In a field where everyone has multiple skills, CJ Hosier still stood out. Actor, designer, technician - he made himself invaluable to friends and colleagues.

Mr. Hosier died in his sleep Monday at age 34; the cause of death is pending.

He grew up in Denver, graduating from Littleton High School and the University of North Dakota. Just a week after his college graduation, he met Emily MacIntyre during auditions at the Theatre Group. They had been friends ever since, through that 1998 show and later, when both were working at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center, where Mr. Hosier was the technical director from 2000 to 2005.

"He had a unique sense of humor," MacIntyre said. "He would come up with just these random things that would stick for years and years. He always had things to say that had us rolling our eyes and going, 'Oh God, you're so inappropriate.' "

At the Mizel, he was good with children as well as design, installing a trap door in the theater stage so children could disappear during a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and creating a dragon with a 14-foot wingspan for another show.

"The great thing about CJ, he was a real Renaissance man of the theater," said Mizel executive director Steve Wilson. "He obviously made a living for us employed as a technical director, but he was a designer as well, he also did lights, he also did costumes.

"He was a teacher. He was a terrific actor, too. What always struck me about him is he just lived the life of theater. He was more than a triple threat. He just really could do it all and filled his life with the theater."

Stephen Pearce performed onstage with Mr. Hosier in at least half a dozen plays, including the memorable Shakespeare's R&J at Theatre on Broadway. Not only was Mr. Hosier a "consummate artist," Pearce said, but a great cook as well, throwing together ingredients and feeding his friends the result.

"He was always the host," Pearce said. "He had a big old house and he always had at least a small group in it, milling about, cooking or doing some odd job around the house. If he had to change out a lighting fixture, that became a mini-party in itself."

Mr. Hosier is survived by his mother, Elizabeth Wolfe, two sisters and a brother. Services will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 740 Hudson St.

ON STAGE

CJ Hosier, who died Monday, was a fixture in the Denver theater scene for a decade. Some of his memorable acting jobs include:

* The Sand Storm, 2006, Theatre Group (Hosier also directed)

* The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged), 2003, Theatre Group

* The Sisters Rosensweig, 2001, Mizel Center

* Quills, 2000, Promethean Theatre Company

* Shakespeare's R&J, 2000, Theatre Group