CREEDE — Creede Repertory Theatre (Creede Rep) recently announced its 11th annual Headwaters New Play Festival will be Aug. 25-27. This year’s festival features a staged reading of “Prima’s Guide to Funerals” set in the San Luis Valley, by New Mexico-based playwright, Leonard Madrid.
Festival passes are $40 and include tickets to “Prima’s Guide,” both world premiere performances of the “Young Audience Outreach Tour: The City Dog & The Prairie Dog,” and the staged reading of “CRT’s 2024 Tiny Tour: Roy G Biv” which will tour to pre-schools and early learning centers around the state next spring.
Readings and performances take place in both the Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre and the Virginia Christensen Multi-Use Facility. A festival pass also includes entrance to the Headwaters Brunch on Cliffside Patio just north of the Mainstage Theatre building, where attendees can eat, drink, and talk about the weekend’s plays during a facilitated discussion.
‘Prima’s Guide to Funerals’
Three cousins, an urn, and one really long day. A comedy set along the Rio Grande river in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado, “Prima’s Guide to Funerals” tells the story of love, grief, and laughter that can only exist in tight relationships among cousins. “Prima’s Guide” is directed by Denver actor-director Rodney Lizcano and features 2023 acting company member Savanna Padilla, with new-to-CRT actors Robert Quintanilla and Katie Rodriguez.
Madrid is currently the Artistic Director of Blackout Theatre in Albuquerque, N.M. His plays have received the Kennedy Center’s award for Latinx playwrights three times. He has also participated in the Ignition Festival at Victory Gardens in Chicago, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, and the Colorado New Play Summit at the Denver Center for Performing Arts. Leonard is currently a theatre professor at Eastern New Mexico University.
40 Years and 400,000-plus Students
CRT’s flagship program, the Young Audience Outreach Tour, now in its 40th season, is staging the world premiere of “The City Dog and The Prairie Dog” by Diana Grisanti, Aug. 25 and Aug. 26, at the Virginia Christensen Multi Use Facility. Featuring the creative team of “Casa Alfonsa” and “El Guayabo/The Guava Tree,” “The City Dog and The Prairie Dog” is a bilingual musical for grades K-6, exploring themes of community and belonging.
Paloma is a prairie dog pup in a prairie dog town. She’s not a huge fan of prairie living, though— the boring cuisine, the terrifying predators, the annoying owls. So, when her cousin from the city comes to visit, Paloma jumps at the chance to leave the open plain behind. Will Paloma adjust to life in a metropolis of 22 million people (and who knows how many rodents)? Will she survive without her dog town behind her? Will they survive without her? Featuring lots of singing, dancing, and audience participation, “The City Dog and The Prairie Dog” is a story about exploring the world, learning new things, and maybe, just maybe, coming home again. “The City Dog and The Prairie Dog” is directed by actor-director Matt Zambrano, a member of Creede Rep’s 2022 acting company.
Creede Rep’s Headwaters Program exists to foster the development of new plays for the CRT stage and beyond. The unique and remote location, high in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, cultivates artistic growth, focus, and inspiration for new work. Since its inception in 2012, the Headwaters New Play Festival is a week-long workshop where new plays are developed with a team of professional theatre artists and receive public readings. Like its name suggests, Headwaters aspires to be a source of new American plays, constantly evolving.
The staged reading of “Prima’s Guide to Funerals” will perform at the Ruth Humphreys Brown Theatre at 120 S. Main St., Creede. “The City Dog and The Prairie Dog” and “Roy G Biv” will perform at the Virginia Christensen Multi-Use Facility at 408 La Garita Ave., Creede.
For festival passes and information about the Headwaters program, including a festival schedule, visit www.creederep.org, call the box office at 719-658-2540 or email boxoffice@creederep.com.
