La Posada-The Stage Play

05/01/2026

Directed by J.P. Perpich, rehearsals continued this week for the May 8th and 9th "trailers" for five new plays by Prescott playwrights. (10 minutes each) Buy your tickets today so you can vote on which playwright gets a full production at the Elks Historic Theatre this coming September. Here are some photos from this week's rehearsal for one of the five plays: "Discovery" by Micki Shelton. If you are driving from outside Yavapai county, email Micki for free tickets. First four get them.

04/27/2026

If you liked "La Posada," come see "trailers" from Micki's newest play along with excerpts for plays by five other playwrights.The winner's play will be produced at Prescott's Elks Theatre in September. (P.S. Micki has four free tickets or anyone driving from out of Yavapai County. Just ask.) Directed by J.P. Perpich, the cast includes Delia Whitehead (as the restorer of an ancient codex) and Matt Conde (as her intern). Filling out the cast are Prescott's Liberty Lockwood and Red Earth Theatre veteran actors Jeff Masters and Ashlee Thelkeld. Tickets only $13. https://ci.ovationtix.com/36295/production/1268722

04/25/2026

Reposting this from three years ago. Watch for publication of the film we made of our live stage production. Couldn't make it to the live production? The film will be available soon on Vimeo for a small donation.

04/10/2026

Good news! Playwright Micki Shelton, whose play "La Posada" was produced in Prescott in 2023, has been chosen as a finalist in Prescott’s Elk Theatre’s 2026 Playwriting Competition. On May 8th and 9th, 2026, five finalists will present excerpts from their plays in the Elks’ Crystal Ballroom. J.P. Perpich directs. Only those with tickets get to vote on their favorite play. The winner receives a production in the Elks main stage this September. Tickets here: https://ci.ovationtix.com/36295/production/1268722

Micki’s play is called "Discovery." The year is 1978. A priceless, papyrus codex is uncovered in an Egyptian tomb. Over 1600 years old, the manuscript is in good condition until it spends 17 years on the black market. Infinitely fragile, fragments are finally pieced together in a Swiss lab. Yet its journey is less shocking than its content, for this is the Gospel of Judas! At its core, the play asks “in a world where facts keep changing, how do we discover truth and how does our search for it affect us?”

02/17/2026

Sharing this from Allan Affeldt this morning. (Allan, his wife Tina Mion, and artist Dan Lutzick are the three subjects in the play "La Posada." Although the play is based on actual events, the way the playwright has drawn the characters and events comes solely from her own imagination. The photos are from the play's premiere in October of 2023.)

Integral to the play is the story Allan tells here:

"I just finished reading David Remnick's remarkable Lenin's Tomb. This is by far the best book on the heady days of Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985, the era of perestroika, and the stunningly fast collapse of the mighty Soviet Union in 1991. It also provides deep insight into the mentality and behaviors of people living under despotism and oligarchy - an important and perhaps prescient lesson for our times.

"In 1987 I organized, with many friends, the first International Peace Walk. A core of 500 American and Soviet citizens walked from Leningrad to Moscow, setting scores of precedents. From small beginnings, the walk grew to more than 50,000 people in Novgorod - perhaps the largest citizen diplomacy event in history. We ended in Moscow on the 4th of July 1987 with the first stadium concert in Soviet History, which I co-produced with Bill Graham - who said it was the most politically important concert in history.

"The era of Putin's European aggression, and of Trump's fawning appeasement, has - for now - wiped away the courage and hope and opportunity brought by the end of the Cold War. We can do better. We must do better!"

01/25/2026

Once in a while, on this page, we speak with Micki Shelton, who wrote La Posada about her writing process and what she's working on now. Here's what she said in our conversation yesterday. "People often ask me how I do research and use it in writing a play based on history, as in my plays La Posada, Fred and Mary: An Unconventional Romance, and my newest play Discovery. This weekend I saw the wonderful film The Testament of Ann Lee and later found this article. How Mona Fastvold works is very much the way I do. It's a good read."

Writer-director-producer Mona Fastvold breaks down the true story behind 'The Testament of Ann Lee,' starring Amanda Seyfried as the 18th-century religious leader.

01/11/2026

In 1985, playwright Micki Shelton was part of a team that launched the 3,000-mile Great Peace March from L.A. to Washington D.C. So was Allan Affeldt. Shelton’s and Affeldt’s connection at ProPeace, the group that launched the march, was one of Shelton’s primary influences in writing La Posada. As is true of the monk’s march, the walk across country met many obstacles, but its influence kept growing. When it reached D.C. thousands joined the march. This film tells the GPM’s story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGwCvAO9CzY

The GPM inspired Affeldt to organize three marches in the Soviet Union where U.S. citizens and Soviet citizens walked together for peace. A year after the first march in 1987, referring to the Berlin Wall, President Ronald Reagan told Mikhael Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and the two leaders signed the INF treaty--the goal of which was to eliminate all intermediate and short-range ground-based missiles and launchers from Europe.

As Shelton’s fictionalized Affeldt says in her play, ““You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.” May we walk together in our hearts as the monks walk across the country. One cannot know what the results of their actions may be.

11/25/2025

Eleven years before our production of La Posada, many of us were rehearsing for Micki Shelton's earlier play "Fred and Mary," also about Mary Jane Colter's work for the Fred Harvey company. Here are some photos of the cast, directors, and funders, including several pics from early rehearsals in 2012.

11/16/2025

I just got back from Cosmos Theatre Arts' production of Eurydice, directed by Michaela Carter. Fabulous! I've seen a lot of good theatre this year, but this is the best production (and script) I've seen in a very, very long time. Come up from Phoenix or down from Flagstaff to see it. And if you are in Prescott, you definitely don't want to miss this touching, funny play. Innovative and delightful staging by Logan Wolfe, wonderful acting, and of course Sarah Ruhl's delightful script. (The entire cast was excellent, and I want to give out special shoutout from me to Frank Malle and Nathaniel Montgomery.) Congratulations Michaela on your first official Cosmos production!

08/17/2025

Before Micki Shelton wrote La Posada, she wrote Fred and Mary, an imagined romance between Fred Harvey and Mary Jane Colter--who, in reality would never have met. Full of actual history, the play was produced in 2012 as part of Yavapai County's Arizona Centennial Celebration. Colter's last design was her renovation of the Painted Desert Inn, a "little building" she absolutely loved. Gracing the beautifully contoured walls are paintings by her friend and co-worker Fred Kabotie, the famous Hopi painter. Fred's son Michael Kabotie attended the inaugural stage reading of the play in Winslow, AZ in 2010.
The Painted Desert Inn is now a museum and gift shop, and you can visit it just off the I-40 in Arizona as part of your Petrified Forest National Park tour.