Damn (Yankees)! Check out these fresh faces of 2023 | John Moore

Ellie Plenk is a preternaturally talented sixth-grader who is currently starring in a fully sold-out run of “Matilda the Musical” at the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center – and it’s only the second theater production of her life. But she’s not some 11-year-old rookie, OK? Her first role was starring in “Matilda Jr.” at the PACE Center in Parker. So, she’s put in the work.

Matilda is, of course, Roald Dahl’s most outrageously and hilariously abused child. I have it on good authority that Plenk actually has loving real-life parents, which means she clearly has some serious acting chops. Because not only does she ooze all the necessary innate confidence it would require any performer to pull off the title role in any Broadway-scale musical, she also seriously (OK, a bit creepily) demonstrates the vacant emotional emptiness of a child who has never experienced parental love.

Turns out, Plenk’s parents are diametrically opposed to the wicked Wormwoods. Her dad is Matthew Plenk, who has a master’s from some school called “Yale,” has performed with every symphony that has a city in its title, and is the artistic director of the Lamont Opera Theatre at the University of Denver. None of which guarantees he’s no Wormwood, but dad will be directing both daughter and son Owen in Lamont’s April staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” So, chances are he’s a good guy – and she’s probably not secretly dying his hair green in his sleep.

Plenk is one of dozens of performers who burst onto Colorado stages in 2023 leaving lasting first (or thereabouts) impressions. Here are eight more representative examples spanning five decades in age:

Natalie Fuentes

Yolot, Wolf at the Door, Su Teatro

Perhaps nothing was more empathetically challenging this year than sitting through Marisela Treviño Orta’s harrowing play watching a very pregnant Fuentes chained to a bed by a terrifying, abusive man. Then again, her character was, in fact, a wolf in human form. Fuentes delivered a feral, otherworldly performance that not only made her character irreducibly human, she inspired the man’s reduced wife to stand up to him as well.

Fuentes, a graduate of Aurora Hinkley High School and the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, is not new to Su Teatro, but this was, both in plot and execution, the definition of a breakout performance.

“This role pushed all of her personal boundaries,” said director Mica Garcia de Benevidez, “but I think her desire to find all the different levels and to hold that strength was integral to her performance.”

Speaking to Westword, Fuentes described “Wolf at the Door” as a fairy tale. “One where the princess wins by fighting.”

Tessa Fuqua

Lama, The Oldest Boy, Miners Alley Playhouse

It seems incongruous to call any 50-something actor a breakout, but Fuqua most emphatically broke out in this Sarah Ruhl play about a Tibetan lama who comes to the U.S. to ask a mother to hand over her 3-year-old son who may be the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama. He is needed, she says, for a life of spiritual training in India.

The part is written to be played by a man, “given that 99 percent of all rinpoche in Tibet are men,” said director Len Matheo, but Fuqua’s casting allowed for a much more resonant and heartbreaking conversation between two women. As a woman, “Tessa brought her own unique credibility to a story about a mother dealing with loss and letting go and impermanence," said Matheo.

Fuqua, whose own impermanent identities have included lawyer, teacher, minister and radio host over the years, is perhaps best known as a visual artist whose work now graces the exterior of the brand-new Miners Alley Performing Arts Center in Golden.

B Glick

Oberon and Theseus, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Phamaly Theatre Company

“I'm just your typical cancer-surviving disabled non-binary queer agnostic Jewish film entrepreneur.” That’s how B (no period) Glick describes themselves. This force of nature blew into town in 2023 and made an immediate mark on area stages, on social media, and as an activist calling for immediate change as it pertains to accessibility at area theaters – and by calling out hypocrites who are falling short.

Glick’s Denver theater debut came in Benchmark Theatre’s “Stonewall,” an original exploration of the 1969 Christopher Street riots that set off the queer civil-rights movement.

In a blink, Glick was performing as King Oberon on no less than the DCPA Theatre Company’s Kilstrom Theatre stage as part of the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company’s first full foray into Shakespeare. Then it was on to Firehouse’s Halloween run of Steven Dietz’s “Dracula.”

Glick is also founder and president of GQue Films, the only non cis-owned film distribution company in the world.

Benchmark, Glick said, “worked to create an accessibly inclusive and supportive environment for both my crippled performing self and the theater audience.” Others, like those at the Denver Center, Glick said, have some work to do.

Ty-Gabriel Jones

Young Joe Hardy, “Damn Yankees” Arvada Center

The audience gasped – literally – when the White actor who sells his soul to come back as a young man to beat the Yankees re-emerges from the devil’s smoke as a young but, well ... no-longer White hero of the classic Broadway musical.

Race is, of course, never directly addressed in “Damn Yankees,” which opened on Broadway in 1955. But here, whether by intention or oblivion, you couldn’t help but wonder whether this particular devil decided to make his human foil really suffer by both granting him his wish – and at the same time making him into a young Black man who would be forced to adapt to baseball’s legitimately dangerous environs at a time so soon after Jackie Robinson.

It wasn’t the only time Jones gave audiences something to think about, admire and even laugh at in 2023.

Jones also appeared as a Drifter (as in the singing group) in the Arvada Center’s “Beautiful,” and is again redefining old expectations with his smashing current turn as Buddy (the Will Ferrell character) in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center’s “Elf the Musical” (through Dec. 30).

Nathan Mariano

Armand, "Wicked Bayou," Wonderbound

Tackling a leading role after only a year with Denver's hipster modern-dance company Wonderbound, said Artistic Director Garrett Ammon, "was no small feat." And Mariano "did it with aplomb."

"Wicked Bayou" was the tale of two playful young lovers who are soon set upon by dark forces. We're talking a hurricane, an evil puppeteer and a gator who feeds on the hearts of children. All set to live music by a zombie death polka band.

"It’s been a pleasure to watch Nathan grow as a dancer and performing artist since joining Wonderbound," Ammon said. "I look forward to seeing him take on new challenges as we continue."

Mariano, originally from Grand Rapids, Minn., began his dance training at the Reif Dance program in his hometown at age 14. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Arizona’s School of Dance in 2022. His extensive training has also included time at the Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School in Steamboat Springs.

Miguel Muñoz

Quixote, “The Quest for Don Quixote,” Little Theatre of the Rockies

The charming current University of Northern Colorado student was the perfect choice to headline the venerable summer company’s new play in which a contemporary coffee shop transforms into the magical world of Don Quixote.

“Miguel is the nicest, kindest individual. It just seems like goodness surrounds him,” said Little Theatre Artistic Director Megan Van De Hey. “Just like Don Quixote himself, he’s a dreamer, and he brought a bit of that whimsical, childlike nature to the part.”

Matthew Murry

E.M. Forster, “The Inheritance,” Vintage Theatre

Vintage Theatre took on one of the greatest challenges of the past decade when it slated “The Inheritance,” a two-part, six-hour opus that follows the interlinking lives of three generations of gay New York men navigating conflict from without and within. It won the Tony Award as Best Play, and it scared off all the biggest companies in town – for good reason.

Vintage gamely entered the ring with a beast three times its size, and it made it to the other side largely on the strength of a few notable individual performances – among them Murry guiding us through the monster storyline with a gentle storytelling touch. He played E.M. Forster, author of “Howard’s End,” the book that inspired Matthew Lopez to write “The Inheritance.” In the play, Forster is both narrator and mentor to the other queer men who are “writing” “The Inheritance” as it comes to life on stage.

Murry may be new to the area, but as he later showed as Yepikhodov in Miners Alley Playhouse's “The Cherry Orchard,” he is a newcomer in name only. "The Inheritance" is a production that needed Murry’s experience and steadying hand, and he warmly offered it as if he were Forster himself.

eden origin

Millie, “Toni Stone,” Aurora Fox

The intentionally lower-cased Denver actor had a huge first full year in the Colorado theater community, becoming the first-ever open nonbinary performer to be nominated by the Colorado Theatre Guild for a Henry Award. The nomination, for outstanding supporting actress in a play, sparked a communitywide conversation about how to best address the systemic problem of gendered awards categories when those two finite categories do not include gender-fluid people. All performers are given the choice to be considered as an actor or actress, but they must choose one or the other.

“I simply do not fit into categories,” said eden, who identifies as “nonbinary-transfeminine.”

The University of Northern Colorado graduate was honored for playing a confidante to the first female Negro Leagues baseball player in the Aurora Fox’s baseball play “Toni Stone.” Also in 2023, eden performed in Vintage’s ensemble musical “Sophisticated Ladies,” as Benny in “In the Heights," and as the Emcee in "Cabaret"; as well as in the ensemble of the Town Hall Arts Center’s “Memphis.” But it was “Toni Stone” that landed eden squarely on the local theater map.

“I was able to be honest and tell the story of a woman who lived life a hundred times over without having a soul to give voice to her reality,” said eden. “To be recognized for showing the world that Millie was ‘somebody’ is incredibly special – and powerful.”

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.