Public Domain Theatre Festival, Boulder

The Catamounts are pleased to announce the Public Domain Theatre Festival, an outdoor theatre festival celebrating theatre outside the box. The Catamounts will be joined by two lauded Colorado theatre companies–Buntport Theater and Su Teatro– in the presentation of original adaptations of public domain works in select outdoor spaces around the Boulder Public Library on the festival’s first weekend, and around Westminster Station Park on its second and third. On nine evenings from June 3-19, 2022, each of the three participating companies will present a twenty minute adaptation of a public domain work. Lit by a Colorado summer sunset, against the backdrop of the park’s picturesque nooks, the three adaptations will run simultaneously three times each evening. Audience members will be divided into smaller groups and rotate between each piece, ensuring an intimate experience of each piece, and giving all groups the opportunity to experience all three pieces and locations in the park. Each evening will begin with a short performance by a rotating performance ensemble. Opening performers to be announced soon. PDTF will be a celebration of live performance in public spaces; an accessible and affordable cultural offering; and a forward-thinking effort moving theatre from the confines of four walls into the public domain. A Look at Each Show in Brief: Buntport is "adapting" The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel, making life size versions of some of the woodcut creatures from its illustrations, and performing a mostly wordless piece in which these creatures attempt to do relatively easy things. A silly, outdoor romp. Su Teatro will present Corridos y Cuentos (Ballads and Stories), focusing on traditional storytelling, ballads, and street performance that offers a contemporary twist and explores issues such as immigration, worker’s rights and cultural identity. The Catamounts will present Enough Rope: The Kissining, a wild mash-up of Dorothy Parker’s poetry collection Enough Rope, the John Barrymore-helmed movie Don Juan, and Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Director Joan Bruemmer-Holden is using this Hemmingway quote as a jumping off point: “ I suppose she only wanted what she couldn’t have. Well people were like that to hell with people.” What does love got to do with it, anyway?