Correction:
The current issue of The Taos Times says "90% of UNM-Taos students receive financial aid ..."
According to Anne C. Landgraf, Information Resources Manager at UNM-Taos, "The percentage of UNM-Taos students who receive some form of financial aid (including state and federal grants, scholarships, and students loans) is not ninety percent.
For fall 2009, total census date student headcount was 1523. The number of students who received financial aid was 701, which is 46%. For spring 2010, total census date student headcount was 1500. The number of students who received financial aid was 746, which is 49.73%."
The following is an updated version of a story that ran in the recent edition of The Taos Times:
Heron sets wheels in motion for theater guild
An Interview With Christopher Heron
by Michelle Chandler
Christopher Heron is an actor, world traveler, father and UNM-Taos student. He is an active community member currently drafting a new charter for the UNM-Taos Student Theater Guild.
Taos Times: How did you first get involved in theater?
Christopher Heron: I was dropped from a vintage hot air balloon when I was about two years old and took a role as Tiny Tim as my leg was maimed from the fall. No, actually, I was born into a theater family. My father was a director amd my mother was a set designer. From a very early age I was incorporated into all of the menial tasks of maintaining a theater from set construction to participating in performances.
TT: Where did you graduate from high school?
CH: North MiddleSex Regional High School in Townsend, Massachusetts. In addition to being an avid member of my high school theater productions, I was active in many theaters throughout Central Mass.
TT: College?
CH: UNM-Taos is the first university in which I have been officially enrolled, though I have attended many through the back door and taken up partial residency in many of their libraries.
TT: What are some of the favorite places you’ve traveled to and how do feel that those experiences have enhanced your passion and/or technique as an actor.
CH: No place that I can think of within the five continents I have traveled has not contributed to my passion for theater. From Greece, where theater was once prescribed as a medicine, to Indonesia, where their stories are acted out in the streets and in play houses, to Parisian mime, to Balinese dancers, essential parts of all cultures on earth are the stories they choose to tell and the style they choose to tell them in.
The experience of seeing their performances inspired me to seek the stories of my own culture that I wish to tell and the styles in which I wish to express them. Life is the matter of the medium of theater. In my travels, I found that my foundations in theater were an invaluable boon in the flexibility to be open minded and accept new paradigms, the bravery to participate, and the acuity to manage the unexpected.
TT: What currently gives you inspiration?
CH: You don’t have to travel around the world to find inspiration. Theater is boundless and contains every possibility of experience in life because every moment is just as full, and it is those moments, phenomenal or banal, that are equally priceless on stage.
TT: What else gives you inspiration?
CH: Exhalation, because when you breath out you have to breath in again. Inspiration in the creative sense is the same as inspiration in the physical sense. As I take life in, it fills me and digesting that I have new fruits to offer the world in expression. I believe that the muse of inspiration is perching on our shoulders every day. It is not a lottery ticket, it’s all around us, as ubiquitous as the air, we just have to choose to see it. And it is in choosing to express our art that allows the current of inspiration to pass through us.
TT: Ponder for a moment being a teenager growing up in Taos. How do you think theater could enhance your experience here?
CH: Well I’ll tell you a story. I’ve been working in children’s theatre here in Taos for 15 years. I was walking into Smiths the other day when a bearded man stopped me and asked, “Do you remember me?” I said “I don’t.” He had played Trunculo in “The Tempest.” We were in this play together. He had gone on to finish high school and was studying theater in college and was living and pursuing an acting career in LA.
Another story: There was a young girl whose mother brought her to participate. When she arrived she couldn’t even speak she was so shy. I watched her shyness slowly melt away and she became more and more exhuberent and turned into this completely blossomed flower. Not only was she confident in expressing herself, she was actively and creatively expressing herself through many different forms and mediums.
The term theater has another use. Soldiers use it. It is a term for war. The Iraq theater, the Afghan theater. It is a group outfit. It is not solitary. It is the catharsis that makes soldiers have reunions 30 or 40 years later, the process of theater galvanizes community and brings people together. It can break down barriers between people because it creates a safe environment for every kind of person to come together and be understood. The art of theater is the act of understanding.
TT: What advice would you give someone who maybe interested in checking out theater but who is maybe too shy to feel comfortable putting themselves out there?
CH: I would say that a significant number of most of the actors you could think of are terribly shy. Warren Beatty had a terrible stutter off stage. Theater creates a safe environment to explore self expression, and the structures within theater lend form to that exploration.
TT: How do you feel a student theater guild could enhance the experience of the UNM-Taos student?
CH: (Replying very emphatically) It can allow them to realize all of their dreams, really. We can act them all out on stage. It will be a great opportunity to enhance their lives both socially and introspectively. It will teach them new skills and will allow them forum to hone the ones they have already gathered. And, for those students at large, their experience will be enhanced by going to see great theater produced and performed by their fellow students.
TT: What are your hopes and goals for a theater guild?
CH: I hope to ferret out all of the theatre folk and have them all at my fingertips (laughs). I hope that the guild will bring together an enthusiastic group of students who will come together to manifest theater design and production, that we can provide the greater Taos community with dynamic feats of theatric wonder, that we can create an expansive vision of the potentials of theatre. From summer Shakespeare in the park to cutting edge originals in local studio black boxes to drama therapy, student theater guild could hold a space of creative support, mutual inspiration and dynamic expression.
To get involved contact Christopher Heron at cristobalheron@gmail.com
