Director Scott Vehill likes working in the Albuquerque theater scene because of its energy.
"We're at a very special place in time where Albuquerque is starting to really explode," he said. "It reminds us of the East Village scene in the '70s and in Chicago in the '80s - when things started to explode. People now are staying here rather than going to L.A. or New York."
Vehill, a producer, director and writer for the Prop Theater Company in Chicago, is directing two plays in UNM's Words Afire Festival.
The festival will include plays by national award winners in UNM's Dramatic Writing Program, such as Leonard Madrid and Don Garcia. It will include Greek tragedies and comedies that take place in New Mexico.
The festival begins today on campus and will run through April 27.
Vehill is directing Leonard Mardrid's "Auora" and Don Garcia's "Parajos de Mi Sangre: My Blood Birds."
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He said "Auora" is a piece of magical realism.
"Leonard writes really wonderfully in a magic realism sense," he said. "In that way, I mean, it's set in a real place, but it refers to all of what has come past and all of the future. So, it's very, very authorial and evocative, yet it's tied to an emotional register. Every night, whoever is watching this play is crying because it deals with the simple human emotion of sacrifice and loss of love. Everybody at some point has felt that - whether it's a pet, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother - we all have to lose the things that we love, and Leonard deals with this in such an amazing way."
Student Andy Brooks, an actor in the play "Pajaros de Mi Sangre: My Blood Birds," said the playwrights are involved in the production process.
"It's cool working with a playwright who's right there in the rehearsal process," he said. "There are revisions and rewrites being done as we're rehearsing. I think it's better for the play, because the writer is right there watching what's going on, and he's revising it based on how the actors are interpreting his piece."
Student Barney Lopez is directing the play "Panic." The play was written by students Amber Cannon, Theodore Jackson, Magdelene Gallegos and Danae Lopez.
"It's about seven college-age people who are dealing with relationship crisis and life issues as they are trying to live on and find a connection within one another," Lopez said.
He said the play is a "dramedy."
"There are definitely some funny moments," he said. "So, we just try to have a lot of fun with it and just play the characters and emphasis the great characters that the writers gave us."
Brooks said the festival gives theater students opportunity and exposure.
"It's student-written stuff, student-directed stuff, student-acted stuff, student-designed stuff," he said. "We don't get that opportunity to show what the students have. We're the ones who need the experience, and it's really good to have this exposure out there."
