Rockett