bold;"> Colorado Chautauqua
The Colorado Chautauqua has presented programs every summer since 1898 including lectures, music, cinema, adult education classes, and nondenominational sermons. Its grounds, including the historic Chautauqua Auditorium, are located about one mile (1.6 km) southwest of downtown Boulder, just south of the intersection of Ninth Street and Baseline Road. In recent years the Colorado Chautauqua has become a year-round operation.
When the Colorado Chautauqua (then known as the Texas-Colorado Chautauqua) originated, it was part of a large, nation-wide Chautauqua movement. The Colorado Chautauqua is (and was) an example of an Independent Chautauqua with permanent buildings at a fixed location, in contrast to Circuit Chautauquas, which were itinerant operations that traveled to temporary tent facilities across the U.S. and Canada performing shows. At the peak of the Chautauqua movement in the 1920s, there were more than 200 Independent Chautauquas around the U.S. and thousands of temporary tent sites.
In recent years, the Colorado Chautauqua has featured many notable artists such as Andrew Bird, The Indigo Girls, CAKE, Marc Cohn, John Lithgow and The Weepies. Notables from the early years included William Jennings Bryan and Billy Sunday.
University of Colorado Events
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, founded 1958, is a summer festival of Shakespeare held at the outdoor Mary Rippon Theater on the University of Colorado campus. The staging of Shakespearean plays at this outdoor venue dates to 1944.
The Conference on World Affairs, started in 1948, is an annual one-week conference featuring dozens of discussion panels on a variety of contemporary issues. Roger Ebert attends the conference every year and conducts his "Cinema Interruptus" lecture, spending many hours over a number of days closely analyzing one film. It was at the conference in 1996
