All-ability group works to highlight the human condition

By Brenden Pachniak

Phamaly Theatre Company, which features performances focused on inclusion and accessibility, is gearing up for its August staging of "A Chorus Line."

The show opens the Kilstrom Theatre at the Denver Performing Arts Complex on Aug. 8. Phamaly is the longest running disability-affirmative theater in the U.S., celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Phamaly has ways of reimagining traditional shows to be inclusive and eye-opening for audiences.

The production will mark Ben Raanan’s third year as the artistic director for Phamaly. He will also direct "A Chorus Line." Raanan said the production is exactly what the founding members envisioned when they launched the company more than three decades ago.

“To my knowledge this will be the first time there's ever been an all-disabled ‘Chorus Line,’” Raanan said.

"A Chorus Line" is considered one of the most popular and iconic musicals in Broadway history. The traditional plot features several dancers that are competing for eights spots in a new chorus line, all sharing their stories along the way. Raanan’s reimagined version delivers stories and perspectives that many patrons haven’t experienced in traditional theater.

“This production that we are doing is very unique in the fact that it is going to have lots of people represented: from people of all types of sexualities, disability, size, age - and people that you would not expect to do these things in ‘A Chorus Line,’” Raanan said. “So great, how do you do a tap dance with someone who's in a wheelchair. We're going to figure it out, you know.”

Raanan emphasized that Phamaly productions are important to disrupt the narrative. “You're not going to see something lesser than,” he stressed. “You’re going to see something different.”

The theater group has won numerous awards, including the Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Award for Outstanding Direction of a Musical for “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and it performed “The Fantasticks” in Osaka, Japan.

Phamaly’s 2022 production of “The Spitfire Grill“ opened in New York, which helped create more awareness of the art and craftsmanship Phamaly is known for.

Raanan said it’s important for audiences to understand that Phalamy productions are simply “adding to the human condition. Our ‘Chorus Line’ is going to be 100 times different than any other ‘Chorus Line’ you have ever seen in your life.”

In October, Phamaly also will stage a story collage titled “The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls” and a sketch comedy show called “Funny as a Crutch.”