A contingent of Colorado-connected creatives are in Idaho this week, in part to amplify a quintessential Colorado stage story.
In 2021, before I came to work at the Denver Gazette full-time, I directed the Colorado premiere of a play called “The Treasurer” at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden. It’s written by Denver-born Max Posner, who got his start as a writer through a youth playwriting program at Denver’s Curious Theatre and subsequent training at Denver School of the Arts.
This little gem of a play focuses on the difficult, late-in-life conflict between a 60-year-old man and the mother who abandoned him at age 13 but is now financially dependent on him in her old age. Now the man just has to admit it: He doesn’t much like his mom, or the burden her encroaching dementia has put on him. It’s based on a story Max saw play out in real life between his own father and grandmother.
“The Treasurer” was rapturously received in its 2017 off-Broadway launch at the estimable Playwrights Horizons, with the all-powerful Ben Brantley of The New York Times praising Posner for having “a sharp and original ear for the tension between what is spoken and what is not.” American Theater Magazine printed the entire script in one issue. It was a big deal.