A horse play

Apr. 28—details

—Simpatico

—7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, May 3-21

—New Mexico Actors Lab, 1213 Parkway Drive

—$15 or $35, 505-395-6576, nmactorslab.com

More than a week into rehearsals for New Mexico Actors Lab's production of the Sam Shepard play Simpatico, cast members are not able to divulge certain details about characters and plot developments.

It's not that they have anything to hide — they just know that when Nicholas "Nico" Ballas is directing, there's a chance that changes they suggest will make it into the play, together altering its DNA in ways no one could have foreseen.

"You will never see the production you think you're going to see if he's directing," says Geoffrey Pomeroy, who plays Carter. "He will bend expectation away from the obvious in a way that's challenging for the actor. You might see some expressionism or farce sneak its way into a piece that you think is going to be a naturalistic sort of film noir."

In Simpatico, Carter and his associate Vinnie, played by Hania Stocker, blackmail a commissioner to ensure his silence when they're about to be caught in a horse-racing scam. Many years later, their fortunes have diverged; Carter and his wife are successful horse racers in Kentucky, while Vinnie spends his days in California, drinking. Vinnie lures Carter to California and steals the materials used in the old blackmail, and Carter persuades Vinnie's friend Cecilia to try to get the materials back.

Cecilia ends up being central to the plot — a reason Ballas gravitated toward the play, he says. Ballas, the Actors Lab's artistic director, acknowledges that Shepard doesn't have a reputation for writing strong female characters but says Cecilia is a notable exception.

Joey Beth Gilbert, who portrays Cecilia, says the character is proving difficult to pin down.

"She's an eccentric — very witty, smart," Gilbert says. "I don't want to use the word manipulative, although she's capable of manipulation. She is very much a character, so I dove really deep into that and was trying out fun voices and a bunch of things. I'm finally settling into who she is, and it's absolutely different than when I started."

She says Cecilia has integrity, but her reasons for helping Carter and Vinnie aren't clear.

"It's been very difficult for me to try to figure out Cecilia and her motives — and why she is being strung along by these men unless she's in on it too," Gilbert says. "She's not just a male device, like a lot of other women that Shepard has written about."

Cecilia maintains the same personality throughout. The same can't be said for Vinnie and Carter.

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"Geoff and Hania have a lot of stuff to work with physically because essentially there's a transformation — an exchange of personality, which is a common Shepard theme," Ballas says. "The two friends really switch, and you end up seeing one in the other's shoes almost literally. It's a lot of work."

Pomeroy says deteriorating male American masculinity was a theme of Shepard's work, and that it's important not to get too caught up in expressing that when performing in Shepard plays.

"Shepard had this ability to capture this swagger — an idyllic American sort of quality that can be a little bit heightened and poetic and beautiful," he says. "I mean, some of these passages are gorgeously written; they have this poetry and visual imagery to them. One of the challenges is to not get swept up in the poetry — to let the words be poetic if they land as poetic, but not to try to pull the poetry out of them."

Pomeroy has been part of the Actors Lab's core company since 2016, while Gilbert joined in 2019. They have plenty of exchanges in Simpatico and are accustomed to bearing the full brunt of an audience's attention while face to face, as they starred in the two-person play Lungs two years ago. Ballas also directed that production.

Simpatico runs about 75 minutes, with two acts. The stage is divided into multiple sets, each of which is lighted while serving as the focal point.

Part of the joy of the rehearsal process, Ballas says, is finding plots and subplots buried within a play. Simpatico has been especially rewarding in that regard, with the Cecilia character glittering in different ways depending on one's perspective.

"On first reading, it appears like a reworking of classic film noir plots, and in fact, Shepard refers to film noir as one of the last great periods of American storytelling on film," Ballas says. "He has created this play that has multiple levels of plot, and during the course of [rehearsals], one of the actors will say, 'Wait a minute! This is what she's really all about; she isn't a simple femme fatale.' She has this deep personal secret that she is uncovering at this point in the play, and it wasn't readily apparent. So kudos to the actors for being able to find stuff underneath the text."

Ballas has fond memories of his interactions with Shepard in the 1980s, when the playwright lived in Santa Fe. He saw Shepard's self-destruction with alcohol up close — Shepard was arrested on suspicion of aggravated drunken driving in Santa Fe in 2015, two years before his death — and says that battle reveals itself in many of Shepard's works.

"Sam had his demons," Ballas says. "He tried to work through a lot of his struggles by playing them out in his characters."

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Simpatico also stars Melissa Christopher and Jody Hegarty. While the Actors Lab includes about 25 core members, it sometimes uses outside actors — and Ballas says the supply of quality actors in Santa Fe has risen sharply. "I think because of the intensity of film and TV work that we have right now between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, a lot of actors have decided, 'To hell with it; I'm not going to live in L.A. anymore. I'm not going to live in New York anymore.' And they have come here, and many have carved out successful TV and film careers while living here," he says. "So, hallelujah for that."

Simpatico is the Actors Lab's five-production season debut, and Gilbert says spirits are higher than in the previous few years.

"Last year even was a little bit different than the year before" because of changing COVID-19 restrictions, she says. "And this year is clearly different than last year. I think we're all trying to go into it with the highest hopes — like everything's going to go exactly the way that we plan it."

For Pomeroy, the 2022 season started very differently. He came down with COVID-19 after rehearsing with another company.

"I'm not going into this season fearful that COVID is going to shut anything down like I was last year," he says.

Ballas says that as much as he enjoys the creative freedom of rehearsals, there's no substitute for an attentive audience.

"There's feedback from audience members directly to the actors, and that's palpable, particularly in our theater, which is very intimate," he says. "We can hear and monitor what the audience is doing. We can hear gasps. We can hear uncomfortable shuffling. We can almost hear the tears rolling down cheeks at certain moments. That immediacy of audience really creates a whole new ballgame that is just such a joy to experience every opening night."

Ballas refers to the crowd as a fourth entity integral to a production, along with the actors, director, and playwright. It's perhaps the least predictable element, and Gilbert says there's wisdom in understanding one has limited control from the stage.

"There's only so much that you can do as an actor to make the show what it is in the end," she says. "So there is a bit that you have to relinquish to the theater gods."

Pomeroy says that with rehearsals about halfway finished, he's still figuring out elements of his character. He then chides himself for not having the entire production nailed down already.

"But I'm not supposed to," he reminds himself. "You know, I'm not supposed to. We still have three weeks."