The High Desert Play Festival, presented by the American Southwest Theatre Company at New Mexico State University, opens Friday and runs through Sunday. The festival of new works will feature original one acts, excerpts and monologues by students and other Las Cruces writers, and full-length readings of two plays by playwrights in residence at NMSU. Scott Brocato spoke with those playwrights, Alexis Elisa Macedo and Jesús I. Valles, about their works, and NMSU Theatre's Britney Stout explains the High Desert concept.
Scott Brocato:
Britney Stout-Bardey, let's start with you. Give us an overview of the High Desert Play Festival, what it's all about.
Britney Stout-Bardey:
The High Desert Play Festival is an opportunity for authors to present new works. So for this festival, we'll be having some one-act plays as well as excerpts and some readings, new plays. So we have a couple of plays, one by J. Vallez and Alexis Mecedo, who have gifted us these incredible plays to bring to the public.
Scott Brocato:
And they're “resident playwrights.” What does that entail?
Britney Stout-Bardey:
So a resident playwright is given a space to develop their work away from their other things in life that might distract them from their work. So they're given resources and time with the actors and the directors to continue to expand on what they're doing.
Scott Brocato:
Let's bring Alexis (Elisa Macedo) and Jesús (I. Valles) into this. Alexis, you state on your website that you're “a versatile performer, a tenacious playwright, an unapologetic Chicana legend,” and that your full name “is worth every letter.” Please expand on that and tell us about yourself.
Alexis Elisa Macedo:
(Laughs) Yes, I'm Alexis Elisa Macedo, she/her. I say my full name because it's worth every letter. And for me, names are extremely important: who I name my characters after, how I name my characters. And so growing up, I had to find ways to maybe cut my name, to make it easier to pronounce, to make it easier for people to read it. And I really wanted to, in being unapologetic and being authentic, I wanted to use my full name. So I can't be Cher, but I'm Alexis Elisa Macedo! (Laughs)
Scott Brocato:
Let's talk about your play, which will be the opening night play, “A Little Brown Girl Crosses a Silly Little Line.” Tell us about it.
Alexis Elisa Macedo:
It's about this little girl, Maricela, who is a campesino with her parents. So they're traveling farmers, and she has the opportunity to be the first person in her family to go to school, and all of the uncertainty and the culture shock that comes along with it, and how she grapples with her dreams of wanting to be a superhero. And when she's confronted with a playground bully, how she overcomes, you know, “I'm not feeling enough, I need these superpowers,” and really embracing her identity and her roots and the beauty of Mexican immigrants being really everyday superheroes.
Scott Brocato:
And what inspired you to write it?
Alexis Elisa Macedo:
I read a children's book about a little girl wanting to be a superhero, and it got me thinking of who were the superheroes that I grew up admiring, and I didn't have any. And I wanted to create one that wasn't...she gets superpowers and then saves the day, and all these amazing things that have to be added to her. I wanted to uplift and highlight all of the things that are maybe seen as invisible superpowers, like speaking two languages and being able to balance two cultures in one person.
Scott Brocato:
What do you want people to take away from your play after they see it?
Alexis Elisa Macedo:
An appreciation and empathy to a community that really wants to lead with love.
Scott Brocato:
Jesus, your play, “a river, its mouths,” will be performed Saturday night at 7. First of all, before we talk about the play, talk about yourself.
Jesús I. Valles:
Yeah, I am a writer, performer, and I guess playwright. I write poetry as well. I was originally born in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, which is right on the border of El Paso, Texas. So I have, I would say, like a very deep connections and a tremendous amount of love for this particular region. I feel like El Paso, Las Cruces, Juarez, are kind of its own sort of like state/ non-state. So yeah, I think the border and border ecologies and border societies are really, really deeply important to my work. And I think that is very much reflected in the play that will be featured here.
Scott Brocato:
And talk about that. What is it about, “a river, its mouths”?
Jesús I. Valles:
Sure. “a river, its mouths” is...I would call it like a creature feature play. It's sort of like a horror play that really relies on sound. During my first semester at Brown, we were tasked with writing an audio play for Zoom because we were like, “we're never going to come back to theater”. This was 2020, so it was in the pandemic. And I started missing home. I started missing the sounds of El Paso. So I started writing this play that is about this down on their luck grad student that returns home to El Paso. and is dealing and struggling with depression. And as they return, they start to hear rumors that there's this kind of what people are calling the Rio Grande Mermaid and bodies start sort of washing up by the river. And so the play is really about how communities sit with everyday horrors that are orchestrated by the systems they live under, and why it might be more interesting and more exciting to invest in cryptids, in mermaids, in duendes. So it feels very deeply Mexican and very deeply a border play.
Because we were focusing specifically on sound, I think I was really saddened by the possibility that I would not return to El Paso. And not returning to El Paso, you know, at that time, would have meant not getting to hear the kind of music that you hear when you hear people speak to each other in El Paso. There's a very specific, I think, border lilt that is so El Paso/Juarez/Las Cruces, right, that is so of this place. And the music in that, in people's dialogue in their everyday speech for me was deeply, deeply valuable. So I think what motivated me to write the play first was wanting to preserve the speech textures of this particular borderland.
Scott Brocato:
What do you want audiences to take away from it?
Jesús I. Valles:
I watched a run-through last night, and I hope they walk away thinking about all of the cool things theater can be with, like, two microphones, seven chairs, and some reading stands. What (director) Larissa Lury has done with this play in a short amount of time is so magnificent, and it feels so fully theatrically realized, that I hope they walk away really with a sense of wonderment at what theater can be.
And the theater is for us, the theater is for Latinos, the theater is for Mexican-American audiences, that we have stories that are worth preserving and telling.
Scott Brocato:
What's next for each of you? Are you working on anything currently? Alexis?
Alexis Elisa Macedo:
Yes, it's actually really exciting: this play will have a 29-hour reading in May and also will be followed by going to the Great Plains Theater Conference, which I'm very excited about. I'm one out of ten playwrights, and I’m very excited to get more feedback and experience time with designers. This play is fantastical and magical and super. And so to be able to see a designer tell me, “OK, well, here's what's possible,” and also wanting to dream with me, is so exciting to me.
Scott Brocato:
Jesús, what's next for you?
Jesús I. Valles:
Oh, nothing, hopefully. (Laughs) But we just opened at INTAR (Theatre) in New York, this play called “Spread,” which is about four 9th grade boys having lunch and figuring out what it means to be friends. So the show opened March 2nd, and it will run through March 22nd. Hopefully we'll get an extension. So really kind of like taking care of the life of that play feels like the next thing. And then trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
For tickets and more information about the High Desert Play Festival, go to theatre.nmsu.edu
