In Albuquerque, if you dress up for Halloween, there are a million ways to pretend you’re someone else for a night, scare the hell out of someone or, even better, get scared yourself. If you do happen to hit the town in costume, you’re encouraged to head straight to the UNM Theatre Department’s presentation of Little Shop of Horrors. While it’s not exactly a gory horrorshow, it is an opportunity to catch a campy musical classic that’s become a permanent part of American pop culture. This version of the story about a dorky flower shop assistant and his man-eating pet plant features impressive, semi-collaborative performances by UNM students. But the Halloween show is just one example of the things UNM is doing to launch the careers of young people who want to work in the art scene for a living someday.
“We’re starting a musical theater concentration that’s going to be rolling out in 2026. It’ll be a theater BA, but you can get a concentration in musical theater, acting or theatermaking. So you can sort of choose a track. We’re going to do musicals every year,” Director Kate Clarke says. “It’s been a collaboration with all my colleagues. The concentration will be between us and the music and dance areas. Students will take a lot of classes in the music side for their concentration and then, obviously, acting classes if they’re getting a theater degree, and then a lot more requirements over in music and a lot more requirements over in dance.”
Clarke, who smiles proudly as she watches her students make magic during rehearsals at UNM’s Rodey Theatre, is an associate professor of theatre specializing in acting, voice, movement techniques, speech and dialects. She was the program director of theatre at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Penn. and the mastermind and creator of Vibrant Channel Breathwork – a somatic/creative acting practice for embodied performance. In addition to teaching Shakespeare, musical theater, singing and low-flying trapeze, she’s a professional singer, actress, director, movement theatre artist and voice talent. She is also a member of VASTA, Screen Actors Guild and Actors Equity. Between her active teaching and directing schedule, she squeezes in theater, television and film work in New Mexico. While her experience and credentials are anything but frightening, she does enjoy a bit of macabre classic American television during the creepiest month of the year. Every October she watches Seasons 1-3 of the bizarre and beautiful David Lynch series Twin Peaks.
For her newest stage show, Clarke admits, “I’m basically telling the story as it is crafted by the writers. This isn’t the kind of show where you’re going to do a huge concept, because it already is kind of the perfect show. Plus, there’s a lot of technical stuff with these puppets, so you need to do the classic, iconic show. So I’m leaning into that.”
Clarke says we can spread the word that the UNM Theatre Department is now the proud owner of three impressive monster plant puppets that they bought from another university – in case anyone wants to rent them – and they’re operated by some amazing student puppeteers (M. Harris, Arrow Robertson, Milo Shimanek, Rebecca Blas, Xavier Olivo, Madison Charleston). Olivo is about as excited as a person can be while showing off the human-sized Audrey II puppet he will be operating live this Halloween, an opportunity outside of acting that UNM’s new theater arts concentration provides to students. Clarke has also added her own spin to the production — small changes that make big differences, especially for students who want to sharpen their theater skills — such as changing the number of singing narrators from three to six. Clark says, first of all, she added parts because she had so many fantastic people come out to audition resulting in an incredible amount of talent this year. And secondly, she thought it would be kind of fun to have some more voices on stage.
“We’re calling them the three muses, and then their three “little sisters” – they’re the little apprentices to the main three.” Clarke says. “They bring a lot to the table because they’re obviously animating these characters themselves. They’re stepping into them. Jonathan [Rowe] right there [onstage] is doing the voice of the plant, but he’s gonna be off stage the whole time. I think a lot of being a good director is casting really talented performers, which I think I’ve been lucky enough to do with this. They’re already coming in with their artistry and their choices – even though they’re young – and their instincts are fantastic. So what I’m mostly doing is giving them a lot of physical shape stuff, and they have impulses that they can make more specific. And then, of course, I staged it and I did the blocking.”
Freshman Jonathan Rowe who plays Audrey II (our man-eating plant), Wino 2 and Skid Row Denizen, sounds much older and more experienced than his age suggests. He pushes out a deceivingly powerful voice that requires no amplification during rehearsal. He’s joined by student performers Leo Castillo (Seymour), Alex Kiefert (Mr. Mushnick) and Mack Burnett (Orin, Wino 3) who plays the villainous dentist who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on his patients. Clarke says many of the performers – including Kara Hall, who plays Audrey (the love interest, not the plant) – have been involved in theater programs around Albuquerque for a while. And others, such as choreographer Kelsi Beer, have even been in previous productions at UNM.
“She was my student for the last three years or so, and she’s a phenomenal performer herself. So she was the lead in some other musicals that we’ve done. She was the leading player in Pippin and she was in Next to Normal last year. So she’s fabulous.”
This is a Halloween story, after all. And although a musical about a talking plant with a hunger for human flesh is kinda scary, the morbid subject matter is performed in a playful, lighthearted way. One of the young people involved in UNM’s Little Shop of Horrors Halloween show tells a tale that might get your blood pumping for real, but don’t worry, it’s only a movie. Choreographer Kelsi Beer acted in a 2023 student horror flick called McCormick. She says it was one of the first UNM student films featured in AFMX (The Albuquerque Film and Music Experience), one of the biggest film festivals in Albuquerque. It was also selected to screen in the Santa Fe Film Festival, Chicago Horror Fest and beyond – in case you’re looking for a scary independent movie to watch in the dark.
“I still have so much love for the film director that I got to work with and all of the crew,” Beer says. “It was kind of a psychological horror film about an elderly woman that hired a caretaker, who I played. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Ed Gein story, but it was somewhat similar to that, except it was an older woman, and she had an obsession with being young. She was a complex character – a bit of a serial killer who would collect the hair of her past caretaker. I just happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and there was a pretty intense scene where I was basically being scalped. It was just a very emotional, taxing scene where I had to scream for my life, and I was weeping like I was gonna die.”
Beer says as a sophomore in college, she’d never had a more challenging role than that. It was also the role in which she decided to pursue a film acting career. She recently completed an interdisciplinary arts program at UNM similar to this year’s program in which students “kind of got to build their own curriculum.”
“I’m a musical theater and film actor performer, and then I also do dance. So I kind of built my own musical theater – and a bit of film – degree where I studied a lot of dance. There were some tap classes that are newer that I got to take,” Beer says. “I’m a singer as well, so I got to do some lessons, and same with the theater department. I just kind of got through a bit of everything, which was really fun. I was also the outstanding senior in that department for graduation. Every year there’s a senior that gets awarded that in the different departments. So, yeah, it was a very fun four years for me, for sure.”
Beer choreographed 10 musical numbers for Little Shop of Horrors, and says it was “insane” to do all of that in a month, but she pulled it off, in part, because of the inspiring atmosphere this new program creates. Like Clarke, Beer says she creates a vision of what she wants the choreography to look like, and throughout the duration of the rehearsal process, she checks in with the actors to see how comfortable they are with the number.
“The cast is the most talented group of students I’ve ever got to work with, especially in a leadership role,” Beer says. “I would introduce some movement, and they may want me to modify something. I was very open to things like that, because I know it can be difficult to dance and sing at the same time. It’s like you’re running while trying to hold a note. So there were times for sure where I would check in with everybody, and they would even give me new ideas that I didn’t even think of. And so there was definitely a lot of collaboration with the other cast members.”
Beer says she was once the mentee collaborating with the director in a similar way during Pippin, directed by Clarke in 2023. Like many newcomers to this year’s program, it was Beer’s first UNM Theatre production, and she got the lead. She says it kickstarted the creative relationship she has with Clarke today.
“And so there were times when Kate needed some movement, and I would kind of help step in and create some for her. And so I was the dance captain on that production. I got that title as well as assistant choreographer, now that I think about it. So there were times where I would improvise during a solo or whatever it was, and it was to her liking. So that was a really special relationship.” Beer says.
Beer has her share of experience as well. She’s been dancing since age 5. In 2019 Beer was awarded All American, which is a pretty prolific award, and it opened the doors for her to sing everywhere from Farmington, NM to New York and Rome. At age 18 she became the youngest principal character as Allie in Mamma Mia. Still, Beer says when Kate first offered her the position to choreograph Little Shop of Horrors, she was skeptical, being a fresh graduate from UNM with a bachelor’s degree. She grappled with separating her new position in a leadership role from the close friendships she had made with the performers until Clarke pulled her aside during rehearsal and said she actually loved the idea of having someone close to the student’s age as choreographer because it might be inspiring for them.
“I would, for sure, say that I am developing [into] being a mentor to these students. It’s hard being in charge of your peers, because you also want to fit in with everybody. You want to get along with everyone,” Beer says. “I feel very happy where I’m at, because post-graduation is pretty difficult for artists. You’re just constantly hustling. And I keep saying this, I was just very privileged to have made the relationships I have made in college. If I didn’t go to UNM, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
Aside from stage acting, Beer was also heavily involved in the film department at UNM, acting in student films, many of which screened during acclaimed film festivals in Santa Fe and outside of New Mexico. Today she’s represented by the top agency in New Mexico for talent, scoring auditions for future films, commercials and television series. She recently wrapped a gig as the lead in A Family Matter, which was a union film. That credit made her eligible to join SAG AFTRA (the Screen Actor’s Guild union). The film drops early next year.
“I definitely am always a performer,” Beer says. “I think in a different way, not performing in [Little Shop of Horrors] is just as important, you know? I’m also learning the directing standpoint. It’s like the choreographer and director are partners. They work so closely together to match each other’s vision, and I choreographed 10 numbers. That’s, like, the majority of the show. Kate was very open to welcoming my ideas and vice versa. And again, Kate is a brilliant director,” Beer says. “If at a very young age, you feel a fire, a spark for anything – it could be the arts, whatever it is – you’ve got to follow it, because it can’t go ignored. I would be nothing if I didn’t immerse myself in these art forms that I evolved in. I would have no meaning in my life. It’s that deep, and I can’t see myself doing anything else. This industry – the performing arts – is bizarre, it’s awful, it will make you want to rip your hair out, but it’s so rewarding at the same time, when you know good things do come your way.”
Little Shop of Horrors
Rodey Theatre
UNM Center for the Arts
Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m.
Nov. 2, 2 p.m.
Nov. 6 and 7, 7:30 p.m.
Nov. 8, 2 and 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $13.50 to $16.50
unmtickets.com/events