JQA at New Mexico Actors Lab

While New Mexico Actors Lab’s previous production looked to the future to examine contemporary problems associated with technology, it’s final production of the 2023 season, JQA, turns to the past to explore current issues about politics, leadership, and the nature of American democracy and American identity through the life and times of our sixth President, John Quincy Adams. In doing so, it challenges the way we think about our country, our government, and ourselves. Robert Benedetti directs and acts in Aaron Posner’s provocative, haunting, and hilarious play, which opens on Wednesday, November 15 and runs through Sunday, December 3.  Evening performances begin at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday performances begin at 2 p.m. A talkback session will be held after the show on Sunday, November 26. There will be no performance on Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 23). 

All performances will be held at NMAL’s permanent home, the Lab Theater, located at 1213 Parkway Drive in Santa Fe – one block from Meow Wolf. Tickets are now on sale at the NMAL website, www.nmactorslab.com or at www.tix.com/ticket-sales/NMActorsLab/6585. Individual tickets are $35, with two limited-seating preview performances (November 15 and 16) costing $15. Students, as well as workers in the food and beverage industry and in theater, receive the $15 discounted rate in the first two weeks of performances only. 

Organized as a series of dialogues between John Quincy Adams and other historical figures, including George Washington, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Fredrick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and his own father, John Adams, over the course of his long and extraordinary life, the unique and highly-theatrical JQA is as much an inquiry as it is a play. Its premiere at Washington’s Arena Stage in 2019 was hailed by audiences and critics, with The Washington Post saying, “Posner distills the essence of a play in ways that intensify its emotional flavor.”

Posner emphasizes that his play is not a historical drama. “While this play is inspired by history and the characters are in keeping with the traits and beliefs of their real-life counterparts, this play is NOT historically accurate,” he says.  “Thus understood,” Tim Treanor of DC Theatre Scene asserts, “JQA is less a story about John Quincy Adams and more a story about the idea of John Quincy Adams, which is, in striking ways, the idea of American political life, even today.” 

Benedetti notes, “We scheduled this show last this year in order to get it as close to the election season as possible. It is tremendously relevant to the issues of our 2024 election; it is uncanny how these same issues were hotly debated by the founding fathers, many of whom crossed paths with John Quincy Adams.”

The production also features Scott Harrison, Kent Kirkpatrick, Alexander Lane, and Danielle Reddick playing various roles.