Last of her kind (almost)

The director of “The Vagina Monologues” is of a dying breed — she will be one of the last students at UNM to pursue a directing concentration within the theater department.

Rachel Leos said she switched from theater education to a directing concentration in the theater program two years ago. Shortly thereafter, the six concentrations in the theater major were eliminated. Leos said she was told the department did this so theater students could be well-rounded, and because they didn’t have enough staff to head each of the concentrations and teach classes.

Leos was allowed to continue with her degree because she started before it was eliminated, and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance William Liotta said UNM still has several students in the directing concentration. Now the department offers a general theater major as a replacement. Leos said she directed a play as a senior in high school, which piqued her interest in the subject. “The Vagina Monologues” is the only full length production she’s directed since then.

She said she spends 31 hours a week in rehearsal. “When I think about it, as stressed out as I am, there’s nothing else I would rather be doing,” she said. “Like that day I was in rehearsal from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., I could be doing that all day every day, and I would be fine.” Leos decided to include some “manologues” in addition to the exclusively female monologues.

Actor Stephen Armijo performs one of the three “manologues.” He said Leos’ simple, straightforward directing style has drawn great performances from a cast made up of mostly non-theater majors. “I think at the end of the day, you can tell who knows what they’re talking about, and what they want out of their actors,” he said.

“I’ve seen shows where the performances are good, but they seldom will go below the surface. I feel like we all really believe in what we’re saying in the show, and that’s ultimately why it’s so successful.” Leos said her directing style is hands-off, compared to some who try to control all that happens onstage. Her style is apt for this production because the monologues are traditionally performed with scripts in hand, she said.

“Letting actors explore and discover things and then acting off of that: That’s more my style,” she said. “It’s more organic.” Leos said she is not sure what she wants to do after graduation.

She said she might teach high school theater, but has also explored theater therapy for children with autism. “For certain autistic children, being present in the moment is hard enough, especially when there’s all these distractions going on,” she said. “When you lay a script in front of them, it’s something for them to focus on and to love and really get into.”

Regardless of her work helping troubled youth, she said her experience with V-Day, the campaign to stop violence against women, and “The Vagina Monologues” has prepared her for the issues she could confront in her future career.

“It’s doing something for me and the people I know who have gone through some kind of gender violence, whose families have gone through some kind of gender violence,” she said. “I think it’ll help me because I want to work with troubled teens, and this kind of experience, this kind of exposure, I’ll take with me and use it to teach them.”