New Mexico Centennial Grant Author Talk

Tapetes de Lana Weaving Center

Mora, New Mexico

November 12, 2011

Photo Credit: Don Shaw



FOOTLIGHTS UPDATE

Author Talk, November 12, 2011, Saturday, 1:30 pm, Tapetes de Lana Weaving Center, Mora, New Mexico, presented as part of a Visiting Scholar Lecture Series funded by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs Centennial Grant in support of the new book (in progress), Boomtown on the Western Frontier, and the Friends of the Las Vegas City Museum and Rough Rider Memorial Collection.

The talk will provide an overview of the plays, players, and venues of amateur theatricals in Las Vegas and Fort Union, NM, 1871-1899 with a focus on the Fort's performing companies and rivalries. Slide show of related historical photographs will be available.

"FOOTLIGHTS" NEWS

Saturday, August 20, 2011, 2 pm:  Presentation and Book Signing for Footlights in the Foothills at Tome on the Range, 158 Bridge Street, Las Vegas, NM, (505) 454-9944.

"LIGHT THE LIGHTS!"

Cloggers and sopranos, contortionists, Indian Club Swingers, ticket-of-leave men and ladies of the night, shepherds, saints, and devils—these are a few of the characters portrayed in the early amateur theatrical productions of Las Vegas, New Mexico, and nearby Fort Union. Between 1871 and 1899, this area hosted no fewer than eleven amateur acting troupes, an opera company, and an oratorio society. These home grown thespians performed both secular and non-secular plays in Spanish and English as well as musicals, variety acts, passion plays, and light operas. They played in courthouses, private salas, grand opera houses, and performance halls that were occasionally stocked with hay and grain. The amateur troupers strutted their stuff before farmers, outlaws, hooligans, soldiers, and the local aristocracy.

Between 1883 and 1886, the enlisted men of Fort Union formed several amateur companies and performed at the garrison. One group took its show on the road and played to Las Vegas audiences. During this brief period, fierce loyalties arose and a vicious rivalry played out in the pages of the Las Vegas newspapers. Entertainment of all sorts was an integral part of the booming western frontier. Although professional traveling troupes came by wagon and train, the homegrown companies—made up of butchers, seamstresses, homemakers, business leaders, and politicians—always drew large audiences. Footlights in the Foothills provides an overview of these amateur theatrical companies—the players, the plays, and the venues—in addition to stories of the social ties formed by the people who offered their talents and bared their egos to the audiences of "one of the hottest towns in the country."

Available at www.sunstonepress.com and

Tome on the Range

158 Bridge Street

Las Vegas, NM 87701

(505) 454-9944

www.tomeontherange.com

 

It's Here!

On August 11, 2010, in Las Vegas, NM, Edwina Irving masquerades as historical non-fiction author Edwina Portelle Romero.







Be there when melo-drama and mayhem take the stage at the Historic Plaza Hotel's Ilfeld Ballroom--excerpts from The Comedy of Adam and Eve, ca. 1870; The Ticket-of-Leave Man, 1863; and "Who Killed Sean Flannery," from Prairie Madness, forthcoming [I HOPE].

A celebration of history and amateur theatre.

Footlights in the Foothills

The footlights dim, the stage goes dark, but only for a few months. Revisions and additions to the book are coming to an end, but hopefully, Sunstone Press will be able to publish it in 2010, the year of Las Vegas, New Mexico's 175th anniversary. Although Footlights in the Foothills, my story of the amateur performers, their plays and venues does not begin in 1835, it does recall amateur troupes in Las Vegas as early as 1871. I complete these revisions with mixed feelings. . . anxious to see the book in print, but sad to leave the 19th century and the grand people I met there like Mariano Monclova, Hattie Knickerbocker, the Baca Family, Alexander Randolph, Miguel Otero, Jr., and the Rothgeb girls, to mention a few.

But an exciting adventure awaits, and by August 11, the footlights will glow again when we--Deborah Blanche, Tim Crofton, a cast of talented young people, and I--take the story to the stage at the Plaza Hotel's Ilfeld Ballroom. With dramatic, and comic, readings from period plays as well as variety acts, we will recreate a typical early 19th century amateur production.

Hope to see you there.