YOUR AD HERE »

Backstage Theatre premiere’s ‘Year of Magical Thinking’

Daily News staff report
newsroom@summitdaily.com
Summit County, CO Colorado

Patty Mintz Figel, one of Denver’s most award-winning actresses, stars in the Colorado regional premiere of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Directed by Backstage Theatre Artistic Director Christopher Willard (The Syringa Tree), “The Year of Magical Thinking” is based on Didion’s best-selling memoir of the same name, a searing account of her journey through grief.

In “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Didion captures the compassion, humor and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable. It is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then moths that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness … about marriage and children and memory … about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.” Told with raw candor, this meditation on grief – “a place none of us know until we reach it” – is also a celebration of family, filled with a luminous belief in the power of the human spirit to endure and overcome heartbreak.

This is Figel’s first appearance with the Backstage Theatre, and she is thrilled to be part of this extraordinary journey. Figel has appeared in many theaters in Denver and has received awards for her work in “Three Tall Women” (Best Actress), “A Lie of the Mind” (Best Supporting Actress) and “Collected Stories” (Best Actress) to name a few.



“The Year of Magical Thinking” will run for eight performances until April 13. All performances are at the Breckenridge Theatre, located at 121 S. Ridge St. in Breckenridge. Tickets are $22 for adults and $17 for youth 18 and younger. This performance is presented without intermission and contains mature subject matter. Tickets are available online at backstagetheatre.org, by calling 970.453.0199 or by visiting the box office one hour before showtime. There will be talkbacks offered at many of the performances. Consult the website for details.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.

Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.

Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.