Find out which productions you can see at Santa Fe Playhouse's 505 ALIVE! Festival

Santa Fe Playhouse will present its inaugural 505 ALIVE! Summer Festival Series from Thursday, June 5, through July 27, featuring eight productions by New Mexican artists that explore themes of ancestry, identity and cultural transformation.

The festival emerged from concerns about dwindling performance spaces for local theater makers in Santa Fe, according to Anna Hogan, Santa Fe Playhouse’s producing artistic director. After reading an article in The Santa Fe New Mexican about the issue, Hogan said she began considering how the Playhouse could better serve the broader theater community beyond simply renting space.

“That article felt like a call to action,” Hogan said. “The answer evolved beyond simply offering rental space for other orgs. I began to explore what it would look like to create a presenting opportunity, one that included a fee to help ease the financial burden, so artists could focus more on the work itself.”

The festival lineup includes “Unbound,” a performance ritual by Dancing Earth Creations, that honors Native ancestors who were enslaved during Spanish colonization in New Mexico. Created by Sarah Hogland-Gurulé, Lupita Salazar and Gabriel Carrion-Gonzales, the work combines dance, storytelling, poetry and altar work to address what the artists describe as generational trauma from Indigenous slavery.

“Our project is a love letter to our Indigenous ancestors who were enslaved, mostly by Spanish colonizers, from the 1600s to the early 1900s in what we now know as New Mexico,” said Hogland-Gurulé, who directs Dancing Earth. The piece draws from research conducted across multiple New Mexican communities with historic Genízaro presence, including conversations with historians, genealogists and descendants.

Another featured work, “Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” by Debra Ann Byrd, chronicles the founder of the Harlem Shakespeare Festival’s path from growing up in Harlem to eventually playing Shakespeare’s Othello in a gender-flipped production. The autobiographical solo performance weaves Byrd’s personal story with classical text.

The festival will also launch “Play. Write.,” a new work development program featuring a workshop of Obie Award-winning playwright José Rivera’s “A Lunar Rhapsody” and staged readings of four pieces by New Mexican playwrights directed by Leonard Madrid. Other programs to be performed include “Untitled Shadow Puppet Play” and “Echo in the Canyon.”

Hogan said she was struck by how many submissions naturally centered on ancestral themes, despite her initial prompt asking for stories that speak to “The Now.” She had been seeking work that felt urgent with clear calls to action, while specifically looking for voices from New Mexico.

The festival incorporates community engagement elements, including post-show discussions and receptions. Several of the featured artists are also theater educators, according to Hogan, who said the communal aspects serve to help audiences process challenging or politically charged themes.

For “Unbound,” the community engagement extends to the creative process itself. Hogland-Gurulé said the work was developed across multiple locations where there was historic Genízaro presence, from Albuquerque to Ranchos de Taos, incorporating local stories and oral histories.

“The relationships we’ve cultivated and tended to within each of these communities deeply impacted how we developed our show,” Hogland-Gurulé said. “No movement, theme or costume was made purely for the aesthetic. It’s all imbued with specific meanings that come from deep and long-term listening.”

The Santa Fe Playhouse is offering two types of festival passes. Standard passes allow attendees to select eight festival presentations for the price of seven and include a ticket to the festival kick-off party. Premium passes include access to all presentations with any available seating and tickets to both opening and closing parties.

The festival represents part of the Playhouse’s broader mission to develop new work and support underrepresented voices, Hogan said. She noted that the theater will also present the New Mexican premiere of “Pueblo Revolt” by Dillon Christopher Chitto in its main stage season.

“I want younger artists to see what is possible, to see themselves represented, and to know that their voices are powerful and necessary,” Hogan said.

Find out which productions you can see at Santa Fe Playhouse's 505 ALIVE! Festival