Denver, CO
Setting the stage for success – MSU Denver RED
When you hear the word “theatre,” your mind might immediately go to the actors you see on stage. It’s fair to say most audience members probably aren’t thinking about the lighting technicians, makeup artists, props artisans or carpenters who built the set before them.
Yet these members of a theatre crew are essential to any performance’s success. Their jobs are unique in that if they are done successfully, most people won’t even notice.
“I think one of the most interesting things about working in the field (of technical theatre) is that when you do your job absolutely correctly, almost nobody notices that you’ve done anything,” said Professor Brian Kelley, the Theatre Department’s technical director and coordinator for the Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Applied Theatre Technology and Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “They just buy it as part of the environment of the show.”
While MSU Denver has a fair number of students who want to go into theatre design, there are more who are focused on being technicians — that is, the artisans who make all the things happen. “That’s pretty unique for most theatre programs,” Kelley said. “It’s much easier to go out and get work as a technician than it is to get consistent work as a designer.”
Just ask Zee Howard, who plans to graduate this spring with a BFA in Applied Theatre Technology and Design with a focus on lighting. “I applied to college as an undecided major,” she said. “I didn’t know I could do this as a career.” She has already landed a gig operating the spotlight at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities this spring.
“Other programs will train people in carpentry or electrical or painting, but their goal is to produce designers,” Kelley said. MSU Denver students get hands-on training (often paid through work-study programs) in building, painting and electrical installation, learning everything they’ll need to know for a real-world theatre technician job.
Theatre costumes enter a new dimension
Max Boelte graduated from MSU Denver in 2017 with a BFA in Applied Theatre Technology and Design, with an emphasis in lighting design. Before applying to MSU Denver, he considered going into electrical engineering at a different institution. But he decided he could combine his passion for theatre with his interest in electrical work while at MSU Denver.
Technical lighting, he said, involves hanging the lights, getting data and power to them, making sure they’re configured correctly and dealing with the data network. “I’ve actually been able to do a lot of IT (information technology) work,” he said.
People often think of a Theatre degree as “super-niche,” Boelte said. “But there’s a ton of applicable skills in other fields that all translate really well,” he said. Today, Boelte works at Casa Bonita, a Denver restaurant known for its immersive experiences, managing lighting projects and new installations.
“Students are building, welding, hanging lights and speakers, building props for six weeks leading up to productions,” said Jacob Welch, chair of the Theatre Department. “For a large musical, MSU Denver brings in over $1 million in equipment into the space. Our students are getting to work with cutting-edge entertainment technology.”
This reflects the MSU Denver Theatre motto “equipment for living” — a phrase coined by Marilyn “Cookie” Hetzel, professor emerita and founder of the Theatre Department at MSU Denver.
Professor Kelley is in his 11th year at MSU Denver. The born-and-raised Denverite began teaching in Ohio but returned to Colorado to teach after learning about Hetzel and the ensemble spirit she hoped to cultivate within the department — the idea that everyone working on a production has value.
“Theatres are a collaborative artistic endeavor,” Kelley said. “Everybody wants to have the show as a whole come to a successful conclusion.”
Giving the Olympics the gift of flight
As Kelley describes it, designers come in with big ideas of the worlds they want to portray on stage, but the technicians have the hands-on skills to make that design come to fruition. For example, the University’s production of “Girls Like That” this past fall involved building a 14-foot-tall replica of a cellphone using Plexiglas and acrylic paint to mimic stained glass.
“So it’s still an artistic endeavor on our part because we’re doing really, really odd things with really, really good materials … and still function within a budget,” he added.
“The goal is, I think, to really immerse people in the story, and we’re all just kind of helping push that story forward,” Howard said.
Catch a show at MSU Denver this spring!“Footloose” “Macbeth” See the full schedule and purchase tickets.
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For Kelley Reznik, another alum of the BFA program in Applied Theatre Technology and Design, this ensemble spirit was a big part of what attracted her to the field.
Reznik, who now works as an assistant stagehand at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, wanted the college experience and started at MSU Denver at age 23. She considered studying Astrophysics but decided to take Kelley’s Intro to Stagecraft class for fun. She knew within the first five minutes she was in the right place.
“I always struggled to make friends, and I found that theatre really pulled out my gregarious, kind of, authentic self,” she said. “And I found a community in theatre that I just had not really found in any other studies.”
Memphis Orion’s steamy vision of Denver includes state-of-the-art saunas and cold plunges, salt scrubs, solariums, and towel-whipping “aufgussing” rituals.
For now, however, the amenities for his new business are limited to a steel-frame trailer behind a gutted industrial building. His custom-built, solar-powered mobile sauna, or Cobacita, fits a little over a dozen people on its wooden benches. That’s a far cry from from the hundreds Orion envisions inside his $27 million Coba Bathhouse project just a few feet away.
“I’m a connoisseur of the world of bathhouses, and I love the different technologies emerging around the world for it,” said Orion, the CEO of Coba. “The modern bathhouse is taking these traditional (forms) and updating them and bringing them to together for people who are moving away from bars and alcohol being the center of social life.”
Consisting of three buildings connected by gardens and outdoor seating areas, Coba — a combination of Colorado and bathhouse — is a concept of extreme, immersive proportions backed by veterans of the art and entertainment worlds. When it’s finished in 2027, it will sit across from the Auraria Campus on West Colfax Avenue in Denver, just south of Domo Japanese restaurant in the La Alma neighborhood.
Orion sees it employing 90 to 100 people and fitting about 400 guests at any one time. If all goes well, its founders believe it will draw roughly 300,000 people per year.
Day passes will cost $50 to $75, with $220 monthly memberships, although prices are preliminary. It’s about the cost of a casual dinner out, chief strategy officer Adam Lerner said, and arguably a value for a theme park’s-worth of wellness attractions. Lush urban gardens, tea ceremonies, wood-burning firepits, steam rituals like aufgussing (a towel-whipping, dancing group experience) and group-soaking pools are on the menu.
Coba’s buildings, including a former asphalt factory that lacks electricity or running water, are, for now, a staging area and proving ground still in need of permits, excavators and carpenters before they can match the elaborate renderings Orion and his partners have been floating to investors.
The project is slated to cost about $27 million, Orion said, with $3.5 million of that going toward the land purchase. He received a $526,200 state tax credit, since the project will include a thermal energy network, with an 800-foot-deep geothermal well planned for underneath the parking lot. The technology will use the consistent temperature deep underground to draw and disperse heat and cold as part of Coba’s electricity-hungry infrastructure.
Orion’s confident the “landmark” bathhouse will draw Denverites who are hungry for new experiences. In this case, that’s an upscale version of downregulation, a.k.a. chilling and steaming one’s way to relaxation, happiness and social well-being.
Orion, an industrial engineering and renovation expert, is surrounded by a pool of expertise. His co-founder in Coba, and the company’s chief commercial officer, is Jon Medina, a designer and producer who has worked with Meow Wolf, AEG Presents and Outside Magazine. Also from Meow Wolf: Coba’s chief financial officer Carl Christensen, the former co-CEO and chief financial officer of Meow Wolf. That immersive-entertainment company just happens to have an outpost about a mile away from Coba.
Chief strategy officer Lerner formerly led the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Meow Wolf co-founder Vince Kadlubek, architect Paul Andersen and others continue to advise on the project. The balance of art and culture veterans should ensure that Coba has a strong cultural appeal, its founders believe, with an emphasis on memorable experiences.
“We wanted to take the mundane and make it more adventurous,” Medina said, citing the “rain room,” where water follows people as they walk through it (a nicer version, perhaps, of the cartoon raincloud that follows around someone in a bad mood).
Coba’s layout is designed to circulate guests through the environments until they find their comfort zone(s). There’s a giant cold plunge pool that fits about 30 people — and one with even colder temps that fits 6 to 10. There’s the 60-seater room called the Ritual Sauna, water massages, a dark and silent sauna meant for solo introversion, floating pools, a rooftop garden and rentable “thermal suites.”
Renderings of the finished Coba look like a psychedelic hall of justice, albeit with Art Deco arches replaced by wavy roof lines. They conceal not just internal wellness features but also a café, space for musical performances and workshops, and lockers and common areas.
“Here the idea is to create something that maybe draws from history, but is not a direct reference to it,” architect Andersen said. “This is something very different, even otherworldly.”
Coba’s success may turn on how transported its guests feel, since it’s being pitched as a respite from stress and an excuse to put down your phone and bond with neighbors.
“We wanted to create a place that has this combination of feeling connected to nature but also modern life,” Lerner said. “Because this is not a retreat. This is actually a place that is integrated into your weekly routine. The kind of place you go to four times a month. Which is why a bathhouse differentiates itself from, say, a spa, which is a luxury indulgence.”
Lerner first met Orion at the ritualistic, art-driven Burning Man Festival in Nevada, and has maintained a friendship that dovetailed into the one-acre Coba project. Their connections are coming in handy as they hold small sessions and continue to raise funds for construction. They even recruited Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Zach Neumeyer, the chairman of Sage Hospitality, to make remarks on their Jan. 22 “civic preview.”
Coba has the potential to outlast fads in biohacking and contrast therapy meant to tame and train the body, said Denver journalist and author Scott Carney. He’s written extensively on how the body can be conditioned to extreme environments, and his Jan. 22 visit to Coba convinced him of its pure intentions.
“There are a few other contrast therapy spots that have popped up around Denver, from mobile saunas and river jumps at the Golden library, to the sauna/plunge combos at Nurture and Archipelago, as well as SWTHZ on Tennyson,” he wrote via email. “But they are all smaller and … more specifically health-oriented. People go there for their quick hot and cold fix and then move on.”
Coba may endure because it’s social, he said, instead of just service-oriented.
Or as Coba’s founders write in their 27-page investor pitch: “Bring a swimsuit if you’d like to participate. Dress is casual. The person next to you may be in swimwear.”
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Bad air quality has unfortunately become a familiar issue in Colorado. At a few points last year, Denver’s skyline was completely blanketed with smoke, whether from wildfires in the state or nearby areas, as well as other sources.
Back in 2019, Denver launched a program called Love My Air. In its simplest form, it rates air quality as good, moderate, or hazardous. It’s a tool that lets people in the Denver area look up air quality in real time and decide how they’ll spend time outdoors.
Across the city, little boxes provide important information.
“We measure a couple of different pollutants you see up here,” said Ephraim Milton, a coordinator with the Love My Air program. “Ozone is a big one here in Colorado. PM2.5 is very common.”
Real-time information on air quality and how it affects different individuals is gathered through a network of 80 sensors, a combination of the program’s sensors and the state’s.
“It’s just very hyperlocal,” said Milton. “I mean, you go to the weather app and that, yeah, sure, that’ll tell you the general, you know, air quality for the area. But you go here to ours, and it’s definitely going to be more local.”
The program has expanded over the years and is now in Jefferson and Adams Counties, with sensors across the state and even into Wisconsin.
“They think they have six sensors in Milwaukee,” said Milton. “They’re really great partners.”
Inner City Health, a non-profit providing healthcare to underserved individuals, is a partner here in Denver.
“The technology that they’re providing affords us the ability to inform our patients and the community at large [that] today may be a good day to go outside and exercise, and today may actually be of danger,” said Charles Gilford III, the non-profit’s CEO. “Because we have folks who have asthma or COPD or different conditions that pose a risk to their safety and to their well-being.”
They have an interactive kiosk in their waiting room, but hope the program continues to evolve.
“To send a text message to our patient base and give them updates and say, ‘Hey, just as a heads up, we saw you the other day and today would be a good day to take that walk,” said Gilford. “What are the other iterations of this technology that folks can have? How can we make sure that in a society where everything is competing for our attention, we can just be that one little nudge to give people good information while they’re going about their lives, and not just in the clinic?”
This tool can also be useful in the event of a fire or nearby construction, for example. Love My Air hosts community workshops focused on education, in addition to their online resources, and the information is also used for policy and rulemaking across the state. They plan on adding multiple healthcare partners in 2026 and hope to continue expanding their reach.
Denver, CO
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver Earns 2025 Top Workplace by the Denver Post for 14th Year
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver
Denver, CO – January 27, 2026 – Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver is proud to announce that they have been named a 2025 Top Workplace by The Denver Post for the 14th year in a row! Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver is a home care provider in Denver, CO, founded in 2008. This recognition highlights the organization’s long-standing commitment to its positive and supportive workplace culture for its caregivers and clients.
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver has ranked:
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#8 in the Medium Business category for 2025
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#9 ranking in the Medium Business category for 2024
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#59 ranking in 2023 for the Small Business category
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and more
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver has earned these rankings with their excellence in maintaining a strong workplace culture year after year. The organization’s Top Workplaces profile can be viewed at:
https://topworkplaces.com/company/visiting-angels-of-lakew/denverpost/
“Earning this recognition for the 14th consecutive year is an incredible honor,” said Stephen Signor, Executive Director of Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver. “Our caregivers are the heart of our organization, and we are deeply grateful for their commitment to both our clients and one another. This award reflects the supportive culture we strive to maintain every day.”
About Visiting Angels
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver is a locally owned and operated in-home care provider serving the Denver, Colorado area since 2008. The organization specializes in compassionate, individualized, high-quality home care in Denver delivered by experienced and dedicated caregivers.
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver provides personalized in-home care services to seniors throughout the Denver metro area, helping clients maintain independence and quality of life in the comfort of their homes.
Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver Office:
Business Name: Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver
Address: 4251 Kipling St #535, Wheat Ridge, CO, 80033
Phone Number: (720) 734-5432
Website: https://www.visitingangels.com/denver/home-care-denver-co
Media Contact
Company Name: Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver
Contact Person: Stephen Signor
Email: Send Email
Phone: (720) 734-5432
Address:4251 Kipling St #535
City: Wheat Ridge
State: Colorado
Country: United States
Website: https://www.visitingangels.com/denver/home
Press Release Distributed by ABNewswire.com
To view the original version on ABNewswire visit: Visiting Angels Senior Home Care Denver Earns 2025 Top Workplace by the Denver Post for 14th Year
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