THE NM SEVEN and the Heart of the Matter
NEWS | TUESDAY, JUNE 8 | BY FUSION STAFF WRITER, RUDOLFO CARRILLO
Writing about this year’s 20th Anniversary performances of FUSION’s much-lauded new short play festival, THE SEVEN, wasn’t problematic for this old Albuquerque culture maven: The stories behind the production were compelling; the performers, producers, and crew magnificently competent. The work itself was demonstrably amazing; at turns entertaining and thought-provoking. The performance I saw was also a kind remedy for the real world of troubles and conflict that surrounds all of us.
My personal experience and advice regarding such theatrical experiences comes down to this simple dictum: Get yourself—and anyone you can find who will willingly tag along—to FUSION, as soon as you can. Find a good seat and settle in for something that is more than good, something that emanates from the heart of the matter here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In fact, get there in time to witness this week’s humble yet powerfully New Mexican offering, THE NM SEVEN. This part of the year’s much noted ensemble of short plays involves staged readings of the top Nuevo Mexico-based submissions to a yearly competition that focuses on excellence and authenticity at the heart of the matter.
The NM SEVEN, featuring seven playwrights from our own backyard, will be performed as staged readings at 7 PM on Friday, June 12, at FUSION—located at 708 1st St NW, Downtown ABQ.
This year’s NM SEVEN includes the following short plays by New Mexican playwrights: “Memories” by Peter Schuyler, from Albuquerque; “To Be” by Scott Harrison of Santa Fe; “Satellite” by William Reynolds, who is from Albuquerque; “Corpus”by Owen Conway, a playwright who calls Albuquerque home; “Legacy” by Karin Diann Williams, also from Albuquerque; “The Appointment” by Santa Fe playwright Talia Pura; and “What I Meant Was” by Ryan Clarke of Albuquerque.
I reached out to the cohort of playwrights repping our state this year and came up with a handful of creatives who wanted to talk shop, wanted to discuss their work, and most importantly, wanted to relay to the folks out there in teeveeland why they should unglue themselves from the eternal glowing screen and latch onto some real and substantive drama, courtesy of FUSION, instead.
You heard it here first: Get thyself to FUSION, to the heart of the matter. Putting that sentiment into kinder, more concrete terms is not something I dare bear alone, so I asked my respondents to chime in about the NM SEVEN. Here’s what they had to say.
A Legacy at the Heart of the Matter
Karin Diann Williams wrote a short play titled “Legacy”; it was selected to be part of the NM SEVEN this year. When I met with Williams, I wanted to know all about the work, about legacies, and of course, about the heart of the matter. Williams told me, “I felt like I took some characters, kind of from my own life and my own family and tried to put them together in a situation that would get to the heart of what family means and what a legacy really is.”
Legacy is a play that William wrote especially for the festival, though she is no stranger to the world of readings, rehearsals, and performances. She told me, “I have written several plays that have been produced and published. I’ve got one that came out recently called Art of Necessity that is available online. I’m really proud of that one because I love doing comedies, and it’s kind of a comic mashup of both Shakespeare and reality TV. Also, my husband and I are both filmmakers, and we’ve collaborated on a few films. We have a new one out called Twin Cats Fly (that is a kids’ movie); it’s about a group of kids coming together to save a cat shelter whose funding is threatened. That one is currently available through quite a few online streaming services, and you can get it on Amazon, Tubi, and Plex.”
Williams summed up a main creative aspect of her work when she told this reporter that “ultimately my work is based on characters; it’s really important to create characters that have very clear and strong desires and motivations…and just kind of put them together and let those characters go to town to see what plays out on the stage.”
An Appointment with The Heart of the Matter
Talia’s Pura’s contribution to this year’s NM SEVEN is well worth making an appointment to see. The play, “The Appointment,” is “near and dear to my heart,” the playwright revealed in our wide-ranging conversation about the arts in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Briefly, the play is about the appointments we all share in life, as humans, as we age. Pura told me, “I wrote it because I saw a specific opportunity or a specific ‘ask' for plays for senior actors, thinking about the fact that there are really not a lot of good roles for older actors. There should be more. We’re all aging. And the population of [aging] actors is growing along with the general population of Baby Boomers. So it makes sense that there are more senior actors now than there ever have been before. They don’t want to play a bit part of a grandmother sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. They want real vibrant roles, and so this play was written with that mandate in mind.”
That vision of inclusivity, rooted in the professional and community theatrical practices Pura encountered when she moved to Santa Fe (she’s originally from Winnipeg), is an essential part of her process, the playwright emphasized: “Inclusion is important; I think it’s really part of my general writing mandate, which is specifically about the inclusion of women in history that should be famous, but aren’t.”
Besides providing a compassionate basis for community inclusion, Pura also noted that gratitude is part of the formula for finding the heart of the matter. Before we parted, she said, “I want to express gratitude. I want to express extreme gratitude to FUSION for putting on this festival and for adding in the NM SEVEN a couple of years ago. They have international outreach, and that is a huge influence on the ideas works like mine speak to”.
What I Meant Was at the Heart of the Matter
Albuquerque playwright Ryan Clarke has been an active participant in the process that yields THE SEVEN for a few years now. In 2024 his play “Writer’s Block” made the cut; in 2025 “War and Cheese” was part of THE 2ND SEVEN; and this year, Clarke’s ten-minute absurdist look at conversation and language, “What I Meant Was,” is part of THE NM SEVEN.
Those experiences with form and process caused Clarke to reflect a bit on his now annual involvement with THE SEVEN as he recalled during our chat that, “I found out that in some ways, it’s difficult to write a short ten-page piece for FUSION and not make it feel like a skit, you know? You want to make it feel like it’s a real living piece.” Further, Clarke says it takes time and patience to craft the sort of intense work that can be considered for inclusion in THE SEVEN, attesting to the substantive nature of the works ultimately considered and produced: “It has an arc, and it has a beginning and an end…all this kind of started from FUSION sparking my creativity and getting me going.”
That burst of creative derring-do brought Clarke’s latest contribution to FUSION’s yearly short play festival to life; for this playwright, the absurdity of language is at the heart of the matter. Ryan discussed the inspiration and process that led him to create a play that is at once as provocatively absurd as it is humorously thought-provoking: “This year, I was inspired by, I was teaching at Albuquerque High School, and one of my students asked me, ‘I want to direct a play next year, but I’m not quite sure what I should do.’”
Ryan’s mentorly interaction allowed him to consider his own upcoming submission to this year’s version of THE SEVEN. He remembered that, “I gave her a stack of plays, but one of them that really resonated with her was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard; it’s a piece of absurd theatre…and right around that time, Stoppard passed away, and so I kind of had all that going in my head; the different ways he uses his dialogue. It’s very odd, absurd, and they talk in circles, and sometimes they’ll sit there, and they’ll debate the semantics of the language that they're using, and it’s fun, and it makes you laugh, so I thought, you know what? I want to write a piece in that style. I want to write a piece of absurdist theatre that might make people laugh. The play itself is about something very minor, but the characters dance around that thing, and they don't really talk about what they want to talk about. They end up talking about the syntax of the language. There’s four characters. I named them A, B, C, and D, just to make it even more strange and absurd.”
And as far as audience reactions might go toward this singular piece of Postmodern theatre where brevity is and isn’t at the heart of the matter, Clarke has this to say: “I thought that [my new play] was pretty funny. So I would say, even if you are not a theater person or, even if you get or don’t get the idea of what theatre of the absurd is, everybody will still understand it, and recognize that we all have conversations like this, where you’re not actually talking about the subject, asking why did you say it like that, why was your tone like that? You know, that kind of thing. I think just about anybody could come and identify with that situation.”
And that situation, folks, is literally the tip of the iceberg. There are four more playwrights in this year’s rendition of THE NM SEVEN; although the playwrights of those auspicious pieces did not speak here, rest assured that their work is as wondrous, as intense, as funny, as absurd, as real, as full of the FUSION of the entire group of dramatic works presented this year—designed especially for you, dear reader, in order to get to the heart of the matter.
FUSION Theatre Company presents THE NM SEVEN
Come experience a staged reading of the plays by New Mexican playwrights selected by the Jury for THE SEVEN
Friday, June 12, 2026
7:00–9:00 PM
FUSION | 708
708 1st Street Northwest Albuquerque, NM, 87102
WINNERS OF THE NM SEVEN
MEMORIES by Peter Schuyler, Albuquerque, NM
TO BE by Scott Harrison, Santa Fe, NM
SATELLITE by William Reynolds, Albuquerque, NM
CORPUS by Owen Conway, Albuquerque, NM
LEGACY by Karin Diann Williams, Albuquerque, NM
WHAT I MEANT WAS by Ryan Clarke, Albuquerque, NM
THE APPOINTMENT by Talia Pura, Santa Fe, NM
THE COMPANY OF THE NM SEVEN
Jeanette Aguilar, Beth Bailey, Nick Barker, Paul Blott, Imani Caldwell, Ryan Jason Cook, Colleen Davidson, David Gibson, Dennis Gromelski, Josh Heard, Juli Hendren, Johnny Hoeft, Lauren Letherer, Leah Livingston, Miguel Martinez, Kathy Millé-Wimmer, Patti Neff-Tiven, Elizabeth Richert, Mónica Sánchez, Wendy Scott, Amy Suman, Allie Sundstrom, Laurie Thomas, Jacqueline Torres, Rachel Wiseman
Thanks to the City of Albuquerque, tickets are Pay What You Wish.