ENMU students write, produce play

PORTALES — Area residents are in for a unique experience this weekend with a production created by Eastern New Mexico University students.

"They have been fantastic," theater professor Janeice Scarbrough said of the students who have written and produced the play. "It's kind of a tradition here that we do a lot of work that comes from the students. I believe in the new voice of our students, so we have always had a collaborative process. What's different about this is it is a collaboration of work completely created by 15 students."

"Departures" will be performed at 7 p.m. today-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday with tickets being $5 for general admission.

The play is the story of a writer from the beginning of her life to where she is now and the work she has written, according to ENMU junior Kendall Romero.

"At this time, she is a little stuck creatively, and she hasn't written anything in a while," Romero said of the character, who attempts to recall different memories throughout her life to help bring her creative process to life again with the memories being played out by the characters.

"This is the first time we've (students) done something that we entirely wrote ourselves from scratch," Romero said. "We've had workshop rehearsals where we have written different memories and times in her life."

Romero said people in creative outlets, such as theater, usually have their own ideas on how things should be, so the experience has taught her to work better with others in a team environment.

"I think this helped all of us learn how to work together ... If something wasn't working, we would always go back and vote or say solutions to make it work rather than just fighting about it," she said. "It gave more to my creative process and my feedback and accepting creative criticism."

Romero said the class in which students have been creating the play was only eight weeks long, so the experience has also taught her to be better about deadlines.

"I worked really hard to meet my deadlines, and for me, that's not always easy, so I feel like it helped me improve with my time management," she said. "I'm so excited (about the play)."

Scarbrough said the director of the play, ENMU alumni Leonard Madrid, was a student of hers who took ENMU's first playwright class under her in 1993.

"To be able to watch him — I taught him and now he's teaching them — it's all a really beautiful circle of creativity, so it has been really rewarding for me to watch not only Leonard, but the students creating," she said. "It's one thing to create a production on your own, but to do it with 14 other people and create this hour and a half of a story is something special."

Madrid said his education at ENMU was perfect for preparing him for his current career teaching theater and working for a theater company in Albuquerque, because it taught him about all of the aspects of theater.

"There were concepts I thought I was going to have to explain to them (ENMU students), but then I realized, 'No, you already know this, because you're at a school that encourages these types of things,'" he said. "It's been rewarding on a lot of levels. First, how great the department is doing but also working with students who are doing this for the first time and who are so talented. They are doing such a great job. I couldn't be more excited by the energy and talent coming from this program."