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Albuquerque Little Theatre will be hosting a black-tie or costume affair celebrating women’s voices and portrayals on stage. On Jan. 12 ALT’s first WinterFest will be an unveiling of the community theater group’s 2025-2026 season that invites the audience to vote on which musicals they wish to see. The theme — “Let Her Speak” — unites all the potential female-forward plays and musicals for the year. In addition to attending a social mixer with complimentary champagne and appetizers, partygoers will get to see snippets of performances from eight musicals.
“The rationale behind ‘Let Her Speak’ is that so many more women than men audition for our shows, and yet in the history of playwriting and certainly European play tradition, there are way more men in a show than women,” ALT Executive Director Rob Armstrong Martin says. “We always have way too many qualified women to cast in a play or musical and not enough men to cast. We said, ‘Let’s flip that and look for plays that are really meaty roles for women.’”
Each ticket will give attendees five votes via a QR code and additional votes can be purchased. Three to four musicals will ultimately “win” and be performed during the season and winners will be announced Feb. 1. ALT says none of the performances will be repeats of anything it has produced in the past.
Armstrong Martin says part of the purpose of ALT WinterFest is also to announce they are pushing average ticket prices down to where they were pre-pandemic, making more affordable seats available for students.
“So 87% of our ticket prices will go down and we’ll have a sort of ‘airline-style seating’ price for the really coveted aisle and exit row seats,” Armstrong Martin says. “It will put way more tickets in reach for budget theater goers and we’re excited about that.”
Albuquerque Little Theatre
224 San Pasquale Ave SW
Jan. 12, 1 p.m.
Adults $60