In the NBA, referees will sometimes miss a blatant initiating foul, like, say – an elbow to the throat. But you can be sure they won’t miss the inevitable retaliatory shot. To those watching, the injured instantly becomes the offending party.

A stage play is no different. When an actor forgets his lines, they often go mute while desperately trying to think of what to say next. But if a helpful castmate starts spouting some improvised prompt to help the other actor get back on track, it’s usually the helper who looks lost to the audience.

The opportunity to perform a theater piece solo can either be an actor’s dream – or nightmare. Now, if you blow your line, you only have yourself to blame – or to rescue you. Bright side: If you’re all by yourself up there, you don’t have to worry about some other misremembering thespian dragging you down with them.

Small- and even single-cast plays have become much more prevalent on the local and national theater landscape in recent years, and for one sound and cynical reason: They cost far less to produce. The DCPA Theatre Company offered two of them (both great) in 2024 alone. At a time when performing-arts groups of all kinds are struggling to financially recover from the pandemic and build back audience numbers, smaller stories become instantly more appealing to producers, artistic directors and bean-counters.

Stories are now being conceived and reconceived to accommodate fewer stipends – I mean actors. Right now, two local theater companies are presenting (very good) variations on “A Christmas Carol” for six or fewer actors. The best play you could see anywhere in Colorado in 2024 was “The Lehman Trilogy,” the Tony Award-winning play about the rise and fall of the famous family and its investment firm dating back to 1840s Alabama. There are more than 50 characters in playwright Stefano Massini’s epic masterpiece – but only three actors play them. That’s part of the charm of the piece, but it’s also a concession to the modern-day economic reality that the play never gets done for the first time if it’s written for a huge cast.

Solo performance is an art form of its own, and we saw examples of it in a wide variety of one-actor shows on Colorado stages from Greeley to Silverthorne. Their subjects ranged from a mass shooting to the story of a mighty First Lady to a racy holiday romp.

“The biggest challenge for any actor who really enjoys the exchange of energy with other actors and playing off of that –  there isn’t any of that in a solo show. It’s all you,” said Megan Van De Hey. “The positive to that is you can control pretty much how any scene is going to go.”

Van De Hey is an award-winning actor currently appearing in the Arvada Center’s “Once Upon a Mattress.” She’s also the artistic director of Colorado’s oldest theater company – the 90-year-old Little Theatre of the Rockies in Greeley, which last summer presented a little gem of a solo play called “Every Brilliant Thing.” But actor John Jankow wasn’t really alone on the stage. Duncan Macmillan’s script requires his actor to encourage different audience members to join him and play improvised variations of central characters.

“The challenge in John’s case is that the audience becomes his second, third and fourth characters,” Van De Hey said. Some will be hams, while others will be tongue-tied.

“As much as you try to prepare for every possible challenge – you can’t,” Van De Hey said. “So there’s no consistency from show to show. And I think that would be both exciting and terrifying for the actor.”

For the challenges solo shows bring, and the sheer accomplishment of pulling them off, seven actors (that we know of) today join The Denver Gazette’s 2024 True West Awards class, celebrating 30 of the best stories from the local theater year.

At the top of the huzzah list is Dame Deborah Persoff, who, at age 77, began her 55th year on Colorado stages with perhaps her greatest challenge to date: A grueling portrait of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a champion of society’s underdogs, an advocate for refugees and the passage of anti-lynching legislation, and a vocal opponent of the internment of Japanese Americans. Onstage Colorado’s Eric Fitzgerald called Persoff’s multi-layered performance “a one-woman tour de force.”

Acting, Persoff told The Denver Gazette, “is exercising the treadmill of my mind. I never think, ‘Am I too old for this?’ If there’s an appeal, I’m going to do it.”

Here’s a brief look at the others:

• Satya Chávez, DCPA Theatre Company’s “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” This one-actor coming-of-age story was just the biggest warm hug of the Colorado theater year, and it involved a fascinating gender re-reversal. The play was written by (and originally starred) Brian Quijada playing a 9-year-old version of his own grandmother, Bee. For Denver, he ceded the role to Chavez, a 2022 True West Award winner who also wrote original music compositions for the play. The story opens with young Bee asking a teacher during a history lesson on Rosa Parks: “Where did Latinos sit on the bus?” That opens into a full examination of what it means to be Latinx through the eyes of a child turned teenager turned adult. Onstage Colorado’s Julie Walker called the production “well worth the price of admission, if for no other reason than to experience Satya Chávez’s multidimensional talent as an actor, musician, comedian, poet and connector all at once. Absolutely captivating.”

• Hope Andrejack, Theatre SilCo’s “The Amish Project.” Jessica Dickey’s important play focuses not so much on the true 2006 shooting in a one-room Amish Pennsylvania schoolhouse that left five young girls dead and another five injured. It fully delves into the required forgiveness demanded by the Amish faith. Andrejack had to play a variety of fictionalized townspeople coming at this central issue from very different points of view. “Andrejack’s ability to embody each character with such distinction and depth is extraordinary,” Karen Mason wrote for Onstage Colorado.

• Buba Basishvili, “The Bluebird,” Theatre Artibus. This bittersweet theatrical poem inspired by Charles Bukowski’s famously tiny poem examines creator and performer Buba Basishvili’s own immigration story. Basishvili, an affable sort of clown who strikes me as our generation’s Dick Van Dyke, was born in the Republic of Georgia, under the occupation of the Soviet Red Army. His whimsical, wordless piece weaves pantomime, visual metaphor and physical comedy to explore universal immigrant themes of identity, exclusion and resilience. In his deceptively simple story, Basishvili’s immigrant, after enduring much pain and hardship, sees a bird that inspires him for the journey ahead. Onstage Colorado editor Alex Miller said Basishvili “has created a timeless piece that does an incredible job of wordlessly describing what that feels like.”

• John Jankow, Little Theatre of the Rockies’ “Every Brilliant Thing.” This is a play that can be performed by any actor of any age or gender. It’s about how a mother’s suicide affects a person over their lifetime, and the constant struggle to be aware of what remains beautiful and true in the world. Jankow, making his first stage appearance in five years, made for such a warm and friendly protagonist, you kind of wanted to go fishing with him afterward. Even if you don’t like fishing. All the more remarkable given that Little Theatre, which is affiliated with the University of Northern Colorado, made this show brand-new alumna Evette Srouji’s directorial debut. “Putting these two UNC grads together,” Van De Hey said, “was bringing the past and present of our own UNC history together – and it was really exciting.”

• Denise Olson-Perry, Everyman Theatre Company’s “My Brilliant Divorce,” at the Bug Theatre. This bittersweet 2003 comedy written by Geraldine Aron follows a woman scorned who is on a cathartic journey to get her life back. And while Olson-Perry was the only actor onstage, she did have a special co-star in Dexter, an adorable 8-year-old dog on wheels.

• Jenny Weiss, Vintage Theatre’s “Who’s Holiday.”Vintage is creating its own “The SantaLand Diaries”-like seasonal tradition with this both naughty-and-nice comedy monologue now in its fourth year featuring Jenny Weiss as Cindy Lou Who. She’s throwing a Christmas party in her trailer, and sharing some of the twisted turns her life has taken. “She has a lot to say, and she is going to tell it like it is whether you like it or not,” Weiss said. “I love being passionate, animated and joyful about the story I am telling.” “Who’s Holiday” plays through Dec. 31 at 1468 Dayton St.

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 24th year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

Unsung hero of the day

Dan Graeber, an expert music director at theaters across the Front Range, helped bring Graham and Kristina Fuller’s “That Parenting Musical” all the way from Longmont to off-Broadway in 2024. He also helmed Town Hall Arts Center’s excellent “Urinetown.” “Kristina and I get most of the publicity, but Dan’s fingerprints are all over that show,” Graham Fuller said.

“He’s the most professional musical director I’ve ever seen. He is the ultimate collaborator, and his preparedness is next-level. He has an excellent grasp of essentially any musical style you would want to write in – and he’s the best pianist I’ve ever heard.”

Next up for Graeber: “Little Shop of Horrors” for the DCPA Theatre Company.