Santa Fe needs more spaces to enjoy the performing arts

We of Tri-M Productions want to thank our Santa Fe audience who turned out for our show of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s A Grand Night for Singing. Performed at the New Mexico Museum of Art St. Francis Auditorium, a large space with great acoustics, we more than doubled our attendance per show compared to other smaller theaters we’ve used. We are an itinerant company, so thankful to theaters such as the Actors Lab or Playhouse that can rent to us for the extended time to load-in, prepare and run a show.

Such theaters in Santa Fe are oversubscribed, and most theater companies need to use one of the multiple “50-seat black boxes” in town such as the wonderful Teatro Paraguas. Such black boxes cannot sustain the large-quality musical theater productions that we aspire to, and the wonderful St. Francis Auditorium is not set for theater lighting or backstage access or raked raised audience seating to see the stage. Santa Fe needs more 150- to 200-seat theaters where shows needing weeks of time in them can be performed rather than events that occur over just one or two nights. I hope the community will support renovating and reopening both the James A. Little Theater at the New Mexico School for the Deaf and Armory for the Arts Theater at the state Military Museum, as well as support the team trying to bring back the Greer Garson Theater at the old College of Santa Fe campus. I am willing to team and help with anyone interested.

Cris W. Barnes Executive Director Tri-M Productions Santa Fe