High Desert Playback and the City of Albuquerque Long Range Planning Team present…
Two North Valleys: A Playback Theatre Gathering for Community Input
The small farms, acequias, and the Bosque are our ancestral heritage.
For over 100 years, 4th Street has represented progress, growth, new development, and change.
Our traditions are vital but change is inevitable. How do we make decisions about the future of the North Valley in a way that reflects our history while making room for meaningful change?
Two North Valleys is a Playback Theatre gathering for Burqueños to come together, enjoy a meal, and share personal stories about living, working, moving through, and imagining the North Valley.
This is not a public meeting.
There are no speeches, no podiums, and no right answers.
Instead, community members will share their stories with High Desert Playback actors who will immediately bring those stories to life onstage, reflecting back what’s said with care, empathy, and joy.
Stories may touch on:
Belonging and displacement
Nature, access, and preservation
Development, housing, and affordability
Safety, traffic, and daily life on 4th Street
What feels worth protecting and what feels ready to change
City of Albuquerque Long Range Planning staff will be present to listen, not lead. Their goal is to gather insight that can’t be captured in surveys or comment cards, to honor lived experience as true expertise, and to use what they have heard to guide decisions that will make the North Valley more accessible to all of us.
Two North Valleys is a free, all ages gathering open to everyone in our community. However, we will center the voices of those who are usually left out of typical planning conversations—queer and trans folks, Black and Indigenous folks, young people, poor people, renters.
Join us. Meet your neighbors. Tell your story. Show up and be heard.
DETAILS:
🗓️Thursday, February 26, 2026
⏱️5:00-8:00PM
📍Nahalat Shalom, 3606 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107
🌮Dinner provided by Three Sisters Kitchen
ℹ️FREE for All Ages. Dinner is served at 5PM. Playback Theatre starts at 6PM.
Registration is required.
REGISTER BELOW 👇🏾
About High Desert Playback:
High Desert Playback makes theater for social change in New Mexico and beyond. We use the art of Playback Theatre to mobilize and amplify social issues through community engagement, outreach, facilitated dialogue, and celebration.
Playback theatre is an interactive form of improvisational theater in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Created in 1975, playback theatre is now used in over 70 countries around the world to help build bridges across differences and to honor the human condition.
Founded in Albuquerque by Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny in 2023, High Desert Playback—a Black/queer/women-led social enterprise—is the first professional Playback Theatre company in New Mexico. The HDP Performance Company includes: Dalilah Naranjo, Danielle Simone, Lasha Kirker, Jessie Lane, Johnny Olesen, Noe Field-Perkins, and Tatiana Gil.
About CABQ Long Range Planning:
The Long Range Planning team is responsible for working with stakeholders in the community to assess how well existing policies, regulations, and City programs are working to meet their goals, maximize opportunities, and address concerns. Specifically, Long Range Planning develops assessments, policies, and program recommendations to guide the physical design and development of Albuquerque.
In general, Long Range planners develop and implement coordinated planning for quality growth and development of the City. Doing so balances social, economic, and environmental goals. Long Range planning helps understand how the future will be shaped by the historic past and the dynamic present.
Learn more about their work in the North Valley here.