Portales doesn’t have a theater run by its young people. We’d like to fix that.
A few of us have started meeting about it. The idea is straightforward: build a company that high school and first-year college students run themselves — on stage and behind it — and put a first production up in spring 2027.
Nothing is settled yet — not the venue, not the show, not the money. We’re telling people now because a theater made by one small group isn’t the point. It has to be made by enough of us.
What we’re proposing
A youth-led theater company is one where the people on stage are also the people making the decisions. Students direct, produce, stage-manage, design, and hold the budget. Adults advise; they don’t take over.
Portales has a high school that stages a show or two a year, and a university with a theatre programme and a real stage. Between them sits a gap. A student who wants to act in October waits until spring. Someone who has finished high school, or who is enrolled at ENMU but not cast, has nowhere at all.
We want to close that gap, prove it with a single production, and build something that outlasts the first show. A theater that closes after opening night isn’t a theater. It’s an event.
Where things stand
- The founding group
- Forming now
- A venue at the university
- Not yet discussed
- The organization itself
- Not yet formed
- Which show we'd stage
- Not yet chosen
- Funding
- Not yet raised
- A first production
- Targeted for spring 2027
Agree a mission statement and confirm the working name.Oct 2026
Identify the right contact and send a first approach.Sep 2026
Decide the legal structure, then file articles of incorporation in New Mexico.Oct 2026
Shortlist candidates once the venue and dates are known.Nov 2026
Set a preliminary budget range, then open the first sponsor conversations.Oct 2026
Rehearsals begin roughly eight weeks before opening.Feb 2027
We’d rather be plain about this than sound further along than we are. If you’re reading this early, that’s on purpose — early is when your help counts most.
Ways to be part of it
Help start it
We need adults willing to sit in the founding meetings and advise without taking over — and anyone who knows bookkeeping, grant writing, carpentry, or how to run a rehearsal calendar.
Get in touch about thisSupport it
A first production costs real money before it earns any. Local businesses and individual supporters are how a founding season gets paid for.
Get in touch about thisPerform or crew
Open to high school and first-year college students. Auditions aren't scheduled yet — tell us you're interested and you'll hear when they are. No experience expected.
Get in touch about thisTalk to us
Whether you want to help build it, support it, be on stage, or just ask what this is — write to us. Someone will answer.
hello@example.orgOr use the contact form, which reaches the same place.