Eva Cullen’s work as an actor, director, costumer, scenic designer and technical director for New Mexico State University’s theater department and the Las Cruces theatre company they cofounded are helping them take the next big step as a theater major: directing a full-length play on the main stage at NMSU.
“You have to be well rounded,” said Cullen, 20, a senior at NMSU who has been acting and singing since age 10.
Cullen will direct “that drive through monterey” next February. They are taking an independent study course at NMSU aligned with the play, and their research into the Chicano and feminist movements will contribute to Cullen’s vision for the production, they said. Playwright Matthew Paul Olmos wrote the play about his Mexican-American mother’s first love experience in 1971 Los Angeles.
Acting in NMSU’s 2023 production of “Carmela Full of Wishes” helped Cullen “connect with my culture,” they said. And, working with the art and music departments in that show enhanced their appreciation for the importance of collaboration to create successful theatre.
For sophomore Carlos Huereca, it’s all about acting.
“This is what I’m meant to do. I love doing theatre,” said Huereca, 20, who has been in the cast of every show the theater department has produced for the last two semesters, including playing Big Brother in “Carmela Full of Wishes,” Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family” musical and five characters in “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors.”
Huereca, a native of El Paso, won two best-performance awards at a campus celebration last May. He got his first taste of working backstage after becoming a theater major this semester.
“In this major, you have to do everything,” Huereca said, remembering his work in the costume shop making the pants he would later wear on stage. “I do want to know more about the technical side.”
“Theatre is my favorite thing ever,” said senior Athena McPeake, 21, who has been “obsessed” with singing and acting since she was in the fourth grade, growing up in California. “All I wanted to do was perform.”
McPeake played the lead in NMSU’s recent production of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” a challenging dramatic role in the Tony-nominated antiwar play.
“I was so scared when I got cast,” she said. “There was so much depth to it. I’d never played a mother.”
Working with director and theater department associate professor Larissa Lury and the other cast members and crew, plus doing extensive research into playwright Bertolt Brecht and the 30 Years’ War that is the play’s setting, “gave me the confidence to go on with it,” she said, “doing this role justice in a way that serves the purpose Brecht had. I have a passion for politics.”
McPeake also sang and acted in NMSU’s 2023 production of “Godspell.” She also performed Shakespeare for the first time in “As You Like It,” where Lury, the director, “helped me find my art, my strength and humor,” McPeake said. That, in turn, helped her to “navigate the humor and the truth” in “Mother Courage.”
The theater department has “fantastic staff,” Huereca said. “They care about us. We can talk to them. They are such talented people. This is an educational space. This is for us to grow. I’m grateful to be here.”
Huereca enjoyed his dramatic role in “Mother Courage” after starring in two comedies; yet his performance in an untitled play that was part of the High Desert Play Development Workshop last spring was his favorite role to date at NMSU.
“I loved that staged reading,” he said. “There were a lot of laughs and some heartbreaking moments.”
“Every character I play, I try to learn something,” Huereca said. Uncle Fester, for example, “was the ugliest (character in “The Addams Family”) on the outside, but so beautiful on the inside. He loves everybody. I should be more loving like that.”
Actors “want to be seen, want to be acknowledged,” Huereca said, but they are also selfless, “taking on someone else’s life. All the characters I’ve played tell stories.”
Like Huereca, McPeake had not done theatre tech until she came to NMSU. She was one of three crew members who helped actors with dozens of costume changes for “Dracula” and was part of the crew for “Carmela Full of Wishes” and NMSU’s 2023 production of “Hookman,” where props included a full-sized car and snow.
Being an actor – or a crew member – “requires so much dedication, so much time,” said McPeake, who, like Cullen and Huereca, is a full-time student. “Most of my friends are in the theater department,” she said, and that’s where she often spends 12 or more hours a day.
“There’s not a lot of time for anything else,” said Huereca, who plans to pursue acting – in live theatre or in films – as a career. “I’m going to give it my all,” he said. “I want to be a professional actor. I have to live my life that way. I love it.”
Cullen’s future plans include pursuing a master’s degree in directing. The skills they have learned working in theatre, means always having a job.
“I can advertise myself as a carpenter,” said Cullen, a Las Cruces native and graduate of Centennial High School. “With a theatre degree, you can literally do anything.”
Cullen wants to do more Chicano and LGBTQ+ theatre and “shed some light” on social justice issues, they said, helping “people understand each other. You need to get everyone invested in the show.”
“We are all learning actively, learning together, doing things we’ve never done before,” said McPeake. Actors and crew members are there “for each other,” she said. “Theatre is so unique in that way.”
As the director of “that drive thru monterey,” Cullen will be in overall charge of the production, working to “create a community” among the cast and crew, “make us a family, and … learn from each other. Theater is such a powerful tool,” they said. “We need theatre to bring us together.”
