It may be more than a year later than hoped for, but Golden’s Miners Alley Playhouse is finally getting a new season off the ground - and it’s doing so with the world premiere of a show written by a mainstay of the local theater scene.

“I’ve been taking writing very seriously for more than a decade now, but this is the first piece of mine that I’ve had fully produced,” said Luke Sorge, an ensemble member of the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company and performer on stages like Curious Theatre and The Edge. “It’s really tethered me to the world lately and has become my passion.”

Sorge’s “Zen and the Art of Profit,” directed by artistic and executive director Len Matheo, runs at the theater, 1224 Washington Ave., through April 26. The show will be available On Demand in Miners’ new pay-it-forward model - audiences pay what they can, which helps pay for those who normally wouldn’t be able to afford to see the show. There will also be limited in-theater (15 seats) performances on Friday and Saturday, April 16 and 17 and 23 and 24.

“I’ve always wanted to fully workshop a play - taking a piece of work and going through the process of making it better a collaborative art piece,” Matheo said. “It’s great because Luke understands the collaborative process and isn’t afraid of it. Lots of writers want to change things… but he’s willing to do things that serve the story and the play.”

Based on Sorge’s own affinity for meditation, “Zen and the Art of Profit” features Bill Hahn and Heather Lacy in the story of a hot-shot executive who has his personal emails publicly leaked. This creates a cascade of problems, and to better himself, he hires a spiritual counselor. The last thing he expects is for the lessons to make a difference.

“I was actually meditating when I came up with the idea for the play, and I mainly workshopped it with the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company,” Sorge said. “Once Len and I started working with it, that’s when it really started taking shape. I’m much happier with the script now than I was a month ago.”

Through various experiments over the last year, Miners Alley has found that the audience element is crucial to any show, and so they filmed this with people watching - just like it used to be. Moving forward, live audiences will undoubtedly be a component of any broadcast, even as the theater looks to upgrade its live streaming and film equipment.

“When we were there, we looked at each other and were just giddy,” Matheo said. “I hope it’ll help people to walk away with a sense of excitement that you can only get from live theater.”

“There’s been a kind of existential exhaustion all year, but at the end of filming, it was just the feeling of a job well done,” Sorge added.

Tickets and more information can be found at 303-935-3044 or www.minersalley.com/zen-art-profit/.

DMNS considers clearer climate conversations

To highlight the importance of fighting climate change, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and the CU Boulder Center for Humanities and the Arts, in collaboration with the Institute for Science & Policy and Inside the Greenhouse at the University of Colorado Boulder is hosting Seeing Differently: The Art of Communicating Climate Change.

The virtual event will be live-streamed at 7 p.m. on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22. Hosting the conversation will be Denver7 Chief Meteorologist Mike Nelson and a diverse group of filmmakers, artists, performers and more. Visit www.dmns.org/visit/events-and-activities/ to register for the event.

Clarke’s Concert of the Week - Virtual 30th b’Earthday Celebration

The eTown radio show, podcast and multimedia nonprofit is being inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame this year to celebrate its 30th birthday. And on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, the organization will be live-streaming a massive party.

The Virtual 30th b’Earthday Celebration will be at 6:30 p.m. and feature performances from Los Lobos, The War and Treaty, Lyle Lovett, Bob Weir, Sam Bush, City and Colour, and Raquel Garcia. Former U.S. Senator and environmental advocate, Tim Wirth, will join for the conversation portion of the live stream on the importance of environmental preservation.

For all the necessary info, visit www.eTown.org.

Streaming style - Welcome to Amityville!

Horror is a genre overflowing with series and extended universes, and one of the most inexhaustible is the Amityville series - a group of films centered on a house with some serious demons. Denver Film and Scream Screen is celebrating its run with Welcome to Amityville! - a virtual series that kicks off at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 22 and runs through 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, April 25. The films will be streaming on Denver Film’s virtual platform, which allows for viewers to stream their selected films on Roku, AppleTV or their computer or mobile device.

The program is hosted and curated by Theresa Mercado and will feature four selections from the 20-plus Amityville oeuvre. Mercado will present the films from the Black Monarch Hotel - a haunted location in Victor, Colorado. Visit www.denverfilm.org for all the details and to get a virtual room in the house.

Clarke Reader’s column on culture apears on a weekly basis. He can be reached at Clarke.Reader@hotmail.com.