Monsters coming out at NM Tech for Halloween

Who doesn’t like Halloween? And this year the holiday brings a special treat when the Performing Arts Series presents the original Rock Opera Horror Channel on Friday, Oct. 31 and Saturday, Nov. 1 at New Mexico Tech’s Macey Center.

Accompanying the performances on Halloween, Friday, Oct. 31, will be a costume contest, with prizes given for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Participants should sign up in the upper Macey Lobby at 6:30pm, mingle with the audience before the show, and parade on stage during intermission. Winners will be selected by audience vote and a small group of judges, combined, announced at the end of the show.

The sung thru Rock Opera comedy, written by Socorroan Colleen Gino, features an array of creatures of the Netherlands, from vampires and ghosts to psycho killers and everything in between performed by local singers and actors. Each song portrays the trials and tribulations that you may not have known these creatures could have. “The creatures are humorous, silly, creepy and often irreverent,” said Gino, “but always genuine and relatable.”

Horror Channel is a story about an overworked woman who is ready to shrug off the exhausting cloak of corporate bull#%&* and just relax with some wine and watch her favorite horror movies. She falls asleep to the dulcet tones of the Wilhelm Scream and her dreams become your entertainment reality! The songs feature well known horror tropes along with some deliciously dark humor and commercials.

As a songwriter, Gino prefers humorous songs. “There’s enough seriousness in the world already. But I also like monsters,” she said. During the Covid-19 shutdown, she wrote several monster-themed songs. “After I had written four or five, my friends suggested I make an album of them,” she added. It was a short step from there to the idea of a musical opera. “It’s not exactlly an Opera,” Gino said, “because there isn’t any dialogue, just singing.”

PAS first featured the musical in 2022. This time around, some of the cast has changed and some of the singers will portray different characters. The 15 songs each are sung by a different member of the cast with some of those also in the band. A couple of special instruments also will be featured. Dylan Etscorn made his bass guitar with a Frankenstein theme and Colleen Gino’s ukelele is Frankenstein’s bride.

Gino will portray the part of a psycho child as an old woman, rather like the one in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

A family of actors joins the cast this year. Ben Thomas is a vampire singing a forlorn love ballad to his familiar, portrayed by his daughter Maddy Thomas. Val Thomas and Dave Thomas also will sing.

Gino moved to Socorro in 2000 to work as an NRAO operator and later at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory. But she was well versed in the music scene. She and two older sisters sang on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand when she was a toddler, and they performed on other variety TV shows. During her school years, she played flute and sang and later she traveled abroad as a vocalist and playing flute.

Now that she has retired, Gino has more time to write and sing but she hasn’t slowed down much. She plays in three local bands: Flat Note Society, Fuzzy Logic and Cattitude. She creates one-of-a-kind jewelry and photography.

The singers/actors and their song are:

● Katie Teems Norris – Horror Channel (Katie’s husband Ryan Norris is a professor in NMT’s Physics Department)

● Bjorn Burnfield – THE BOSS in Horror Channel (A recent Socorro community addition)

● Jal Pena – Working Dead (NMT Senior and familiar theatre face at NMT and in Socorro Community Theater)

● Aga Gabor da Silva – I Was in the Kitchen (NMT staff in Library/OSL)

● Rory Thomas – Alien Skies (Socorro Community member)

● Enrique Rodriguez – Live Again (NMT Alumni, Socorro Native and in the duo Shelbi & Enrique, aka Balance Your Chemicals)

● Minnie Mao – Victor’s Victim (NMT faculty in Physics)

● Maddy Thomas – Eternally (Socorro Community member)

● Val Thomas – I Bite Back (NMT Staff in Research, Compliance & Safety and well-known band member in Ben & Val, Fuzzy Logic and Fretwork Fables)

The Horror Channel Band, also performing a Sneak Peak at October 26 Sunday Sessions at the Capitol Bar at 6pm is made up of:

● Colleen Gino – Drums/Performer (Wrote all of the songs and most of the music for this show and retired from MRO at NMT in 2023)

● Dylan Etscorn – Bass (NMT Staff at ICASA also helped write the music for the show)

● Ben Thomas – Guitar/Performer (NMT Staff in Research Compliance & Safety)

Horror Channel is sponsored by the Anne Sullivan Copper Memorial, National Endowment for the Arts, New Mexico Arts, the New Mexico Tech Graduate and Undergraduate Student Associations, and the El Defensor Chieftain.

Performances are at 7:30 pm on Friday, Oct. 31 and Saturday, Nov. 1. Tickets range from $22 to $8. For tickets and more information visit nmt.edu/pas or call 575-835-5688 or email pas@nmt.edu. Find them on Facebook. And that’s no trick.