New Mexico Repertory Theatre.

The New Mexico Repertory Theatre was founded in 1983 by Andrew Shea, Clayton Karkosh of the University of New Mexico Department of Theatre Arts, and Steven Schwartz, an actor from Santa Fe. Their intent was to form a permanent, professional, non-profit theatre company serving the people of New Mexico. The New Mexico Repertory Theatre was to be supported by subscription sales and private and corporate donations. In January 1994 the New Mexico Repertory Theatre closed. The reasons given were lack of financial support and declining tickets sales.

The New Mexico Repertory Theatre was founded in 1983 by Andrew Shea, Clayton Karkosh of the University of New Mexico Department of Theatre Arts, and Steven Schwartz, an actor from Santa Fe. Their intent was to form a permanent, professional, non-profit theatre company serving the people of New Mexico. The company had a contract with the Actors' Equity Association.

Andrew Shea was the artistic director of the company. He had degrees from Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachuetts, Northeastern University in Boston, and the California Institute of the Arts, where he earned a graduate degree in directing.

The New Mexico Repertory Theatre was to be supported by subscription sales and private and corporate donations. With Shea as artistic director and John Beauchamp as managing director, the company purchased and remodeled the old Spanish Baptist church in Santa Fe as a theatre, and rented the Kimo Theatre in Albuquerque for two-week runs of each production. The company planned six productions a year. In 1988-89 Andrew Shea successfully negotiated with the State of New Mexico to lease the Armory for the Arts in Santa Fe, and the company was relieved of its mortgage debt on the church.

Prior to the official opening of the first season, the company performed Mark Medoff's "Children Of A Lesser God" to critical and public acclaim. It was the first of several plays by Medoff, a professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, that the company would perform.

In subsequent seasons the company toured one production a year to smaller cities in New Mexico. It also applied for and received grants from the Santa Fe Arts Commission and the New Mexico Arts Division. Companies, such as Mountain Bell, now U.S. West, underwrote the touring productions.

In spite of the grants, the company was never financially secure. In 1991 Andrew Shea resigned as artistic director to pursue other career interests in film directing. He was replaced by Rosario Provenza as acting artistic director. In 1992 Martin Platt was hired as artistic director and Bob MacDonald became the executive director. Donations and attendance declined, however, forcing the cancellation of the sixth production that year. In the spring of 1993 a series of actors appeared in the two-actor play, "Love Letters". In one of the productions Carol Burnett and Charton Heston appeared to full houses. In the summer of 1993 two productions MSS 616 BC N.M. Repertory Theatre page with one or two-member casts were performed, but the board disagreed with Platt's choices for the rest of the season, and he was asked to resign. New plays were announced for the 1993-94 season. Three of them were produced, but in January 1994, a few days after the holiday production closed, the New Mexico Repertory Theatre closed. The reasons given were lack of financial support and declining tickets sales.