Theatre Santa Fe Board
These are the professionals who volunteer their time to promote theatre in Santa Fe.
Talia Pura • President
Talia recently moved to Santa Fe after many years of acting, directing, writing, and designing for theatre and film, and teaching theatre at the University of Winnipeg. She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, CAEA, and DGA. Talia also has extensive experience in arts administration.
Jackie Jadrnak • Secretary
Jackie spent 42 years as a newspaper reporter/editor in Huntington, WV; Columbus, OH; and Santa Fe, NM (reporting for the Albuquerque Journal). Most of the time was dedicated to hard news, covering local and state government, then health and medicine, with the final few years in Santa Fe enjoying the opportunity to write about arts and entertainment.
Jim Patterson • Treasurer
Jim retired to Santa Fe in 2000 after nearly four decades in advertising and marketing. In Chicago, he created / published the smARTbook, a guidebook to the arts, and spent five years as President of the Board of City Lit theater company. Jim is currently on the board of Creative Santa Fe and an avid theater goer.
Argos MacCallum
Argos is a poet, actor, director, and all-around stage hand. He has worked with many theatre companies in Santa Fe and is a co-founder of Teatro Paraguas.
Deborah Hayden
Deborah graduated from San Diego State University with a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. She is clinically certified in both the U.S. and Canada, and has served as an adjunct clinical faculty at several universities in the U.S. and Australia. In her spare time, she supports the theatre arts in Santa Fe and is on the Board of the Theatre Lovers Club.
Danielle Reddick
Danielle has been an actor and fitness professional in Santa Fe for more than fifteen years. She is currently a company member of Theater Grottesco.
Emily Rankin
Emily is an actor, director, stage manager, and artist with over twenty years of experience in film and theatre. She regularly works with companies like Meow Wolf, Santa Fe Classic Theater, and the Santa Fe Playhouse. She is currently based in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM.
Katie Olivant
Katie is the Managing Director for New Mexico Actors Lab. Katie moved to Santa Fe in 2020 after a 25-year career as an administrator and faculty member at California State University, Stanislaus. Prior to working in higher education, she held a variety of arts management positions for the Harriman-Jewell Fine Arts Program and Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, the Aspen Music Festival, and the City of Austin, TX Cultural Affairs Division.
Cris W. Barnes
Cris worked as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 40 years, finishing his career doing major strategic planning and project development while living in Santa Fe since 1990. He is now Executive Director of Tri-M Productions.
Kita Mehaffy
Kita Mehaffy, MA, MFA has an eclectic background. Her first career was in health care where she worked as a nurse, nursing teacher and administrator. She went on to produce award winning short films, write a body of plays with both production and competition credits, and volunteer as a drama editor for Clockworks, a national literary journal. She has been published in most genres including dramatic critical analysis, poetry, fiction, flash, and non-fiction. She is past Executive Director of Santa Fe Improv and was instrumental in growing their programming and building their theater here in Santa Fe. When she is not writing, she teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, an important practice for anyone in the arts and, indeed, alive in the today's challenging world. www.TheMindfulnessClasses.com