Overview:
Curious Theatre's annual 24 Hour Plays fundraiser will feature creative teams writing, producing and performing six original plays in a day.
What was once a historic Swedish Evangelical Free Church on Acoma Street, originally built in 1895, now serves as an artistic safe space for directors, playwrights and actors at Curious Theatre Company. Within its brick walls, Curious’ artists will soon be preparing for the theater’s annual 24 Hour Plays on June 6, during which artists will write, direct, and perform six original plays for the Denver community.
“From the buzz of ideas backstage to the rush of live performance, the 24 Hour Plays is a thrilling ride—for both the artists and the audience,” said Jada Suzanne Dixon, producing artistic director and one of the directors for the upcoming 24 Hour Plays. “It’s bold, it’s unpredictable and it’s a celebration of creativity in motion. Our hope is that what happens on that stage sparks powerful conversations that carry on long after the final bow.”
This is Curious’s second time hosting the 24 Hour Plays event. The festival is an anchor for fundraising so the theater can continue producing new art. It’s also a memorable experience for the creative team.
“It would be even more nerve-wracking if I were expected to have something prepared coming into the 24-hour piece,” said one of this year’s playwrights, Josh Hartwell, who has been an artistic member of Curious for fourteen years. “But there’s really no way to prepare, so I just show up and I get inspired by the actors I choose and what they say in the interview process.”
The night before the six plays created in 24 hours are shown to the public, the collaborative setting consists of roundtable discussions with 24 actors, six directors and six playwrights who bring props and costume pieces as inspiration. The group spends a total of two hours brainstorming potential ideas on how to approach the plays.
GerRee Hinshaw, a local performer and Curious artistic member, is a director on the production this year and shares how the stress of beating a deadline is overshadowed by the artist’s passion to tell stories.
“We always have to remember we’re not saving lives with these plays,” Hinshaw said. “We are entertaining lives. We are telling stories about lives but no one’s going to die if we have to cut something or if we have to adjust something because we just don’t have enough time to make the full dream happen.”
While the stories onstage may not be life or death, many longtime supporters have felt that way about the fight behind the scenes to keep Curious Theatre open.
In March 2024, after facing the effects of post-pandemic America, rising maintenance costs on its building and a decrease in ticket sales and subscriptions, Curious launched a public emergency fundraiser in hopes of reaching $250,000. The organization raised roughly 50 percent of its goal and announced it was putting its historic building up for sale in July 2024.
“It wasn’t like a fire sale,” said Marketing Manager Emily Whalen. “We weren’t putting the building on sale desperately; we were putting the building on sale strategically so we have the ability to work with Blue West Capital, who we’re working with, and look for the right buyer and the right deal. So someone who will, in theory, lease it back to us and help support us and help support art in Denver, while also, of course, you know, making it work for them as well.”
The production of the 24 Hour Plays Series also comes at a time when local theaters like Curious know they can’t rely on the federal government to step in. Though the organization was not one of the local organizations whose National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant was cancelled by the Trump administration, the organization is concerned about threats to defund the NEA.
“Like many art organizations, we’re navigating the ripple effects of ongoing cuts to public arts funding,” Dixon said. “But at Curious, we believe in meeting challenges with creativity and community. That’s why our upcoming fundraiser isn’t just about raising money—it’s about celebrating what makes the work joyful and vital.”
Curious has persevered in the face of challenges to its building and mission to carry out its art by prioritizing telling original stories about contemporary issues. Hinshaw says that Curious strives to tell stories that the “nation and local communities are wrestling with.”
Curious believes the theater can stay afloat by connecting with a broader demographic through its plays. Whalen says that 24 Hour Plays is the company’s most recent attempt to appeal to younger generations.
“It’s always been a struggle for theater for decades to engage younger audiences,” Whalen said. “That’s one of the things we are trying to do with the issues that we’re looking at in our normal season, but also in how fast, fun and energetic the 24 Hour Plays are. It’s got a lot of very fast energy in the same way a lot of media is fast nowadays.”
Curious has already raised over $20,000 before the production of the 24 Hour Plays and hopes to raise an additional $5,000 on the day of the event to contribute to the longevity of its building. The company currently intends to stay in the building for its 28th season, which runs from September 2025 to May 2026; however, Curious is unsure whether it will continue to have its longtime creative sanctuary after that.
“Curious Theatre is one of my artistic homes,” Hartwell said. “The fact that the building has been here so long and that the theater company has survived for so long and through so much—that means a lot. And the content that the theater produces here, that we do here, is always the kind of theater that I would want to see, even if I weren’t involved with the arts at all.”
24 Hour Plays, Friday, June 6, 7:30 p.m., at Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma Street, Denver. Learn more at curioustheatre.org.
