2013 Layout Archive Stories

Three scheming sons. An exiled wife. An older man and his youthful mistress. Wait, is this a nighttime reality show? No, it's Springs Ensemble Theatre's production of "The Lion in Winter," which offered up a bit of history and two hours of non-stop banter last weekend. King Henry II of England and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, bicker and stra

They say a kiss is just a kiss, but sometimes it's more. Sometimes it changes your life. Or on a rare occasion, deposits you directly into another's person's body. Whichever comes first. On a cold Saturday afternoon in January, there's a lot of kissing going on. The two leads of the Fine Arts Center production of Craig Lucas' 198

The relentlessly bleak, blunt French film "Rust and Bone" is a love story without romance, a bloody-knuckled fight picture absent a clear victor. By the end of this one — two hours that feel like six — there are no winners or losers, only exhausted survivors — audience members included. That may

It's a fascinating notion really: A two-story robot built (as art) with community-donated styrofoam. Even more perplexing is that when the "Nothing Comes from Nothing" is done, the "machine" is deconstructed and then recycled or sent to a landfill. The randomness of the materials, the impermanance of the object defies our idea of what art should

When it comes to cable shows, fewer are hotter than HBO’s half hour comedy, “Girls” (Sundays at 7 p.m.). With great ratings and two Golden Globe wins (Best Comedy and Best Actress in a TV Comedy for co-creator and lead actress Lena Dunham), the program is Must See television. The Season Two premiere led to some questions. Has H

People line up on Friday for cheese stuffed peppers made by Lydia Martinez, owner of Vallejo’s Restaurant, 111 S. Corona St. They usually sell out of the special at lunch. But if you call before 2 p.m. Fridays you can reserve the special for dinner. Good news. After more than 50 years of only taking cash, they have started accepting credit

Mark Rothko knew exactly what he wanted his abstract paintings to do.“I am here to stop your heart. I’m not here to make pretty pictures.”These are words straight from the artist's mouth and appear in the Tony Award-winning play, "Red." Academy Award-nominated screenwriter John Logan (“Gladiator&rd

Sue Grace meets Josep Caballé-Domenech in a match set up by Ludwig van Beethoven. It’s clearly the main event on this weekend’s Colorado Springs Philharmonic concert, which also includes Carl Maria von Weber, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner on the card.For Grace, this is a continuation of mor

“Mama” breaks a lot of horror movie rules, right off the proverbial bat. It gives us a long back-story opening, and brings up much more back story as the tale progresses. It over-explains. It reveals its supernatural menace, not just in glimpse

It’s a filthy place, this “Broken City.” Even the people called “good guys” have their dark side, their dirty secrets and tragic flaws. And the “bad guys?” They’re all over the New York papers, all over New York cable news - a mayor who play

She didn’t want to tell this story. Heather Harpham’s one-woman play “Happiness,” which opens Thursday and runs through Jan. 27 at the Millibo Art Theatre, dances, muses and slices into the most painful time of her family’s life. Her daughter had been born with the inability to create red blood cells

Given the events of the last decade, people tend to have strong ideas about Islam, both as a religion and as contemporary culture. But are these perceptions true to life? Colorado College chose to examine this idea in a yearlong focus on contemporary Islamic culture, specifically as seen through the arts. “We’re inter

January is the cold, dark heart of winter. The frigid air and short days make us crave warmth and comfort, and there's no better place to find that than Rocco's Italian Restaurant. The brick walls, padded booths and red-checked tablecloths may say "kitsch" to some, but the food tastes like there's an Italian Grandma in the kitchen. Rocco

Celebrate the new year by tossing out the old with the symbolic gesture of chucking your Christmas fruitcake into the stratosphere. At the Great Fruitcake Toss, you can launch your fruitcake into space with a variety of mechanical and pneumatic devices from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday at the Manitou Springs High School track, 405 El Monte Place, Mani

The Old West died hard in the City of Angels. And in the years after World War II, battle-hardened veterans came home to a town “under enemy occupation,” when the only way to fight off the Mob was with a six gun, your two fists and the right hat. “Gangster Squad” i

Osama bin Laden is dead, which everybody knows, and the principal facts leading up to tha

The Story Project returns again this month with new tales of everyday life and daring do. All true. All personal. This week storytellers include naturopathic doctor Ruth Adele, entrepreneur David Fein, performance artist Patrick McConnell and songwriter Charles Sjolander. It's at 7 p.m. Friday at Marmalade at Smokebrush, 219 W. Colorado Av

What better way to feel your oats than going to the Quaker Oatmeal Festival? Pack your appetite and head to Lafayette, Colo., for more than 200 gallons of steaming oatmeal, 4,000 oatmeal pancakes and 1,200 oatmeal muffins to munch. More or less. You’ll also find 50 booths at the Health Fair 8 a.m.-1 p.m.  A baking contest takes place

Funky Cold Theatricalities presents “24Seven,” theater on the spur of the moment -- or really, over the course of one day. Seven selected playwrights are given a writing prompt on Friday. On Saturday morning, seven directors show up to read the scripts and cast from a gaggle of previously hand-picked actors. The actors show up a few

Everybody wins in the “pottery lottery,” a fundraising facet of GOCA 121's upcoming exhibition, “Ceramica: Contemporary Clay." The “1,000 Platters Project" offers a chance to take home one (or more) of 1,000 Mark Wong plates and for a good cause: Proceeds go to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs' conte

The world is full of victims and life can be patently unfair. That’s one of the conclusions Brian Mann drew from Franz Kafka’s classic novel “The Trial” when he listened to the book on tape a year ago. The story, he says, immediately resonated with him. Mann will direct his own adaptation of it for Theatre ‘

Chris Bohler, who with his wife, Kerri, own The Villa Italian Restaurant in Palmer Lake, have teamed up with Mike Elliott and Marina LaRiva to open La Rosa Southwestern Dining, 25 S. Colorado 105 in Palmer Lake. If that address looks familiar that’s because it was to the former B&E Filling Station, which was originally opened by

If the leads in James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter” used Facebook, their relationship status would have to be that “It’s complicated.”In the 1966 play about a severely dysfunctional historical family, King Henry II of England and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, court each other with vicious one-l