SantaFe.com

Eliot Fisher has directed and served as pianist for the last three Santa Fe Fiesta melodramas. Harnessing the satirical barbs of a bevy of alliterative assassins—his writers—Eliot has helped puncture the “Turn the Town into a Tourist Trap” and the “Star Struck Santa Fe Status Seeker” pretensions of local politicians and culture mavens.

In 2003, for the twentieth anniversary of the Engine House Theater, Eliot wrote and directed The Outlaw Barber of Living Proof, an original melodrama based on the outlaw Belle Starr’s 1868 hiding out in a small New Mexico village. He then transferred the...

Thursday, May 15, 2008
by Jeffrey Laing • SantaFe.com

The Lensic Performing Arts Center welcomes best-selling author and Hollywood personality Carrie Fisher to its stage for Wishful Drinking, a hilarious and sobering look at her Tinseltown hangover staged by renowned director Tony Taccone. During its extended run in California, Wishful Drinking received critical acclaim, set box office records, and delighted audiences in sold-out houses night after night. The Lensic presents Wishful Drinking a Jonathan Reinis Production in association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The show runs from June 18 through June 22 with performances at 8:00pm,...

The Tenth Annual Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe (SCSFe) will be held at The Lodge from May 27 to June 1, 2008. The conference will be divided into two major strands. “The Screenwriting Symposium” will include classroom instruction from world-class screenwriters, over thirty 90-minute symposia; mentor panel discussion, live readings of “Actors Choice Award” winners, and 18-hour Academy Labs for advanced screenwriters (limited to ten participants). “The Hollywood Connection” will include two Producer panel discussions, symposia to aid in marketing, and private pitches to 15 Hollywood...

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 11:31 AM
by Jeffrey Laing • SantaFe.com

Founded by four Minnesota natives, Santa Fe’s newest theater company—The Coop Theatre—will hit the stage running in mid-May with an ambitious and controversial play, David Mamet’s Oleanna (1992). Promising high-quality productions of entertaining and challenging plays, co-founder Jeremy Hance voices the overarching goals of Coop Theatre: “…all of us agree on the kind of company we hope to create. We all love good theatre that is demanding and powerful. We hope our company will be relevant and inclusive. We want to get all kinds of interested people involved” (Tiffany Roufs, Coop Theatre...

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 11:28 AM
by Jeffrey Laing • SantaFe.com

On March 19, 2008, over mineral water and scones, I met with Santa Fe’s Eliot Gray Fisher to discuss his burgeoning career in the arts. Whatever criteria one may consider—genetics, upbringing, academic preparation, and inclination—Eliot was destined to be an artist. However, what is most striking about his early successes in the dramatic arts is how he has taken a tired, much disabused form—the classic melodrama—and breathed life into it to create a twenty-first century melding of high and low art.

Eliot Gray Fisher’s roots are firmly entrenched in an accomplished artistic family. His...

Thursday, May 1, 2008
by Jeffrey Laing • SantaFe.com

There's a lot of paper involved in Wednesday's premiere of "HOME ... A Work in Progress" at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

Talking about paper, fretting about words on paper and literally watching it rain from the sky.

That's because Joey Chavez's Santa Fe High theater students have put together an original production focusing on the 896-page manuscript of the main character, Ruben, an Española Valley native.

Ruben has come to New York City seeking fame and fortune for his novel, and life is not exactly delivering what he had planned.

"I made Ruben into a wacky, failed writer with not...

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
by Polly Summar • Journal Santa Fe

Call the babysitter, bring in the cat, fill up the old wreck, and head down I-25 to a strip mall near the corner of Alameda and Coors Road to catch the fiercely comic, surprisingly poignant, and undeniably affecting solo performance of Taos native David Garver in Eric Bogosian’s take on “a crazy out there” America on the cusp of the Twenty-First Century— Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (1999)—at Greg Sorano’s The Studios (10131 Coors Road, Albuquerque), a newly designed and created black box performance space, on May 2 & 3, 2008.

David Garver does more than just bring to life a cast of fourteen...

by Jeffrey Laing • SantaFe.com

Scott Harrison’s Ironweed Productions will continue to investigate the complex issues of contemporary American society and the universal condition of the human heart in its production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable. Set in a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964 in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and the dawning of the civil rights movement, the play centers on the school’s first black student and involves the struggle between pastor Father Flynn who embraces doubt and school principal Sister Aloysius who is all conviction and believes doubt is weakness.

by Jeffrey Laing and Cyndi Wood (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

By the end of this year, Santa Fe's Judd Apatow wannabes will be making their own short films at Warehouse 21. Thanks to a gift of $5,000 in software provided by National Geographic's All Roads Film Project and the Santa Fe Film Festival, budding young filmmakers will find a creative incubator in the teen center's new space at 1614 Paseo de Peralta. The software will be used in the new 17,000-square-foot building's 16-computer media lab. The new $3.4 million structure is slated to open by the end of June.

"The Santa Fe Film Festival is definitely a future collaborator on future projects,"...

Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Kathaleen Roberts • Journal Santa Fe

On Thursday February 21, 2008, at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall, The Acting Company performed what may not be the definitive production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. However, while not a theatrical experience for the ages, this interpretation of Shakespeare’s final play is a lucid, inventive, extremely well-acted, witty, and, finally, poignant experience for today. It speaks especially well to those audience members new to Shakespeare and is updated to appeal to contemporary youth. It is proof positive that the national initiative, “Shakespeare for a New Generation,”...

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 3:16 PM
by Jeffrey Laing and Diane Gorodnitzki (Photographer) • SantaFe.com