Laurence Curry

Laurence Curry was found dead on Sunday, 18 October 2026, at an apartment in Aurora, Colorado. He was 51. Earlier that day he had been helping a friend to move. His former wife, Brittany Curry, said the coroner's office told her he died of an overdose, which she believed was unintentional. No separate official statement on the cause had been published.

His death was reported on 19 October by the Denver Gazette's senior arts journalist John Moore, who had written Waiting for Obama. Dozens of tributes followed from Colorado's theatre community. His former agent Patty Kingsbaker said that whenever she was around him she felt pure love, and Denver actor Brian Landis Folkins called him the brightest light he had ever known. A memorial service was expected to be held in Denver, most likely in November.

Laurence Anthony Curry was born on 14 August 1975 and grew up to make his home in the Denver area. He studied at the University of Northern Colorado, graduating with a degree in theatre and dance performance.

Alongside his stage training he achieved a black belt in taekwondo. Friends and colleagues said the discipline laid the foundation for the fluid, controlled movement that later marked his dancing, choreography and acting.

Curry did a little of everything in the performing arts: he acted, danced, choreographed, taught, directed, sang and played the trumpet. His Colorado stage credits spanned the Denver Center Theatre Company, Curious Theatre Company, the Arvada Center, Theatre Aspen, Colorado Chamber Players and TheatreWorks in Colorado Springs. He made a brief appearance in Donovan Marley's 2005 farewell production at the Denver Center, The Madwoman of Chaillot, break dancing in a role his castmate Leslie O'Carroll remembered him playing "like he was a magic soul". He later appeared in the Denver Center's All the Way and starred in its 2017 immersive production of The Wild Party at the Stanley Marketplace in Aurora.

At Curious Theatre he starred in 2013 alongside Damion Hoover and Cajardo Lindsey in Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, and followed it with an award winning turn in Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man, for which Westword's critic Juliet Wittman praised his emotional depth and powerful presence. He also appeared in Curious Theatre's staging of McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays.

From 2006 to 2013 he worked as a professional teaching artist and dance specialist for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He taught dance at the University of Denver and was a longtime guest artist at Denver School of the Arts, where he directed In the Red and Brown Water and choreographed 9 to 5 the Musical and one of the first high school productions of Spring Awakening. He created a concert series introducing hip hop to new audiences through music, dance and graffiti art, working with local artists such as DJ Chonz and the BreakEFX dance team, co-founded Dance Doxology, which uses movement in worship, and taught at Streetside Dance Studios in Boulder with his business partner and best friend, Rico Changeux.

Beyond Colorado he danced in national fashion shows, in a music video for Lou Bega and with Oakland's Savage Jazz Dance Company, and he was a prominent television pitchman in national commercials for Ford Motor Company, Coors, Nintendo and Zima. His film work included Asteroid, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead and the Netflix film Our Souls at Night, in which he shared a scene with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

In 2016 he played President Barack Obama in John Moore's darkly comic play about guns and family, Waiting for Obama, at the New York International Fringe Festival, the New York stage debut for him and the rest of the all Colorado cast. Westword described his portrayal as uncanny, going beyond mimicry. He returned to the role five more times in public readings and in a 2020 radio play recording, most recently at the Miners Alley Performing Arts Center in January 2025.

Curry met Brittany Curry in 2012, when both danced for Moraporvida Contemporary Dance. They married and had two sons, Maceo and Milo. Brittany Curry said that being a father was probably his greatest joy in life, and that the days their sons were born were the happiest she had ever seen him.

The couple divorced in 2022 and Brittany moved to Queen Creek, Arizona, but they remained friends. She said that in his later years he struggled with addiction, which she described as a chronic, relapsing brain disease, and went through periods of homelessness. He is survived by his sons, his former wife, his sister Deb Curry of South Carolina and her son Jacob.

Curry is remembered as one of the most versatile performers of his generation in Colorado theatre, equally at home in serious drama, dance and comedy, and for the role of Barack Obama that carried a Colorado play and its cast to New York.

His influence was felt as strongly in classrooms as on stage. Denver School of the Arts theatre director Shawn Hann said his kindness and generosity of spirit made students feel seen, and seen with love, and that any student who worked with him was powerfully affected. Brittany Curry said she wanted him to be remembered for all the good things he gave to the world, and for his talent.