Father and son actors are shooting for the stars | John Moore

Dwayne and Judy Carrington meaningfully named their only child Orion for the constellation that immortalizes the handsome hunter of Greek mythology. Literally, it means “shining star.” Which, at 42, is exactly what he is. Orion, an actor, model and former junior Olympian, is enjoying his breakout moment as an FBI agent in the searing new Kristen Stewart film “Love Lies Bleeding.”

Young Orion loved the name. OK … eventually.

“Well, when you're a kid you kind of just want a regular name – but now, I love it,” Orion said with a laugh.

“Shining star” is also an unexpectedly apt description of his 67-year-old father, who, 46 years into his own Denver stage career, is on the roll (of roles) of a lifetime. Through Sunday, Dwayne Carrington is bringing one of his favorite all-time characters to life in Miners Alley Playhouse’s bittersweet comedy “A Jukebox for the Algonquin.” He’s playing Johnny, an elderly man determined to bring dancing and joy into his senior care center in the form of a vintage Wurlitzer. And he’s already in rehearsals for his big next project, the feel-good musical “The Full Monty,” which opens April 26 at the same Golden playhouse.

“It's an honor, obviously, to have a dad like him,” said Orion. “But it’s also a weight that you carry whenever you walk into an audition and someone says, ‘Hey, you're Dwayne’s son.’”

“Dwayne’s son” has his own name – and it’s a pretty good one.

Both father and son started their lives on the stage under the wing of a parent. Dwayne’s mother was auditioning for a 1969 production of the musical “Finian's Rainbow” in Ogden, Utah, when she heard the director was looking for a young boy – and her 12-year-old son fit the bill.

Seventeen years later, Dwayne was lugging his 5-year-old son to rehearsals all over Denver when the legendary director Buddy Butler cast Dwayne to play a sports announcer in the Shwayder Theatre’s baseball musical “Damn Yankees.” This was a package deal: Butler wanted the 5-year-old to play one of the fan kids, and Orion was happy to oblige.

Fast forward a decade and by then Orion was himself a regular Joe Hardy. He was starring as a Smoky Hill High School track sprinter on his way to Kansas State and the Junior Olympics before his body, as he put it, “broke down like an old greyhound.”  

Dwayne Carrington, who turns 68 on April 13, grew up about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City in a Black community mostly made up of former military and railroad workers. Dwayne immersed himself in every aspect of theater-making at Weber State College before coming to the University of Denver to get his master’s degree in film. Turns out, that was at the exact same time DU was eliminating its film program. So he earned his master’s in public relations instead.

Dwayne began acting for the only local theaters that regularly offered roles for Black actors in those days, starting with the Denver Black Arts Company’s musical “Barca: Men of Lightning,” about an ancient Phoenician military general.

That began a remarkable run of seminal roles including twice playing Othello, once playing MLK and once playing the Black officer sent to investigate the murder of a World War II sergeant in “A Soldier’s Play” – mostly for Eulipions Cultural Center, Eden Theatrical Workshop, Shadow Theater and other Black companies that are now long gone, leaving a seismic void in the local cultural landscape.

“It's an interesting phenomenon of sorts,” Carrington said of the present dearth of Black-centered Denver theater companies. “Doing theater in those days was difficult because other companies were not casting Black actors or doing Black shows, which is why we had to create our own Black theaters. We paved the road a bit because younger Black actors today are getting cast without a lot of issues because just about every theater company now has a need for some kind of Black representation.”

In 2002, Dwayne made it to the major leagues when he was cast to play Philmore in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s production of “Jitney.” That made him part of national theater history: Israel Hicks eventually became the first director in the world to direct the entire 10-play August Wilson century cycle for the same theater company.

“I felt honored to be part of that,” said Dwayne. “And to be honest: I wish I could have been more of a part of that.”

Running from the arts – and back

On another branch of the family tree, Orion’s gravitation to the arts, which took him to Denver School of the Arts as middle schooler, was betrayed by an athlete’s body that made him in high demand in several sports. Despite a wistful longing to perform in his high-school production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” Orion said, “I found myself running from the arts – literally.”   

When Orion’s sports career ended after college, he moved into sales and settled with his wife, Marquette, and their then-newborn son, Harlem, in Kansas City. Orion found solid work in modeling and event hosting before finding his niche in, believe it or not, hosting car shows. Soon he was named host of the regional food show called “Let’s Eat” for Comcast Entertainment Television.

But it was his success in commercials that ultimately shifted his full focus to acting. “I was like, ‘There's something about this that I really like, but I'm not quite sure what it is,’” said Orion. “Then I realized – it was the acting.”

The couple moved to Denver when Harlem was about 5 to be closer to Orion’s family. Marquette is a dancer who owns and operates Denver’s Hard Candy Dance Studio, which focuses on both fitness and training aerial dance performers.

Two years ago, Carrington landed an audition to play a nonspeaking role in Rose Glass’ New Mexico indie film “Love Lies Bleeding,” produced in part by Kristen Stewart. It’s a dark and violent yet somehow whimsical love story about a reclusive gym manager named Lou (Stewart) who falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder passing through town. Orion must have made an impression, because soon he was being considered for as many as six roles in the film before Glass settled on him playing O’Riley, an FBI agent who’s not-so-hot on the trail of Lou and her seriously creepy father (Ed Harris).

“As soon as I read the script, I was like, ‘Oh, this film is going to go somewhere,’” Orion said. “I think it's nice to see a lesbian couple at the forefront of a film driving the love story. I don't think there have been too many films with lesbian protagonists who are so fundamentally human and flawed. These are just two really complicated and messed-up people – and that's what makes them interesting.”

He added that Stewart was “fantastic” to work with. When Orion wrapped his final scene at 4 a.m., he said, she ran over and gave him a hug and a “job well done.”

While “Love Lies Bleeding” promises to change the trajectory of Orion’s film career, he has since filming stepped into the local stage community as well, playing no less than Macbeth in Local Theatre Company’s original 2023 play “The Lady M Project” (which imagines Macbeth’s wife in the afterlife). He also just played a small but fun role as the cowboy object of a woman’s nocturnal fantasy in another new play called “You Got Older” for a small theater in Lakewood called Benchmark. Orion didn’t need the job, but he took it for the simplest of reasons: “I love the arts,” he said. “I like to perform. And I just want to be good.”

Producer Haley Johnson added, with blunt honesty, that "we’re not exactly paying Denver Center salaries,” she said. “The fact that Orion was willing to come in for a supporting role for our little stipend really speaks to him as a person and as an artist wanting to be a part of our artistic community.”

Dwayne is more proud of the person than the actor his son has become. Still, it was a thrill for him and his wife to see Orion’s face splashed across a 40-foot movie screen.

“I was just really, really proud,” Dwayne said. “When he has that closeup shot saying his first line, I looked over to Judy – and she wasn't even paying attention to me. Her eyes were just plastered to the screen. I took a moment right then and thought, ‘That's just so cool.’”

That’s kind of how Orion feels whenever he sees his dad on a stage.

“I mean, he's forgotten about more theater than I'll ever learn,” he said. “I'm always in awe watching him, and I always will be. His example definitely gives me something to work toward.”

Dwayne, for his part, says he had no notes for his son after seeing the film. “I never do,” he said. But he does keep some simple fatherly advice at the ready whenever needed.

“He tells me: ‘Just keep going,’” said Orion, "and I have found that to be some sage advice, man. I have that on my phone, in fact. So many times where you're just like, ‘I should just do anything but this because I'm just getting my butt kicked,’ I can hear him saying, ‘Just keep going.’ And I do.”

Dwayne intends to give his son one hell of a show when Orion attends Friday’s performance of “A Jukebox for the Algonquin” at Miners Alley Playhouse.  He knows enough to know that these kinds of roles don’t come around every day.

“To be asked in advance to consider accepting any role is still somewhat rare for me in my career,” Dwayne said. “So when a part like this comes to you, especially at this stage of my life, it lands on you differently.”

I ended by simply asking the father what he loves most about his son.

“I love him first and foremost because he’s a wonderful human being,” Dwayne said. “And second because he's a great man and a wonderful father and husband. I am humbled and proud to be his father. I'm humbled by the man that he's become and by the man he's steadily becoming. And I'm proud because I get to attach myself to that human being and say that I was a part of that. That's more than any father could ever want.”

And I asked the son what he most loves about his father.

“I love my dad because he's always been there,” Orion said. “I love him because of the example he has set for how to be a good man. I attribute all the things that I've accomplished and the man that I've become to him. I think for too many, it's unfortunately a privilege to have a father in your life – and I have always had my father in my life. And I wouldn't be who I am or where I am without him.”