{"id":24918,"date":"2024-11-09T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T03:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-senior-showcases-set-design-skills-in-and-out-of-high-school-drama-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:04:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:04:55","slug":"montezuma-cortez-senior-showcases-set-design-skills-in-and-out-of-high-school-drama-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-senior-showcases-set-design-skills-in-and-out-of-high-school-drama-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez senior showcases set design skills in and out of high school drama program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cruz
Cruz Hernandez designed the set for Montezuma-Cortez High School\u2019s fall musical \u201cBeauty and the Beast.\u201d (Cruz Hernandez\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A Montezuma-Cortez High School senior is showing his talent for set design, not only for the high school\u2019s drama department, but for other theater entities outside of school.<\/p>\n

Cruz Hernandez has been involved in designing sets for the middle school and high school since he was in sixth grade. However, last year\u2019s set design for \u201cHello, Dolly\u201d allowed him to design the dynamic set featured in the high school\u2019s fall musical, which opened on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first position in theater was in sixth grade as the set designer,\u201d Hernandez told The<\/em> Journal<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I\u2019ve been passionate about for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fall\u2019s musical of \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d features a stunning, large-scale set, one that is larger than most past sets, according to drama director Nicholaus Sandner.<\/p>\n

\"Cruz
Cruz Hernandez hopes to pursue a career like high school drama director Nicholaus Sandner. (Cruz Hernandez\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Hernandez will compete with his \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d set model for the program\u2019s trip to ThesCon in December. He is also the actor playing Gaston\u2019s yes-man, Lefou, in addition to designing the set.<\/p>\n

Not only is Hernandez active in the high school\u2019s drama program, he\u2019s the president of the theater troupe and a member of the high school\u2019s improv troupe, \u201cImpulsive Improvisers.\u201d He also recently started designing sets for a professional theater company in Farmington.<\/p>\n

The MCHS theater troop visits the Four Corners Musical Theatre Company at the Farmington Civic Center to watch shows from time to time, as the company offers the drama program free tickets. Hernandez said he inquired if the company needed a set designer on one particular trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reached out and was like, \u2018Can I be your set designer?\u2019 My first show to design with them was the professional one, \u2018Young Frankenstein,\u2019\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n

Designing for \u201cYoung Frankenstein\u201d went so well that Hernandez will also design the \u201cCharlie Brown Christmas\u201d set, as well as the sets for all other shows in 2025. He will still design the sets while in college.<\/p>\n

To design a set, Hernandez said he first goes through the entire script, highlighting specific locations and brainstorming how he can fit various locations into the design.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn \u2018Hello, Dolly,\u2019 a train station, a feed store, New York City, downtown, all these things had to fit into one set that fits backstage too,\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n

Once he establishes how he\u2019s going to design the set, he does drawings to scale. The entire process takes about a month to complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do a half-inch scale, and then I start making the models out of foam core,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cI make physical, little models and then we can have something tangible to use when making the sets.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was also recently hired as the Sunflower Theatre\u2019s assistant manager.<\/p>\n

Hernandez, who will graduate from MCHS in the spring, said that he\u2019s applied to University of Colorado Boulder. He hopes to double major in technical theater and education.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially what Mr. Sandner does,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the cool thing about our high school theater department is that we\u2019re a family. We all know that we have each other\u2019s backs, and we all know we can bring a diverse community together to see something that we created. I think that was the inspiration to keep doing it \u2026 I think it\u2019s a great way for people to unite.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hernandez is involved with MCHS\u2019s drama program, the Four Corners Musical Theatre Company and the Sunflower Theatre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,36,216,29,910],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter","tag-theatre"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78726,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24918\/revisions\/78726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24918"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}