For playwright Leonard Madrid, there's nothing like watching his story come to life.
"Last year, one of my plays was produced at UNM, and eight months later, it was produced at Eastern (New Mexico University) with a completely different cast, completely different set," he said. "Nobody even knew each other. I was the only one who knew the people involved, and it was interesting to see how completely different the productions turned out. I'm one of those people who gets really excited when I see people taking something I've done and running with it so it ends up being a lot different."
Madrid, a graduate student at UNM and recipient of the 2008 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Award for Latino Playwrights, wrote his first play in 1995. At the time, he was majoring in acting at Eastern New Mexico University.
"At Eastern, I was studying under a group of people who had a very interesting view of theater," he said. "They didn't feel that everything had to be locked into its own area. They felt that every artist could be any artist they wanted to be. At that point, I learned that I didn't have to be one thing - that I could branch out into a lot of things."
Madrid was awarded for his play "Aurora," an adaptation of the Greek tragedy "Alcestis." It was his third award from the center.
Madrid said he incorporated New Mexico storytelling ideas and set the play in modern-day Mora, N.M.
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"I have always loved the concept of a place called Mora," he said. "My mom, she spent a couple of years there. She's absolutely in love with that whole idea. So, I put it in Mora."
The play is about a woman whose husband is going to die. So, she trades his fate for her own.
"Greek plays are always about kings and queens, and this is just about two people," he said. "It's just about two regular people who just have to deal with it - life and death."
Madrid, who also has a degree in set design, said his undergraduate experience in theater has helped him in his writing.
"I have a fellow playwright who came into playwrighting from a different angle, and he writes this beautiful, beautiful language," he said. "But he had never been in a play, and he went and actually acted in a few plays, and he thinks that it completely changed the way he writes because he sees what it's like to be an actor and have to say those lines. I have to agree with that, because a lot of the times, I'll read my things out loud as an actor, and I'll be like, 'Oh, that's clunky.'"
As a graduate assistant, Madrid teaches playwrighting and improv classes. He said being a teacher wasn't easy at first.
"I felt weird about it, because you feel that in order to teach it, you have to stop thinking that you are pretending to be a playwright," he said. "You just have to admit it. Being from a small town in New Mexico, I often feel that I can't claim that title, because that's for other people."
