OPENING ACTS
Festival premieres plays by UNM graduate students
The ghost of an old movie star and a mysterious writer haunt protagonists in the Linnell Festival of New Plays at the University of New Mexico.
Opening today, the two fully staged premieres represent the culmination of the master’s degree programs of authors Rebecca Sánchez and Denise Hinson.
“For both of these writers, they signify a great artistic and technical achievement,” said Gregory Moss, an assistant professor of theater and dance who heads the master of fine arts program.
Hinson’s “Angels All Die” is “highly comic with a lot of heartbreak,” Moss said.
“It’s about a young man who’s doing makeup for a trashy soap opera,” he continued. “He falls in love with the woman he’s working on. He’s being followed by the ghost of a famous movie star giving him advice.”
Sánchez’s “Chatterbox” chronicles the relationship between an effervescent kindergarten teacher and an anxious literary scholar and expert on the work of a reclusive Chicano writer. As the woman struggles to assert herself, he retreats into the world of ideas.
“It’s very Albuquerque, very New Mexico,” Moss said. “The play is about their desire to get together. It’s this sort of mismatched love story.”
“Chatterbox” recently won a second-place Kennedy Center Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting. The recognition comes with a cash award, an invitation to the Kennedy Center American College Theatre National Festival, membership in the Dramatists Guild and with the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, as well as a professional development residency.
This year’s festival also includes readings of new works by second-year MFA playwrights Stephanie Grilo, Drew Morrison and Krista Pino, as well as an afternoon of works by first-year MFA playwrights and an evening of screenplay readings. All playwrights are MFA candidates in UNM’s graduate program in dramatic writing.