Boulder City Chautauqua
About Boulder City Chautauqua
Karen Vuranch weaves together a love of history, a passion for stories and a sense of community. She has toured throughout the U.S. with her traditional storytelling and living history performances and has completed five performance tours of Wales and England with Coal Camp Memories. She also participated in a storytelling exchange in China in 2002. Karen brings history to life with interpretations of women from America's past, including Pearl Buck, Mother Jones, Mary Draper Ingles, Emma Edmonds, Clara Barton, Belle Starr, Louella Parsons, Julia Child, and her most recent character, Mama Cass. Karen also writes and produces audience participation murder mysteries, often working with community groups, creating a production in just two or three days using members of the community. She has been honored by many organizations, receiving in 2017 the Mountain Lion Award from the President of Concord University, where she is a faculty member. Other awards include the Tamarack Artisan Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Performing Artist of the Year for Tamarack, the Robert C. Byrd Community Service Award, and others too numerous to mention here. In 1994, Karen and her husband Gene Worthington performed together at the White House.
Karen Vuranch (Mama Cass Elliot)
About the Chautauquans
About the Historic Boulder Theatre
Amy and Desi Arnaz, Jr. purchased the Boulder Theatre in 1997 and brought it back to life after being on the brink of extinction.
EducationRandy Noojin (Woody Guthrie & John Lennon)
Karen Vuranch weaves together a love of history, a passion for stories and a sense of community. She has toured throughout the U.S. with her traditional storytelling and living history performances and has completed five performance tours of Wales and England with Coal Camp Memories. She also participated in a storytelling exchange in China in 2002. Karen brings history to life with interpretations of women from America's past, including Pearl Buck, Mother Jones, Mary Draper Ingles, Emma Edmonds, Clara Barton, Belle Starr, Louella Parsons, Julia Child, and her most recent character, Mama Cass. Karen also writes and produces audience participation murder mysteries, often working with community groups, creating a production in just two or three days using members of the community. She has been honored by many organizations, receiving in 2017 the Mountain Lion Award from the President of Concord University, where she is a faculty member. Other awards include the Tamarack Artisan Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Performing Artist of the Year for Tamarack, the Robert C. Byrd Community Service Award, and others too numerous to mention here. In 1994, Karen and her husband Gene Worthington performed together at the White House.
Although this year's Chautauqua will be held in a different venue, our 20-year relationship with Desi Arnaz Jr. and the Historic Boulder Theatre continues.
Built in 1933 by Fox Theatres, the Historic Boulder Theatre was the heartbeat of Boulder City for nearly 60 years. Because it was the only air-conditioned building in town, workers from Hoover Dam would pay $.25 for a movie ticket just so they could sleep for a few hours in the cool theatre to escape the scorching heat in Black Canyon.
As the years passed, hundreds of movies were shown on the screen, Will Rogers performed on a small stage in front of the screen, bands played, speeches were given and many couples shared their first kiss during a movie.
Chautauqua began as an educational gathering, originating as an American movement in the late 1800s, providing public lectures, religious programs and concerts during the summer months. It was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America."
Chautauqua in Boulder City, Nevada, began in 1992, and continues today as an exploration and enrichment of life through three pillars of programming: education, cultural arts, and recreation.
Boulder City Chautauqua is a Non-Profit 501 (c)(3) Organization. All donations are tax deductible to the extent permissible under law.
Randy began working on stage at Lake Central High School’s Theatre Guild (LCTG), in St. John, Indiana under the tutelage of Paul (Boss) and Angie Lowe. He majored in theatre as an undergraduate at Indiana State University, where he acted, directed and studied playwriting.
After college, Randy began a 30-year working relationship as actor and playwright with Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre (SART) in Mars Hill, North Carolina. He performed in dozens of new plays and American classics, including a play he produced with music, The Memory Collection (The Legend of Basom Lamar Lunsford), which received the Access to Artistic Excellence NEA Grant for Musical Theatre. He has worked as an actor on productions of Caligula, Talley & Son, Enrico IV, Lanford Wilson’s Rain Dance, and at Actor’s Theatre of Phoenix as Martin in The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor AriZoni Award. After this, he was commissioned and produced two one-act plays Boaz and Unbeatable Harold, which was later made into a feature film, starring Dylan McDermott, Charles Durning, Henry Winkler, Phyllis Diller and Gladys Knight. This was just the start. Over his career he has written, produced and acted in dozens of his own one-act plays and won numerous awards. Randy has acted in hundreds of plays in regional theatres, Off- and Off-Off Broadway in New York and in film and television. He was the Winner of Best Supporting Actor at 2016 Stage One International Film Festival for the role of Taxi Driver in EXPIRE, a short film shot in Beirut. His plays have been widely produced nationally and are published by Applause and Dramatic Publishing Company. His solo play with music, Hard Travelin’ With Woody had its world premiere in The New York International Fringe Festival and has since toured the U.S and Canada to repertory theatres, colleges, labor union meetings and festivals internationally.
Noojin holds an MFA in Performance from Arizona State University and an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop.