Theater Review: “Recipe” is a Must-Experience Culinary Theatrical Event in Five Points

The rich cultural and culinary history of the Five Points area in Denver is now the subject of a brand new, immersive theatrical experience. Recipe is the brainchild of a collaboration between Artibus, Grapefruit Lab and Emancipation Theater Company and is playing at the Savoy at Curtis Park January 9-19, 2020. KGNU’s Crystal Clear offers this review:

I will keep this short and sweet. Recipe is playing at the Savoy on Curtis for a two-week run, and I urge you to see it.

For one thing, it has been underwritten by an Imagine 2020 grant from the city of Denver and it is imperative that as a city we continue to value arts and culture and investing in them with funding that allows for the nurturing of new and exciting ideas. Thankfully Theatre Artibus, Emancipation Theater, and Grapefruit Lab have embraced this exploration of collaboration and immersive theatre to a new level by truly engaging the community and history of Five Points in order to give voice and value of the overlooked and underrepresented.

Recipe is wholeheartedly a step into someone else’s shoes, which is to say at the very least refreshing if not essential as old Denver blusters at the unrecognizable RINO. Recipe as performance is ambitious to confront gentrification, and the systematic oppression of women and people of color, what makes memory and what brings a community together, most especially that they have chosen to do it with the theme of food and through the lens of whimsy and interpretive dance.

What I loved is that this challenge for the performers to be completely engaged with the audience as they are only a foot away gives the electricity and tension that such ambitious projects deserve. In seeing over 100 years of a building you are able to see deeper into the meaning of community. Recipe engages all of your senses and requests you join in and experience community for yourself and for that its value is priceless.

For more information go to theartibus.com/recipe.