Our People: Reflecting the local culture

Oct. 8—Leonard Madrid's plays are a reflection of his growing up in the Hispanic culture of Portales and his familiarity with Latino communities in New Mexico.

Many of his plays are actually set in north Portales, where, he says, the people speak a mix of Spanish and English that are unique to the community.

Madrid's plays have received the Latinx Playwriting award at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. One play, "Aurora" was performed at a national festival for new playwrights held in Chicago, as well as in Mexico City at its Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario.

His plays, he said, reflect "magical realism," that is, real-world stories with elements of magic from New World mythologies, as Madrid defines it.

At Eastern New Mexico University, he teaches theater, from acting to set construction to costume design.

The News asked Madrid about what inspires him to write plays, his dedication to theater, and his teaching.

Here are our questions and his responses:

Q: What compels you to write a play?

A: Usually it's a compulsion of story-telling. Then the play becomes a puzzle. You take a situation and break it down to reasons why. Then another puzzle takes form, then another. You solve the puzzles in the script, then staging becomes the puzzle. It's a series of puzzles you solve.

Q: What do you draw from your own life for dramatic content?

A: Most of it is magical realism. Rudolfo Anaya (whose classic novel, "Bless Me, Ultima" is considered a work of magical realism) is my grandfather's cousin.

It's in the language, character and family life I see in the community. Today, there is new folklore joining with the old. There are new monsters and hauntings.

In my plays for the Blackout Theater, which is about radio drama, I'll ask "what if they were real?"

Q: What are the new monsters?

A: People coming back from the dead are new monsters and there are more creatures from new sources. I try to put a new monster in each town in New Mexico.

Q: Do you write your plays in English, Spanish or Spanglish?

A: I'd call it Spanglish. It's the language I hear in north Portales. That's English with a lot of Spanish words and phrases mixed in. It is New Mexico-specific. It's very colloquial and that's what we celebrate.

Some you can understand only if you live in north Portales. It's the same in all of New Mexico, in different places.

Q: So you celebrate what makes New Mexico's culture unique?

A: Yes. Nowhere else do you see luminarias and posadas, in which people take on the role of Joseph, the Virgin Mary and other characters in the Christmas story, and they knock on doors in the neighborhood as if they're seeking room at the inn. There is the "Pastorales" based on a play called "The Second Shepherd" that was written in the Dark Ages. We had theater in New Mexico long before there was a Broadway in New York.

There are places in the country like New Orleans and Hawaii where there are unique customs, but there are also many places that could be anywhere. It's the small towns that make New Mexico exciting and worth exploring.

Q: What fascinates you about theater?

A: I am intrigued because it goes back over 1,000 years, but it still meets the moment. Once a book is written or a movie is made, it can't change, but with theater, every time it's different. It lives in a way no other art form does. Every show, every performance is different.

Q: How would you describe yourself as a teacher?

A: As a colleague of my students, to help them along. I ask them "what do you want to do and how can I help you do it?"

There is a lot of hands-on. I can show them, "this is how I would do it. This is my way," and tell them "you can find your own way."

Q: What do you do in your spare time when you're not doing theater or teaching?

A: I have a lot of weird hobbies. I bake a lot and I do crafts, especially leather crafting. I make tooled-leather costume pieces. And I design colognes.

Q: You design colognes?

A: That started with a play, a kind of radio play, where we sent letters to the audience. Each letter was scented to smell like the character who was speaking, and there was a recording in the character's voice that told the story.

It may seem weird, but cologne is an art form. You have music for your ears, and you can create art for your sense of smell.

I have custom designed colognes as gifts for family and other people I have known.

Q: Do you have other projects?

A: Yes. I'm majoring in Spanish as a student here. I went to Mexico City for a production of one of my plays and found out I don't speak Spanish as well as I thought I did, so I'm studying Spanish here.

Q: And what can you tell us about your family?

A: I have a sister who lives in Clovis. My parents moved to Albuquerque, and I have brothers in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, and Miami. I have extended family — cousins, aunts and uncles — everywhere.