Toni Tresca

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

About Me

Editor of Bucket List, freelance journalist and co-host of the OnStage Colorado Podcast. An award-winning radio show host, member of the American Theatre Critics Association and named one of "Tomorrow's News Trailblazers" in 2026 by Editor & Publisher Magazine.

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My Latest Work

Denver Westword •

‘In the Shadows’ brings immigrant stories into the light at Union Hall Art Space

At the entrance to “In the Shadows,” a cluster of suitcases makes Union Hall Art Space in Denver look, for a moment, as though somebody is packing up.
That confusion delighted curator Italu Ramos Hernandez during installation. Sammy Seung-min Lee’s sculptural luggage was the first work to go in, and a passerby asked whether the gallery was moving.
“I thought it was just really funny,” Hernandez says. “But also, that’s what you get with suitcases. They are an object that communicates something’s...
Denver Westword •

Inside Boettcher Concert Hall's $122 million renovation

When Boettcher Concert Hall opened in March 1978, Denver unveiled an experiment in how audiences could experience an orchestra. The $13 million, nearly 2,700-seat hall debuted with the Denver Symphony Orchestra performing Vaughan Williams, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Johannes Brahms inside the first symphony hall in the United States built “in the round.”
Harold C. Schonberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for The New York Times, called it “America’s newest concert hall, and its most uno...
OnStage Colorado •

Did ‘The Outsiders’ win Best Musical because of one scene?

About midway through Act II of The Outsiders, the rain starts falling and the bodies start flying.Greasers and Socs charge, collide and pound one another into the ground during the rumble, Rick and Jeff Kuperman’s extraordinary piece of fight choreography. Bodies skid across the wet floor. Fists seem to land with bone-crunching force. Water explodes around performers as they fall, grapple and spring back into the fight.For three breathless minutes, director Danya Taymor’s production feels danger...
OnStage Colorado •

‘Route 15’ puts East Colfax in the driver’s seat

A bus ride offers a strange kind of community. People who might otherwise never meet share the same few feet of space, disappear at different stops and, occasionally, learn something about one another along the way.Roshni Healing Arts Sanctuary in Aurora builds its world premiere Route 15 around that possibility. Written by Deepali and John Pacheco, with a monologue contribution from Ammon Underhill, the 90-minute piece turns the famously eventful Route 15 bus that runs from Union Station in Den...
Denver Westword •

Diamond Dawgs vendor retiring after 31 Rockies seasons

Joyl Watkins has spent 31 seasons selling hot dogs outside Coors Field on the corner of 19th and Wynkoop. When the Colorado Rockies play their final home game of 2026 on Thursday, Sept. 24, the Diamond Dawgs owner plans to serve his last one.
“This is my last season,” Watkins says. “I’m excited about it. I don’t really have a specific reason for retiring other than it’s just become a lot of work. It’s going to be hard, but it’s time.”
The Rockies close their home schedule against the Arizona Dia...
OnStage Colorado •

HOLDTIGHT's 'mother : un/tethered' shifts from stage to screen

HOLDTIGHT’s un/tethered trilogy was supposed to end onstage. Instead, the final chapter will premiere on a movie screen.“It all just started to feel too challenging to have this be a live performance piece with what we wanted to capture,” HOLDTIGHT founder Gwendolyn Gussman said.mother: un/tethered, a 32-minute “art-documentary” directed and edited by Gussman, premieres Wednesday, Sept. 9, at the Sie FilmCenter, with a second screening Sept. 24. The film completes a trilogy that began with toget...
OnStage Colorado •

Third Side has a winner on its hands with ‘Brindlewood’

Practical Magic 2, starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, arrives in movie theaters next week. But in Aurora, practical magic has already arrived.It comes in the form of Brindlewood, Ryan Glaser’s new 60-minute folk musical about a young girl who wanders too far into an ancient forest and discovers that every gift, shortcut and tempting offer comes with a price.Third Side Theatre Company stages the world premiere of this spooky morality tale with gleeful simplicity at The People’s Building....
Estes Valley Voice •

A&E: This Weekend, September 4-7

Labor Day weekend is giving you plenty of reasons to stay out past your bedtime. Nearly 100 artists and makers are taking over Bond Park, classic cars are gathering over coffee, galleries are staying open late, and a local watering hole is celebrating its birthday. Meanwhile, live music stretches from Friday afternoon through Monday night, and the Park Theatre has everything from post-apocalyptic Colorado to a free trip back into the Wizarding World. Here’s what’s happening around Estes Park thi...
Estes Valley Voice •

Labor Day Arts & Crafts Show is back in Estes Park from Sept. 5-7

What began as a fundraiser run by the Estes Park Volunteer Fire Department 44 years ago has grown into one of the town’s longest-running Labor Day traditions.

The Estes Valley Sunrise Rotary Club, which took over the Labor Day Arts and Crafts Show in 2009 after the fire department hosted it for 27 years, will host this year’s event in Bond Park over Sept. 5-7 with more than 90 juried artists from 17 states.
“This is a big event for us. It’s a lot of fun. We are looking forward to it,” said Jean...
OnStage Colorado •

Tradition and change collide around the campfire in ‘The Grown-Ups'

On my way to the bathroom after Absurd Rodeo Theatre’s The Grown-Ups, I found myself in line with a woman who looked shell-shocked. With my lawn chair slung over one shoulder, I asked what she thought. She stared ahead for nearly 10 seconds before answering.“It just felt so eerily modern,” she said.An uncomfortable conversation to have while waiting for a toilet, perhaps. But it was also a fitting postscript to Simon Henriques and Skylar Fox’s play, which begins as a nostalgic hangout among summ...
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...
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