Desert Blooms

Theatre is flourishing in a southwestern town with deep roots

By Moira Brennan

I am in Santa Fe, N.M., watching a man burn. He’s a 50-foot tall papier-mache figure, standing at the top of a brown hill behind the field house in downtown Fort Marcy Park. Thousands of people surround me—the well-heeled and the ragged, packed in shoulder to shoulder to witness the dramatic kick-off of the city’s annual harvest festival, or Fiesta. The routinely magnificent Santa Fe sunset is made more spectacular by orange flames licking up the puppet’s legs and curls of smoke tumbling off his shoulders. Before the torching, Zozobra, as the monster is known, was looking rather dapper, his friendly head cocked to one side. But as he lights up, his eyes take on a menacing glaze, and I begin to chant along with the crowd, "Burn! Burn! Burn!" I have to admit it: I am ecstatic. Both moved and rooted. Bound to those around me by our shared awe and palpable desire for a purge. I think to myself "Wow, ancient culture’s it! I’m done looking for theatre under gilded proscenium arches or in little black boxes. This is ritual as it’s meant to be, late from the hands of the gods."

I am a big fat sucker.

Zozobra, though a riveting spectacle, is no more ancient than Ringling Brothers. It was cooked up in 1925 by Will Shuster, a visual artist born and raised in Indiana, who’d come to New Mexico, like countless others, looking to put some distance between himself and his more exacting neighbors. After a couple of Shuster’s pals were thrown in jail for excessive merrymaking (Fiesta, as it’s celebrated in these parts, dates back to 1712), he gathered the undetained around a bottle of moonshine to figure out how the holiday might shrug off "commercialism" and recover its Dionysian element. Thus old man Zozobra was born, a tromp-l’oeil meant to buffoon the casual seeker. It worked.

Shuster’s proprietary urges and his playfulness in expressing them, as well as the fact that his trickery has itself become a tradition free of irony, well describe the cultural avalanche that is Santa Fe—a town of 62,000 people, spread beneath a weepably beautiful mountain, lit like a Bertolucci set piece, many parched miles from nowhere. The city’s "quirkiness" is often attributed to the collision of three resident cultures: Native American, Hispanic and Anglo. But, more accurately, it results from Santa Fe’s being an intersection of history, art and big money. As art critic Dave Hickey, who recently curated the Site Santa Fe International Biennial, told a local art publication called The, "Santa Fe has the peculiarity of being an extremely cosmopolitan town devoted to the fantasies of the local." Can you imagine a more interesting place to make theatre?

Though, in fact, not many people do. Over time theatre greats have touched down here—Greer Garson, Kim Stanley and Simon Callow, to name a few—but they’ve not tended to climb on stage. Local dance and music institutions, most notably the acclaimed Santa Fe Opera, have large and loyal audiences, but they haven’t cleared the way for Strindberg or even Shepard. For years it seemed that no matter what quality of theatre you threw at the Santa Fe audience, they’d throw it right back. In describing the demise of New Mexico Rep, the regional-model, subscription-based theatre that went south in 1994, artistic director Martin Platt called it simply "ugly."

Why has a serious local theatre scene struggled to coalesce here, despite the presence of a sophisticated, art-loving public? One could speculate that traditional Western theatre is the study of how people get along in society and that in Santa Fe, until recently anyway, this has not been a topic of great interest. The vast, empty landscape and the spirit of independence that pervades the place is perfectly suited to the solitary endeavors of painting or sculpting. There are an estimated 200 art galleries in town. When I asked Sabrina Pratt, executive director of the City Arts Commission, about the number of theatre companies, she said, "Hold on, I’ll count ’em up for you." Her 10 fingers sufficed.

What distinguishes Santa Fe among other boho-friendly cities today is not a flood of young actors and directors pouring in, á la Chicago in the 1980s, although there is a discernible trickle. Rather, it’s leadership by a few seasoned professionals, most of whom stumbled into Santa Fe after building fine reputations in other cities. Within the last decade, they’ve been applying their expertise and considerable determination to the job of building a reliable audience base where none was before. Their efforts were recently buoyed with the opening of the smart new Lensic Performing Arts Center, smack in the center of town. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, sets in Santa Fe can fly. If that’s not a mark of advancement, I don’t know what is.

But along with the breakthroughs come the serious headaches of an ever-expanding Western metropolis. Between 1990 and 2000, Santa Fe’s population jumped 30 percent and continues to rise. A cost of living that rivals that of Seattle is sustained not by industry but by steady tourism and a pocket of affluent, real-estate-hungry residents who make their fortunes elsewhere. The vast majority of jobs remain in the low-paying service sector and, not surprisingly, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. These troubles are refracted through the city’s new theatre companies, throwing light on both their hopes for success and their responsibility for adding to the overall health of the city.

David Olson, artistic director of TheaterWork, which is housed in a handsomely renovated garage next to the bowling alley on the Wal-Mart end of town, says he finds the disparity between old and new Santa Fes challenging but also invigorating. "The quiet, sleepy little town that was here before Santa Fe became an ‘in’ place, a destination place, no longer exists—but the cultural struggle is to hold on to its remnants and not lose it completely," he avows. "The old Santa Fe is layered over with fast-moving influences from outside. What hasn’t happened yet is a strong and clear dialogue among cultural workers about how to reconcile the two."

Olson and his wife, Paula, who founded and ran TheaterWork for 10 years in Minnesota before relocating to Santa Fe, absorbed the idea of theatre-as-social-tool while working in South America in the late ’60s. They have a radical intention in Santa Fe: to make theatre integral to the lives of residents, "like a library or a bakery," Olson explains.

TheaterWork is by far the most prolific company in town, having mounted 45 original productions in its five years here. Sixteen were works by regional playwrights and three were pieces adapted by Olson from stories "gathered" in northern New Mexico. But while TheaterWork has no trouble filling its 50-seat black box—every performance in the last season sold out—it hasn’t yet achieved the goal of paying its staff and actors a living wage. "This could be a place where designers and actors and technicians could afford to rent a house and raise a kid or two," says the director, whose characteristic warmth belies a fierce idealism, "but it’s going to take a lot of strategizing and pooling of resources. Step by step, we’re getting there."

If you turn left out of TheaterWork’s parking lot and take the crowded drive down Cerrillos Road, past the Taco Bell and the cheap motels with names like "Desert Chateau," you eventually run into the small tangle of sand-colored streets that is downtown Santa Fe. Here you can purchase exquisitely crafted silver pendants from Native American designers lined up under the portal of the Governor’s Palace, and you can drop a small fortune on ancho-chili-smudged elk or fine tequila at one of several world-class restaurants. And you can visit the offices of Santa Fe Stages, the highest-profile, only full-contract Equity theatre in Santa Fe, now in its eighth year of operation. With two new venues right downtown, Stages is drinking from the generous tourist font.

The company has the peculiar history of having been breathed into life by the golden lungs of one woman: Santa Fe writer and philanthropist Sallie Bingham. In 1994, Bingham prevailed upon Martin Platt to give theatre in Santa Fe one more try. Still smarting from the Rep debacle, Platt conceived something outside the regional model—a hybrid presenter/producer organization that would import international, cutting-edge dance and theatre and use the revenue to fund in-house productions. The first season included Eine Kleine Hamlet, an adaptation of Hamlet written and directed by Platt, which the Los Angeles Times called "stunning."

But after several seasons Platt resigned to pursue other projects, and two years ago Bingham withdrew her support due to differences over play selection. The company carries on under the directorship of Craig Strong, who left his life as a theatrical producer in Los Angeles to help found Stages. Sitting in the old Santa Fe Music Hall, now the festival’s full-time office space, Strong describes the recent changes: "When Sallie left we had to rethink what we do, to a certain extent. For example, we had to eliminate rotating rep from our plate, which I’d like to get back to. But this venue and the Lensic give us two downtown outlets, which is allowing our tourist audience to grow. We’ve actually doubled our ticket revenue since last year, which is pretty dramatic." This season, "We’re doing The Cherry Orchard, but we’re doing The Cherry Orchard with Marsha Mason," he says.

Even without Bingham, Stages’ budget is hefty compared to the other theatres in town. As a result, it takes its share of criticism for jobbing in most of its actors from L.A. or New York and for not doing more to cultivate the work in its own backyard. Strong is trying to mend this perception. Last season saw a collaboration with TheaterWork on a site-specific piece written by Olson called Guadalupe, performed at the historic Santuario De Guadalupe. And Strong is in the planning stages with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Santa Fe to develop year-round, youth-oriented programming.

In its third season, Stages offered a spot to an international touring troupe called Theater Grottesco, founded in Paris in 1984 by graduates of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq. The company’s style, in the tradition of European experimentalism, is intellectual, highly physical and visually oriented—just the kind of surprising work Stages was pulling in from points around globe. As it happened, Grottesco had recently made Santa Fe its home base. "We were in Detroit for eight years," says artistic director John Flax, "and it was a really rewarding time. Then a slash-and-burn Republican governor was elected, and he reneged on our contract with the schools. We were no longer beholden to Michigan, and we wanted a more physical climate and atmosphere, so we came." 

When Grottesco landed in the Southwest in ’96, it had whittled itself down to a company of two, Flax and artistic associate Elizabeth Wiseman, also a Lecoq grad. The pair’s first concern wasn’t so much finding an audience as it was finding the caliber of actor who could achieve the physical precision their style demands. "We were told that there was no talent here, that we’d have to go to the coasts to cast," says Flax, a compact guy with the wry and weary air of a serious clown. "But we decided to set up workshops, and right away we saw all kinds of talent. And it didn’t take a whole lot of training to get people doing the kind work we do. Now I think we have a company that would go up against any in America, and it’s because the talent is here."

Although Flax says he doesn’t see the company’s relationship to the community as primary to its mission, Grottesco’s latest work, a full-length dance/theatre piece called This Is Life as We Know It, involved open rehearsals in which locals were invited to tell stories from their parents’ or grandparents’ generations, which the actors then translated into movement. The piece looks at the way inherited gesture may be a window on a bygone world, one perhaps less homogenous than today’s. Though this theme would seem to describe exactly life in modern Santa Fe, Flax’s motive for collaborating was purely artistic. "We went to the community in service of the art, not the other way around," Flax says frankly.

Rachel Kelly, artistic director of Shakespeare and Santa Fe, now in its 14th season, doesn’t have to do much head-scratching as to her relationship with the community. It’s made up of her parents, grandparents, cousins and all the friends she knew growing up here. Among the artistic directors in town, she’s the sole insider, and her background allows for insight that has helped the company blossom. "Santa Fe was founded on the belief that a community comes together and shares art," says Kelly. "It wasn’t ever a place where there was the rich side of town and ‘the other’ side of town. It’s becoming more segmented these days, but I think people who have lived here for a long time are reminded of the old-time parties and fiestas when they come to our shows. That’s one reason why we’ve been very successful."

The company spent its first few years under the directorship of Steven Schwartz, performing in a city park, free to the public, with actors working on a strictly volunteer basis. Kelly took over shortly after it moved to the open-air courtyard at St. John’s College on the east edge of town, where it now swings for three summer months in full festival mode, with strolling musicians, food and drink for sale, and rampant picnicking on the lawns before and during performances. Tickets are no longer free, but Kelly feels the audience understands that as the price goes up, so does the quality of the offerings.

So far, the diminutive Kelly has shepherded SSF from a one-play, non-Equity season to a three-play, semi-Equity company, complete with an MFA internship program involving students from across the country. Most significantly, she’s developed strong relationships with two top-flight regional directors—Nagle Jackson, who’s come to town as principle director for the last five seasons, and Ed Hastings, who mounted A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night for the 2000 and 2001 seasons, respectively.

Could Santa Fe become the next Ashland? Kelly won’t go that far in her predictions, but she’s scanning the horizon. "I think a lot of it is just being able to be still enough to say, ‘This is what is going to happen. I recognize this as the future. So I will just help put those things in place.’ That’s what it’s felt like."

Perhaps the most telling sign of Santa Fe’s potential as a theatre town is the newly opened Lensic. The pristinely renovated 843-seat Deco movie house, snugly housed on a street three blocks from the Plaza, filled a nagging need for a large, acoustically satisfying venue ready to serve any number of arts or civic organizations in town. The $8-million overhaul was spearheaded by Nancy Zeckendorf, a long-time Santa Fe patron of the arts, and supported by a wide spectrum of businesses, politicians and artists. As one fundraiser said, creating the Lensic was a "no-brainer."

Robert Martin, formerly of the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, was plucked from California to serve as general manager because of his proven knack at getting people of varying backgrounds and agendas to rally in support of the arts. Says Martin, "The ultimate goal for me is a mixed audience, which you create by diverse programming. People will take a risk and discover things they otherwise would not have if they’ve been made to feel comfortable here. And that’s as true for someone who’s never been to a chamber concert as it is for a regular chamber concert—goer who’ll now open himself up to seeing a kids’ mariachi band."

The first three months at the Lensic saw over 40 events and 25,000 people pouring through the doors. Martin, whose forward-looking energy seems to complement the history that surrounds him, is highly conscious of keeping events affordable, and, though he has not yet raised the money to offset the costs, from the start he offered the center to Santa Fe public schools free of charge.

But the especially good news for local theatre artists is Martin’s comprehensive knowledge of the national performance scene. From his perch just above the box office he rattles off dozens of breakthrough artists he’s interested in hosting: "I’m trying to create relationships with artists I’ve worked with who I think would be simpatico with what’s going on here."

As for the current Santa Fe theatre scene, Martin hopes the Lensic will become the catalyst for greater networking and collaboration between groups. "I came because I had a gut sense that there was a community here waiting to flourish, but that hadn’t had the right mechanism in place to allow it to develop fully," he says.

In Santa Fe, the economic and cultural elements that signal the end of a deeply cherished atmosphere of devil-may-care individualism and intense localism are exactly the ones that may end up creating a vibrant theatre scene. But whatever unique community evolves from the particular political and artistic passions of the theatre artists working here today, you can bet it will be shot through with just the kind of nostalgia and celebratory pranksterism that Will Shuster captured with Zozobra. "I was worried that this would become a building only for the wealthy," said Rachel Kelly, describing opening night at the Lensic. "But I take that all back. Opening night reminded me of pictures I’d seen of my grandparents—old photos where people are right downtown in front of the Lensic, all dressed up. That had ended for a while. Now maybe it’s back." Back and burning the place up. at

Moira Brennan is a 2001-02 American Theatre Affiliated Writer, with support by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.

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