Robert Benedetti
Love in the Time of Climate Change
One couple’s struggle for answers and a way out of IKEA.
Daunting themes like parenthood and climate change expand throughout the play Lungs by Duncan Macmillan. Such common struggles for younger generations juxtapose the bare stage at the New Mexico Actors Lab, where Nicholas Ballas intends for audiences to embrace them in the new local production of Lungs—a bold move for his debut as the sole artistic director of the New Mexico Actors Lab.
“What I really believe about this show more than anything else is it’s a love story at its core,” Ballas tells SFR. “I want the audience to vicariously experience these people falling in love, to experience the bumps in the road they go through and to ultimately come out the other end with them and to be cheering them on all the way.”
Written in 2011 and winner of the 2012 Best New Play Off West-End award, Lungs is darkly funny and playfully unfiltered throughout. The only characters, M and W (Geoffrey Pomeroy and Joey Beth Gilbert), contemplate their future as a couple, but also their responsibilities in a changing world. The realistic conversations, filled with interruptions, cursing and long trains of thought, help explain how two people in a relationship can have two different truths. Fittingly, Ballas describes the 2021-2022 season at the New Mexico Actors Lab as dealing loosely with themes of truth—and its opposite.
“We get to see these two different versions, the woman’s version of the truth, the man’s version of the truth and how they play off each other, and what assumptions people make about each other in a relationship particularly,” he says.
The thrust stage leaves little to the imagination, and audiences are required to wear masks inside and provide vaccination proof, or negative test results at the door.
“The epiphanies that they have in the course of a relationship when they realize, ‘Holy shit, that’s really not who that person is, is it?’ and ‘I think I still like this person and I really didn’t think that I would,’” Ballas says, “there’s all these wonderful surprises.” (Liane Pippin)
LUNGS: 7:30 pm Thursday, Sept. 30-Saturday, Oct. 2; 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 3. $5-$25. The New Mexico Actors Lab, 1213 Parkway Drive, (505)395-6576
Tackle Them Apples
Courtesy of Museum of New Mexico Foundation
Do you get a cuddly feeling when you think about the changing colors of local cottonwoods? Got a million plans for harvest-related cooking projects? Eager to get out there in a plaid button-up or an argyle sweater and await the onrush of scented candles? You bet. At Los Luceros Historic Site, the fall is in full swing and unsprayed varieties of apples ranging from Winesap, Red Delicious to Golden Delicious are yours for the picking. Orchard-ing with exhibits, trails and historic buildings all around us? Sign us up. No need to bring your own bag—you’ll get one with admission. Plus, kiddos under 16 get in free. Get your pie and cake recipes ready, you beautiful autumnal deviants. (Riley Gardner)
Apple Picking: 10am-4pm, Thursday, Sept. 30-Sunday, Oct. 3. $7 (free if under 16). Los Luceros Historic Site, 253 Co Road 48, Alcalde. (505) 476-1165
These Maps Slap
Franziska von den Driesch
Ever heard of a multi-sensory sculptural installation? If you haven’t, you can get yourself educated at SITE Santa Fe. Colombian artist Oswaldo Maciá's hand painted maps are filled with notes detailing the biological drives of migration and how it relates to our sense of smell. You’ll even note a particular fragrance of Central American tree resins to further pull you in. Audio sculptures are included here, too, so you can hear the sounds that have attracted Indigenous cultures to the Chaco region of Columbia for centuries. Consider it a celebratory experience of migration throughout humanity’s time on our cozy little rock and those driving desires to seek out greener pastures. (RG)
New Cartographies of Smell Migration Opening: 5-9 pm Friday, Oct. 1. Free. SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta. (505) 989-1199
Lines from A to B to You
Courtesy of Currents New Media
Generative animation, you dweebs—it’s the new artistic frontier. Now perhaps that’s debatable, but after seeing Parallel Trajectories, you won’t be able to deny it’s pretty dang cool. New media artists Robert Campbell and David Stout both come from a filmmaking background, with Stout having some experience as a sonic artist. Here they bring life to lines, constructing an array of sharp imagery like you’re looking at the world from afar or through a microscope. You’ll maybe see architecture or natural landscapes within these patterns. Or heck, maybe something more. It’s everything we’ve come to expect from the brick-and-mortar version of the annual new media festival. (RG)
Parallel Trajectories: All day Saturday, Oct. 2. Free. Currents 826, 826 Canyon Road, (505) 772-0953
