I love sitting in the front row at the theater. The live action that makes plays so appealing in the first place is amplified in the front row: the sight and the smell of sweat, the glistening tears, the flying spit.

Spit was flying all over the place during the opening beat-boxing overture of Curious Theatre Company’s The Denver Project. The lovely woman beside me waited politely for the actors to have their say before finally drying the wet spittle from her face with her sleeve—smiling all the while—appreciating the special intimacy of the front row, as I do.

When hip hop theater hits D town, you might not expect Curious Theatre Company to be the one producing it. But Curious has committed itself to balancing its annual offering of contemporary New York plays with a spattering of ambitious in-house creations, and The Denver Project is such a creation: the product of yearlong interviewing, workshopping, and fine tuning.

This company’s affection for New York runs deep, though.

For The Denver Project, Curious commissioned Bronx-based playwrights Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruíz to school the director and cast in the tenets of hip hop theater and guide them in creating a mosaic of the local homeless population. According to Director Dee Covington, Sapp spent much of his time in Denver walking East Colfax late at night, sleeping under bridges, and talking to street people.

The result is a fusion of spoken word vignettes punctuated by intricate harmonies and beats. This compelling collage of rhythm and sound explores several aspects of homelessness, including mental illness, shell shock, smack addiction, street marriage and prostitution.

The problem is The Denver Project rings false. It feels like what it is: a group of mainstream actors trying to be hip hop. I’ve been exposed to a fair amount of hip hop theater in the past few years, and watching spoken word artists trying to act is sometimes just as painful, but somehow more authentic.

Nevertheless, the actors make due with what they got. Tyee Tilghman as the street sage, Tie, turns forth the strongest performance by far. Then again, his is the only role written with texture. The others are relegated to oftentimes thin caricatures.

Take for instance John Jurcheck’s shallow businessman. When he feeds a quarter to a random parking meter instead of putting it in Tie’s outstretched hand, one must wonder at his spitefulness. The gesture seems to parody the winning campaign ads of Denver’s current mayor and champion of the homeless, J.W. Hickenlooper, though I think the obscure reference may be lost on most.

The problems aren’t all in the writing, though.

Misha Johnson forgets to infuse any humanity into her roles—either the overwrought social worker or the tough street teen. It didn’t help that her trendy Banana Republic cargo pants made her look and feel like a trumped up trust fund poser. Maybe it was the holes in my own jeans that made the actors look overdressed.

I got the chance to see Sapp and Ruíz perform in San Antonio with their hip hop ensemble, Universes, and it blew me away. What they themselves do, they do very well. But I’m not sure their Curious collaborations are hitting the mark.

It’s no wonder Curious has sought them out, though. The experimental and nonconformist nature of hip hop theater makes it exciting. And its relevance to urban young folks (the audience American theaters are desperate to cultivate) makes it a virtual goldmine.

Curious does great work with the Broadway stew—plays that have been written, developed, and well established elsewhere. When they try to work something from the ground up, as they did with 2006’s War Anthology, they sometimes come up short.

Still, you have to respect Curious Theatre for taking risks with timely, edgy, and experimental new work. I always have.