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Photo courtesy of SCRAP Productions Facebook Page.

Photo courtesy of SCRAP Productions Facebook Page.

SCRAP puts on performance about grief and loss

On Oct. 26, the University of New Mexico student organization, Students Creating Really Awesome Productions (SCRAP), held their opening night for their show “Too Much, Too Much, Too Many.”

The story focused on Rose, played by Domenica Nieto, a grieving mother who has just recently lost her husband James, played by Nicholas Johnson, to Alzheimer’s disease. When she decides to lock herself in her room, her daughter Emma, played by Kristine Padilla, brings Pastor Hidge, played by Nicholas Caine, to try and get her to come out of her room.

The set provided a fluid transition between scenes with a well designed layout that accommodated the feeling of separation between Rose and the rest of the cast, while also showing the audience the full picture. This was reinforced by the collaboration of the cast and delivery to the audience, showing how strong the feelings of these characters were.

“I brought emotion to it working with the cast so much like Emma and James, I felt connections with them and it helped me connect the character to them as well,” said Domenica Nieto, a UNM freshman and the actress who played Rose.

The members of the cast came to really find things to connect themselves to their characters which brought another layer of emotion and realness to each scene.

“They all connected really well with each other which I think really helped this show and gave that human connection with the characters, I loved working with them,” said Monica Villalba, the director of the show and current UNM senior.

Actor Nicholas Caine said that he puts a lot of himself into each character that he plays, drawing on personal memories to evoke emotion on stage, allowing himself to relate to the character.

“(It’s) never just a role, and I hope you hear this from every actor, but the lines really start to blur and that’s the running joke, where does the actor begin,” Caine said.

Kristine Padilla, the actress who played Emma, said that the cast feeds off of each other to create the genuine emotion that the audience sees on stage.

“I found it easier to connect because my family has had a hard year, we’ve all been grieving, so I was able to make that connection between the two and put that into the character,” said Padilla. “It was also a lot of feeding off of each other, I couldn’t have made the character what it was without the things that Domenica was giving me.”

The performance depicted grief and the relationship of living with someone with a mental illness. Each flashback to James gave more context to how his illness got worse, making the audience feel even more for Rose and Emma. Each scene was created with detail and excellent storytelling in mind.

“We’ve been working for about two months, like all of that and I’ve been working on it for a couple of years so actually seeing it in front of people was an exhilarating feeling that I can’t explain,” Villalba said. “I’m really glad people got to really connect and see that with the characters and set and everything so yeah, I think it went really well.”

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The show will run again Nov. 1 to Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 4 at 2 p.m. at the Experimental Theatre in Popejoy Hall. Ticket prices are $12 for general admission, $10 for faculty & seniors and $8 for staff & students.

Tiffani Watteyne is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted by email at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @tiffanirosew.

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