New plays! New musical! Food trucks!
See how new plays for our time get made, and come together to talk about ‘em!
Join us for two evenings of new plays by nationally renound writers and breakout writers (including NMSU students). We’ll have excerpts from plays and screenplays by local playwrights and students, the first act of faculty member Lisa Hermanson’s new musical, and new full length plays by our professional writers in residence: Benjamin Benne and Maiya A. Corral.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15
5:30pm Excerpts from Plays and Screenplays by Students and Local Writers
directed by Eva Cullen and Yasmine Jahangiri
6:45pm Food Truck: Green Chile Paddy Wagon
7:30pm Reading of La Manda by maiya A. corral
directed by Monica Mojica
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16
5:30pm Student Monologues
and Act 1 of The Golden Door, written and composed by Lisa Hermanson
directed by Mike Wise
6:45pm Food Truck: Green Chile Paddy Wagon
7:30pm Reading of untitled anthropocene play by Benjamin Benne
directed by Larissa Lury
More about the 7:30pm showings:
untitled anthropocene play by Benjamin Benne
Sean and Nathanael are cousins, born just a few weeks apart in 1988. Every year they visit the same beach in Southern California (first as children, then as adults) to swim in the ocean, eat carne asada, and witness how their lives, their bodies, and the natural world around them have changed year after year. Spanning 10 billion years in the life of the earth, this play (commissioned by Seattle Repertory Theatre) explores human and ecological transformation, intimacy between men, and the cycles of life and death that shape our existence. (synopsis by Paul Adolphsen)
Benjamin Benne’s (he/him) plays include Alma (Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, American Blues Theater, ArtsWest Playhouse, Curious Theatre Company, Central Square Theater, The Spot), In His Hands (Mosaic Theater Company), and What / Washed Ashore / Astray (Pillsbury House + Theatre). His work has been developed at The Public, Roundabout, Playwrights Realm, Denver Center, The Old Globe, Two River, the O’Neill, New Harmony Project, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, among many others. His Awards include Ojai Playwrights Conference’s Dr. Kerry English Award, Portland Stage's Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Arizona Theatre Company's National Latinx Playwriting Award, the Kennedy Center's KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, American Blues' Blue Ink Playwriting Award, and the Playwrights' Center's McKnight and Many Voices Fellowships. He is a current member of Primary Stage’s Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer, has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory and Seattle Repertory, and was named part of "LA Vanguardia: The Latino innovators, instigators, and power players breaking through barriers” by the L.A. Times. MFA: Playwriting, David Geffen/Yale School of Drama '22. www.benjaminbenne.com
La Manda by maiya a. corral
La Manda is a play about a quest. Heavy with the untimely death of her son, Gen falls through memory and time to relocate the pieces of her grief. As she travels into the past, she discovers a story that goes far beyond her own, intimately interwoven with the stories of her ancestors. La Manda is a play about how tradition can both imprison and free us. It is a play about the beauty of our brokenness, and how our sorrow songs will lead us home.
Maiya A. Corral (she/her) is a storyteller & theatermaker from the West Coast. She has many homes and her ancestors come from many places. Currently, Maiya is nesting on land stewarded by the Council of Three Fires, otherwise known as Chicago. Mixed race, Mexican & queer, her writing explores the subterranean realms of consciousness and belonging. Her stories are rooted in complexity; tender, joyful, rage filled, mythic and mysterious. Her stories belong to big hearted people who believe in magic.
Her work has been developed with the neighborhood theater chicago, Definition Theater, St. Louis Shakespeare Company, Refracted Theater Co, The University of Idaho and Florida International University. Her work as a writer and director has also been recognized and developed at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Washington DC.
Reach out to her at maiyaalexandriacorral.weebly.com or on instagram @meohmaiya
More about the 5:30pm showings:
The Golden Door; A New Musical by Lisa K. Hermanson
The Golden Door is an original new musical, written completely by Lisa K. Hermanson. The musical explores the question of immigration through the lens of Ellis Island in the 1920s, and challenges us to question how much has really changed since then.
The story follows a young woman, Ilse, as she immigrates from her home in Sweden to America, seeking more financial stability for her family. She has a sponsor in the United States: her uncle, whom she has never met. Act I is her journey from Sweden to (and hopefully through) the immigration checkpoint of Ellis Island. On the ship, she meets others around the same age as her: Marna, an elder sister traveling with her siblings, and Anders, a second son out to make a name for himself in the “promised land”. Through them Ilse learns about other reasons why one might immigrate to America in the first place – and the challenges that await them at customs in Ellis Island.
The Excerpts:
Chronicles of the Chosen Few by Benjamin Curnutt
Paper Crutches by James Fritz Jerome
Girl. Literally, like, I’m dead. by Mireya Sánchez-Maes
The Kindred Ones by Vida Vee Isabella Montoya
Grand Theft by Austin Reeve
Candlelight Dances by Rissa Wooldridge
Current Updates
The current High Desert committee consists of: Diana Dávila, Lisa Hermanson, Aaron Krohn, Larissa Lury (Chair), and Bobbi Masters.
Although none of these are requirements, we are particularly excited about plays that feature:
- characters close to the ages of most of our students, or characters who could be realistically portrayed by our undergraduate actors (age range 15-30). (Though we do have professional actors on faculty and in the Las Cruces community as well as some older students, who can be cast outside that range.)
- Hispanic and/or Latino/a/x characters
- Indigenous characters
- our Southwest region
Playwrights will be invited to submit plays for consideration from mid-September through mid-October, 2023. Due to our small pool of readers and limited time, we cannot accept unsolicited submissions. However, if you are reading this during that timeline and have a play you would like considered (or would like to be considered in future years), please reach out to Professor Larissa Lury at llury@nmsu.edu.
The current High Desert committee consists of: Diana Dávila, Lisa Hermanson, Aaron Krohn, Larissa Lury (Chair), and Bobbi Masters.
Although none of these are requirements, we are particularly excited about plays that feature:
- characters close to the ages of most of our students, or characters who could be realistically portrayed by our undergraduate actors (age range 15-30). (Though we do have professional actors on faculty and in the Las Cruces community as well as some older students, who can be cast outside that range.)
- Hispanic and/or Latino/a/x characters
- Indigenous characters
- our Southwest region
Playwrights will be invited to submit plays for consideration from mid-September through mid-October, 2023. Due to our small pool of readers and limited time, we cannot accept unsolicited submissions. However, if you are reading this during that timeline and have a play you would like considered (or would like to be considered in future years), please reach out to Professor Larissa Lury at llury@nmsu.edu.
High Desert Play Development was founded in 2005 to support playwrights’ works-in-progress, and to introduce students to the play development process.
Playwrights in Residence
Bi-annually, we solicit plays for the program from 15-20 nationally renowned and emerging playwrights. Two of those plays are selected for a developmental workshop and reading. The playwrights each spend a week in residence in Las Cruces, workshopping their play with a director, actors, and at times a dramaturg. Most of the collaborators are NMSU students, faculty and staff. The workshop culminates in a public staged reading.
Following the reading series, one of the two scripts is frequently selected for a fully-mounted production the next season, with the playwright in-residence for one or two weeks of the rehearsal/performance process.
The program is unique in that it exists entirely to serve the needs of the playwright, and the experience of the students involved. As such, the workshop does not require submission fees; NMSU/High Desert does not claim ownership or a future in the play; feedback is offered to the playwright only as requested; and the playwright is allowed to classify the play as either a workshop production or as a world premiere as they see fit.
Local Writers
In recent years, we’ve launched a new component of High Desert featuring short plays and excerpts from full length plays by students and writers local to the Las Cruces area. We look forward to meeting more local writers and helping to cultivate new plays in our community.
Past Seasons
In Fall 2022, NMSU Theatre Arts produced Big Frog by Dylan Guerra, which originally came to the department as a submission for High Desert.
In Spring 2021, High Desert produced a staged reading of Deal Me Out by MJ Halberstadt, as well as readings of ten-minute plays and excerpts from plays by: Bob Diven, Jeffrey P. Colin, Dominique Gomez, Riley Samuel Merritt, Tristan Mitchell, Elia Vasquez, and Peyton Womble.
2019’s High Desert featured readings of Intelligence by Helen Banner, as well as End of the Exodus by Hannah Benitez. While the pandemic left the department unable to produce one of the plays in the following season, NMSU Theatre Arts and American Southwest Theatre Company commissioned Hannah Benitez to create a virtual work, Tracer, which was produced in the 2020-21 season.
2018 High Desert workshopped two plays: three girls never learnt the way home by Matthew Paul Olmos and The Uses of Enchantment by Gregory S. Moss. Both plays were presented as staged readings in March, 2018.
In spring of 2016 readings of both In Loco Parentis, by Adam Kraar, and Tori Keenan-Zelt’s Truth Dare… were produced and in spring of 2017 NMSU Theatre fully produced Truth Dare… as a fully staged production.
In January, 2014, the workshop produced readings of For the Falls, by Emily Dendinger and West Highland Way by Meridith Friedman. The NMSU Theatre 2014-2015 season opened with West Highland Way.
In Spring 2010, High Desert produced a reading of Balls, by Jonathan Yukich, and produced Carol Carpenter’s Good Lonely People in Fall 2011. In Spring 2012, Carol Carpenter’s Sweet, Sweet Spirit and Andrea Stolowitz’s Antarktikos were workshopped; Sweet, Sweet Spirit was fully produced in Fall 2012.
The 2006-2007 inaugural season included Penny Penniston’s Spin and John Walch’s The Nature of Mutation. The Nature of Mutation was fully-produced by New Mexico State University Theatre Arts in March, 2007. In 2008 there were staged readings of Lydia Stryk’s On Clarion and Matt Casarino’s Pixie. Pixie was chosen for full production in 2009.
Although High Desert does not accept unsolicited scripts, if you are a playwright and are interested in being considered for the program, please get in touch.
