Snell & Wilmer LLP’s Denver outpost has added a new transactional partner to its corporate and securities team, bringing with him 18 years of experience including co-founding the technology transactions group…

The Denver Center is a-humming.

In the theater company’s largest house, Emma Woodhouse — to her own gentle comeuppance — is winking her way through Kate Hamill’s delightful adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” (See if before it closes Sunday.) Downstairs in the Singleton Theatre, things are positively loopy. Or rather brilliantly looping, as a young, Latina music-maker sets about crafting a mixed tape of her life in the hip-hop-influenced “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?,” directed by Matt Dickson. It runs through June 2.

So convincing is Satya Chávez (who uses the pronoun “they”) in the role of “Bee” Quijada that the audience is likely to assume it’s their life as the fourth child of Salvadoran immigrants that will be recounted for the next fleet, entertaining 80 minutes. It’s not; it’s writer-performer Brian Quijada’s.

Chávez’s intimacy with Quijada’s story might have been earned during the time they spent working (along with Nygel D. Robinson) on the concert series “Songs from the Border” at Colorado Spring’s Fine Arts Center during its 2021-22 season. But the vibrant poignancy and tangible intimacy that Chávez created with the opening-night audience feels very much their own.

Chávez skillfully utilizes the tools of hip-hop and spoken word for the show’s layering of sounds and, more vitally, personal and cultural history: rap’s diving and arcing rhymes, an iPad with a Bluetooth connection, four loopers, and her voice. But Chavez, a talented musician, also plays a keyboard, guitar, ukulele, guitarron, bass, caña, a harmonica and more. And they sing.

Oh, how they sing, warmly, wittily, sometimes plaintively. Chavez punctuates parts of the storytelling with a wordless refrain that soars and wails — just a little — during its exploration of belonging.

“Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” takes its title from the question a 9-year-old Bee asks her elementary school teacher during lessons on Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement. Defying the reigning black-white dialectic of the nation, little Bee wonders about her place as a brown kid, the child of immigrants, in this American life. Bee and her next oldest brother, Marvin, were born in the U.S. Older brothers Fernando and Roberto were born in El Salvador.

The show is disarmingly personable and cleverly participatory as it goes from Bee’s conception and birth (their time in mom’s womb is bathed in red light) to her childhood living first in a trailer park outside of Chicago and then in a suburban neighborhood adjacent to Highland Park, with its large Jewish community.

They share their love of Michael Jackson, an early role model — until he started to tarnish his reputation by what seemed to be a drastic repudiation of his skin color. But they find their emotional place when they become involved in theater.

Chavez wears a monochrome outfit, a richer shade of army fatigues. They begin at a breakneck pace, then find a lively cadence of trust and familiarity, at times teasing the audience with the sly rapport of a lounge singer.

The production design of the show feels like a departure for the theater company, not in quality but in tone. The set by Tanya Orellana (who also created the costumes) and Pablo Santiago’s playful and geometric lighting design recreate the spare intimacy of a black box theater that can also offer a neon-lit portal into Bee’s past. How far back it goes speaks to (and reverberates, thanks to Alex Billman’s sound design)  the show’s joys and imagination.

There’s ample sweetness to this journey and little argumentativeness in Quijada’s script — until there needs to be, when nagging quandaries about belonging boil over. Because “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” is a theater geek’s coming-of-age saga, Bee had described theater as their church. Late in the show, they take us there, to an ongoing, rancorous national conversation about immigration in which immigrants bear the brunt of ire.

And so, Bee takes an extended moment to preach a gospel of inclusion, one inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, but also confesses the kind of hurt and disappointment that comes from witnessing a nation fail its ideals. The nation may falter in moving toward a better and welcoming future, but Bee doesn’t.

“Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” began with Bee telling us that she popped the question to her beloved, who is Austrian and Swiss, in Mexico. It ends with an expansive answer to the question of the title.

Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelance writer who specializes in theater and film. 

IF YOU GO

“Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” Written by Brian Quijada. Additional compositions by Satya Chávez. Directed by Matt Dickson. Featuring Satya Chávez. At the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, 14th and Curtis streets. Through June 1. For tickets and info: 303-893-4100 or denvercenter.org.

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Denver’s water department released a cringey Backstreet Boys parody video that featured tips for residents on how to limit water use during the summer. 

A group of employees, also known as the ‘Splashstreet Boys,’ portrayed the famous 1990s boy band and changed their 1999 hit ‘I Want It That Way’ to ‘I Water That Way.’ 

The catchy choreographed video featured five members of the company’s communications team, including Steve Snyder, Micky Boehm, Jimmy Luthye, Nathan Hayes and Jill Harclerode who sported drawn-on facial hair. 

The crew were seen dancing, singing and wearing 90s inspired outfits as they showed how to properly water outdoors in the heat.  They were cheered on by a group of rowdy fans and were joined by a walking toilet that was portrayed by the company’s manager Patrick McCoy. 

The Backstreet Boys took to the company’s Instagram page and praised the parody: ‘You guys NAILED this.’ 

One employee, Jill Harclerode, is seen rocking drawn on facial hair as she dances near a lake with her band the ‘Splashstreet Boys’ 

The video starts with a close-up shot of a lawn sprinkler just before the ‘Splashstreet Boys’ dramatically walk to the front of the Denver Water building. 

A walking toilet then approaches the camera before the camera pans back over the performers. 

‘My yard needs water when it gets hotter,’ one of the employees sings as the walking toilet jumps up and down in slow motion. 

‘Believe these dry days that I water that way,’ he adds as another employee takes center stage to explain why they ‘want lawns to survive.’ 

As he sings his part, his band members dance around him as he says: ‘Concrete just won’t fly- So I say, I water that way!’ 

The band then leads into the iconic chorus of the song and listed the reasons ‘why’ people should only water their lawns at a certain time of the day. 

Standing in front of a new background, each member, dressed in all white, dances around as they fade in and out like the original Backstreet Boys music video. 

The video then shows one of the employees pouring water out of a can onto a lawn, just before he breaks out in a backflip. The lyrics start to slow down and the background goes dark. 

‘I’m watering at night. This seems right. I water that way,’ he sings as he spills more water onto the grass. 

Another employee is seen wearing a patchwork denim bucket hat, a denim blazer and blue sunglasses. 

The group makes their way over to a nearby lake as they dance and sing on shore. 

They all sing: ‘Don’t water in the day time, don’t water in the sunshine. Tell me why?’ 

The group mimicked the iconic ‘I Want It That Way’ music video and had a large group of fans surround them, screaming with large posters 

The Denver Water employees nearly replicated that moment as they danced around in all-white outfits and even faded away 

The Backstreet Boys even saw the video and said that the employees ‘NAILED’ it 

The Backstreet Boys in the original video that was filmed at the Los Angeles airport in 1999

The band explains that if people water their lawns and plants during the day, the water will evaporate.  Harclerode then makes her big debut as her coworkers dance around her. 

‘Now I can see you’ve taken to heart the watering rules baby,’ she sings. 

‘So stop wasting water, start doing your part… The future is in your hands!’ 

She then sprinkles water around and the toilet makes another appearance as the chorus comes back around. 

Now, inside of the company’s building, the group continues to dance and sing as  ‘fans’ holding signs surround them, mimicking the iconic video. 

An employee then sings: ‘What’s Coloradoscape?’

‘More climate friendly landscapes. More plants that like it in our state.’ 

They then take a dig at another state and say: ‘No, we’re not Kentucky. Drought friendly never felt so great! I water that way.’ 

A member then goes up to one of the fans and kisses her hand before they tell people not to water more than three days in a week, and not to do so from 10am to 6pm. 

A fan is seen holding up a sign with ‘H.O.A’ on it as she cries and the band sings: ‘Somebody tell the H.O.A. (forget the H.O.A) I water that way.’ 

‘Fans’ are seen cheering on the band with signs that say: ‘Save Water’ and ‘I love toilet’ 

At the end of the video, an extra clip included the company’s CEO, Alan Salazar (center), as he danced around and kissed the walking toilet 

They then join their group of fans and a security guard who joins in on the fun. 

‘You live in Colorado….You want it to be habitable,’ they sing. 

‘I only wanna hear you say, I water that way,’ they sing as the video comes to an end. 

In an extra clip at the end of the video, Denver Water’s CEO Alan Salazar joins the performance and says: ‘I water that way,’ as he kisses the toilet, rubs it and then says ‘I’m gonna regret this so much.’ 

As people laugh, one of the band members says: ‘We’re already there.’

Commenters flocked to the parody video and reacted to the unique performance. 

One said: ‘Now this is how you spend tax dollars!’

Another said: ‘Raises. All of you get raises.’

‘I’ve never been so motivated to be water conscious in my life,’ a commenter wrote. 

While some enjoyed the video, others made it clear they disapproved. 

‘Stop propping up the lawn industry with this stupid grass ‘lawns.’ Barf,’ one wrote.

‘This was a waste of money,’ another said.