Toni Tresca

Toni Tresca at a reading for Diego Florez's play 'Cuauhtémoczin' on April 22, 2023.

About Me

Editor of Bucket List, contributor to Denver Westword, Estes Valley Voice, and co-host of the OnStage Colorado Podcast. He is a member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association, and Editor & Publisher Magazine has named him one of 2026's "Tomorrow's News Trailblazers."

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My Latest Work

Denver Westword •

The Butterfly Pavilion is making room for a giant Pacific octopus

The Butterfly Pavilion is currently preparing for a new resident that senior director of animal collections Sara Stevens describes as “basically like giant eight-armed toddlers, with all of the joy and all of the chaos a toddler brings.”
That resident — a giant Pacific octopus — will be the centerpiece of a $250,000 expansion of Water’s Edge, the Westminster invertebrate zoo’s aquatic exhibit, when it reopens Sept. 14 after about a month of construction.
Water’s Edge will grow to 1,100 square fe...
Estes Valley Voice •

A&E: This Weekend, August 28-30

You don’t need Platform 9¾ to find a little magic in Estes Park this weekend.

The Park Theatre is going all-in on Harry Potter, freshly painted views of the Estes Valley are landing on gallery walls, and live music is spilling out of breweries, patios, and taverns across town. Add a race where dogs can join the starting line, an 11th birthday bash, and silent movies with a live pianist, and there are plenty of reasons to get out of the house.
Here’s what’s happening around Estes Park this weeke...
OnStage Colorado •

A brisk 'Murder for Two' could use more clarity

Just before Murder for Two began on opening night at the Dairy Arts Center, the performors offered an unusually revealing piece of information in their preshow speech: this would be the first time American Crossroads Theatre had performed the show on this stage with its full technical setup.By the end of the night, that was easy to believe.Trent Dahlin, who also directs the production, and Anna Stefanic, its two actor-musicians, were clearly rehearsed. They tore through Joe Kinosian and Kellen B...
Estes Valley Voice •

A&E: This Weekend, August 21-23

Dinosaurs are loose at the Park Theatre, classic cars are cruising into the Legion, and artists will race the clock during the Estes Valley Plein Air Quick Paint & Auction. Elsewhere, you can dip into a wellness festival, catch Gypsy jazz in Allenspark, browse local art, or simply follow the sound of live music around town. Here’s what’s happening around Estes Park this weekend, August 21-23.

‘The End of Oak Street’ at the Historic Park Theatre

After a mysterious force transports a family, inc...
Estes Valley Voice •

Estes Valley Plein Air 2026 brings 38 artists to Estes Park

Connie Schmidt already has a list: Sprague Lake, Lily Lake, maybe Bear Lake if she can land a parking spot, and somewhere she can catch a few aspens beginning to change color.

Schmidt is not mapping out a sightseeing itinerary. She is deciding where to set up her easel during Estes Valley Plein Air, when artists have six days to turn the landscapes around Estes Park into paintings created on location.
“As you can see, lakes are kind of my thing,” Schmidt said. “Water is my thing.”

Water is esp...
Estes Valley Voice •

Universal Consciousness Festival brings five days of wellness to Estes Park

The Universal Consciousness Festival began with a natural disaster.

In September 2013, historic flooding tore through the Estes Valley, and a mudslide struck the Dao House property south of Estes Park. For Samalita Adamae, executive and managing director of Dao House, the destruction also revealed something worth preserving: the way neighbors showed up for one another.
“You know, all of us were helping each other out, cooking for each other, and neighbors were coming over to do whatever needed...
Denver Westword •

Want to talk about polyamory and more? Check out Mile High Love Fest

Lindsay Hayes had been attempting to bring Love Fest, an educational conference on polyamory, consensual non-monogamy and other diverse relationships, to Denver for years.
Hayes first encountered Southwest Love Fest online during the pandemic. After noticing a message on the organization’s website offering to help people establish conferences in their own cities, she began reaching out to its leadership.
“I knew Denver had such a vibrant, non-monogamous community that I was already bugging them,...
OnStage Colorado •

ER Productions debuts with 'Stop Kiss' in Aurora's Storyteller Theater

First came the play. Then came the venue. Only after that did Colorado actors Ratt Walsh and Emma Moonfield realize they had accidentally started a theatre company.“All of a sudden, we had the bones of something that was real,” Moonfield said. “The government needs to know about us. We need to get a tax ID. We need a bank account, which is absolutely the backwards way to approach a company, and I feel really grateful that despite building around the idea instead of building toward the idea, we h...
OnStage Colorado •

'Tick, Tick…Boom!' gets lost in the crowd

Sheets of music hang over the stage as the audience enters Tick, Tick…Boom! at The Arts Hub. It is a striking visual representation of Jon’s central problem: his work has encroached on nearly every aspect of his life.The aspiring composer is approaching 30 with little success to show for years of sacrifice. His musical consumes his attention while his girlfriend, Susan, wonders whether their relationship has a future and his best friend, Michael, has traded artistic ambitions for financial secur...
OnStage Colorado •

‘The Comedy of Errors’ embraces Shakespearean chaos in Centennial

There are few places less likely to evoke ancient Ephesus than a vacant Ross Dress for Less wedged between a Staples and a Marshalls.Yet that’s where Shakespeare in the Wild landed when rain pushed its opening performance of The Comedy of Errors out of deKoevend Park. Audience members carried their folding chairs inside, unpacked picnics and charcuterie boards across the old retail floor and cracked open beers.As one usher joked, “Instead of Shakespeare in the Wild, tonight it’s Shakespeare in t...
Estes Valley Voice •

A&E: This Weekend, August 14-16

You could spend your weekend watching Big Brother, exploring an artist’s studio, or floating in the pool while watching “A Bug’s Life.” That eclectic mix sums up August 14-16, with the Fine Arts Guild’s “1984,” the 10th annual Artist Studio Tour, the Cleveland Pops Ensemble, James “Murr” Murray, and enough live music to fill nearly every spare hour. Here’s what’s happening around Estes Park this weekend, August 14-16.

Last Call: ‘Spider-Man’ at the Historic Park Theatre

The fourth installment...
Estes Valley Voice •

Fine Arts Guild brings Orwell’s '1984' to Estes Park

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Those contradictions form part of the machinery keeping citizens obedient in George Orwell’s “1984,” and they are among the ideas director Lars Sage wants Estes Park audiences thinking about when the Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies brings the dystopian story to the stage this weekend.
The guild will present a fully staged adaptation of “1984” at 7 p.m. Aug. 14 and 15 and 2 p.m. Aug. 16 at the Estes Park High School Auditorium. Adapted by...
Estes Valley Voice •

How to navigate the 10th Estes Park Artist Studio Tour

The easiest way to get overwhelmed by the Estes Park Artist Studio Tour is to count artists.

There are 20 of them this year, working in everything from hot glass and oil paint to prayer wheels, ceramics, jewelry, photography collage, and turned wood, with addresses scattered around Estes Park.
The easier number is 13.

That is how many studio stops visitors actually need to find, because six locations host more than one participating artist. The 10th annual tour runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug....
OnStage Colorado •

SET’s intimate ‘Eureka Day’ makes uncertainty hilarious

As Springs Ensemble Theatre opens Eureka Day, national political conversations are once again circling the excesses of the “Woke 1” era: that late-2010s-through-pandemic period when progressive language could make complicated questions feel as though they had morally obvious answers.Jonathan Spector’s 2018 comedy lives squarely inside that world. At Eureka Day, a progressive private school in Berkeley, CA, inclusion is bedrock policy and every decision is made by consensus. Then a mumps outbreak...
OnStage Colorado •

'504: The Musical' sings the messy work of solidarity

Before 504: The Musical began on opening night, director and Phamaly Theatre Company artistic director Ben Raanan told the crowd at the Denver Center’s Kilstrom Theatre that the company had wondered whether audiences wanted a disability-rights musical with a number in its title.“This is our first opening night sellout since COVID,” Raanan said.Question answered.The enthusiasm is warranted. With book and lyrics by Abbie Goldberg and music by Mason McDowell, 504: The Musical is one of the stronges...
OnStage Colorado •

Heavy hand undermines Rocky Mountain Rep's 'Urinetown'

A musical about rationing water should hit differently in Colorado this summer.The state is currently experiencing a widespread drought. In June, after a historically poor snow season, Gov. Jared Polis declared a statewide drought emergency. In Grand County, where Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre performs, Lake Granby is currently sitting at 30+ feet below normalThat makes Urinetown — Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ Tony Award-winning musical about a 20-year drought that forces citizens to pay a c...
Denver Westword •

Phamaly premieres '504: The Musical' as states try to weaken the law that inspired it

We're in the final stretch of our summer campaign. Our goal is to raise $25,000 by August 9 to support the journalism our community relies on. Reader support is helping shape the future of local news. Nearly five decades after disabled activists occupied a San Francisco federal building to force the government to enforce Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the protections they fought for are again under pressure.
Nine states renewed a lawsuit in January challenging federal Section 504 re...
Estes Valley Voice •

A&E: This Weekend, August 7-9

If last weekend belonged to jazz, this one belongs to the visual arts and wine. Galleries throw open their doors for First Friday Art Groove, Bond Park fills with wine lovers, and live music spills out from breweries, patios, and taverns nearly every night. Here’s what’s happening around Estes Park this weekend, August 7-9.

‘Spider-Man’ stays at the Historic Park Theatre

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” follows Peter Parker as he fights crime in a world that has forgotten who he is as a result of t...
Estes Valley Voice •

YMCA renovations give new life to two performance venues

Performers returning to Hempel Auditorium this summer found a room that looked, sounded, and functioned differently from the one that closed for renovations last year.

The turquoise chairs were gone. New flooring, lighting, acoustic panels, and audiovisual equipment had been installed. Backstage, two former dressing rooms had been combined into a larger space that can accommodate rehearsals, meetings, and pre-performance gatherings.
Outside, the Kathie Mennel Amphitheater received its own upgra...
Estes Valley Voice •

Estes Park Wine Festival pours into Bond Park for 11th year

Months before the wine begins flowing in Bond Park, Tim Bowers hears from visitors planning their Estes Park vacations around the annual festival.

“Obviously, since it’s in Estes Park, we get a lot of people who plan their summer trip around being in town,” Bowers said. “I get a lot of calls from people who want to know the dates for the next year because they want to make sure they are around for the event.”
Those returning visitors will join vacationers who happen upon the festivities when th...
Denver Westword •

Photos: Bright Nights gets wild at Four Mile Historic Park

We're in the final stretch of our summer campaign. Our goal is to raise $25,000 by August 9 to support the journalism our community relies on. Reader support is helping shape the future of local news. A lantern shaped like a great white shark opens its illuminated jaws at Four Mile Historic Park, inviting visitors to step inside for a photo. Nearby, glowing seahorse lanterns appear to float along the path and oversized butterflies turn a walkway into one of Bright Nights’ most colorful attr...
Denver Westword •

Colorado Ballet bets on cheaper tickets to build its future

We're in the final stretch of our summer campaign. Our goal is to raise $25,000 by August 9 to support the journalism our community relies on. Reader support is helping shape the future of local news. Colorado Ballet can sell out “The Nutcracker.” The more difficult question is who can afford to make the production part of their holiday tradition and whether the company can build an audience that reflects the Denver it hopes to serve.
“If we do not build our audiences, we will not survive m...
OnStage Colorado •

‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ struggles to find its frequency

On the same weekend that Spider-Man: Brand New Day delivered the second-largest worldwide opening in film history, Elemental Theatre Company introduced Aurora audiences to an earlier variation on the same idea.Baroness Orczy’s 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel helped establish the secret identity template later followed by Zorro, Batman and Spider-Man. Although Sir Percy Blakeney appears to be a silly, wealthy Englishman, he secretly saves French aristocrats from the guillotine as the heroic Scar...
OnStage Colorado •

'Closing Times' reckons with a lifetime of regrets

A man sits in a bar, reminiscing about the life he did not lead. He goes to a bus stop, where a young woman who clearly knows him refuses to leave him alone. Then the action slides toward an ethereal third space before returning to the bar.Rinse and repeat.Those are the three locations in Derek Murphy’s Closing Times, receiving its world premiere from Denver Theatre Ensemble at the University of Denver Black Box Theatre. Yet each cycle through them changes what the audience understands.Directed...
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