A Spiritual Art Quest in New Mexico : Theater: Santa Fe Stages’ director turns vision of ‘passion and fire’ into an international festival that kicks off its inaugural season this summer.

The original slogan for the Santa Fe Stages, the new international theater festival that kicks off its inaugural season this summer, was “Love it, hate it, don’t miss it.” It wasn’t long before someone took Martin L. Platt, the artistic director, at his word.

Asked to give his impressions of Matthew Witten’s “Sacred Journey,” one of the festival’s 10 productions, playwright William S. Yellow Robe responded with a highly critical essay. The one-person show, written by Witten and performed by Adan Sanchez, is based on the experiences of a real person, a homeless Iroquois who shared his experiences with Witten but wishes to remain anonymous. Yellow Robe strongly objected to a non-Native American interpreting a Native American tale. “For me to watch the performance . . . will be a tremendous strain,” wrote Yellow Robe.

Not only did Platt reprint Yellow Robe’s indictment in the program notes, he also invited him to a panel discussion following one of the performances. Things reportedly got so heated, the participants almost came to blows.

“Love it, hate it, duck!” might well be the revised motto for the festival, which continues through July 30 with “Journey” playing in repertory with Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Corneille’s “The Illusion,” Platt’s re-interpretation of Peter Brook’s “Tragedie de Carmen” (starring Los Angeleno Suzanna Guzman) and perhaps the festival’s most stunning production, “eine kleine Hamlet” (“a little Hamlet”).

It’s likely that never before has Shakespeare’s tragedy been so intimately rendered as in Platt’s bare-bones production, at the 100-seat Weckesser Studio Theatre, one of the festival’s two stages (the other is the 550-seat Greer Garson Theatre) at the College of Santa Fe. “I’m not especially interested in being ‘commercial’ or ‘politically correct,’ whatever that means,” said Platt recently, sitting in his office near the plaza of this historic American capital. “If you’re not willing to provoke, engage or stimulate a theater audience, then you might as well leave.”

Indeed, Platt almost left Santa Fe 18 months ago, after the demise of the New Mexico Repertory Theatre, at whose helm he’d been for 12 rocky months following 18 years at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. However, Santa Fe playwright and philanthropist Sallie Bingham corralled him into staying with a $3.5-million grant (and a promise of more to come), if he could come up with a concept and vision for a new theater.

“Martin’s an iconoclast,” says Bingham, who was a founder of the Horse Cave Theater in her native Kentucky and the Women’s Project in New York. “I have great respect for artistic directors who follow their own vision. I fully expect Martin will do things I will not particularly like, but then, theater must be subversive.”

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What Platt came up with 15 months ago was an international theater festival that would import works such as “Promised Land”--an experimental Canadian-Italian production that opened the festival on June 2--and cross-fertilize them with home-grown products such as Leslie Harrell Dillen’s “Mabel,” a monodrama about Eastern socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan, who became a local legend. The fare reflects the area’s polyglot of Native American, European, Latino and Anglo traditions. But the canvas is stretched wider than simple multiculturalism.

“I’m trying to develop a network of international and national companies with whom we can do projects,” Platt said. Consequently, more than half of the productions were first developed and presented in other venues. British-based duo Snarling Beasties (Debbie Isitt and Mark Kilmurry) presented their political dramas “Punch and Judy” and “Femme Fatale,” which originated at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Their success here was bettered by the appearance of the RJC Dance Theatre from Birmingham, England. By all accounts, the six-member black dance troupe--reggae, jazz, contemporary--dazzled Santa Fe.

“It re-invigorated this town to have them here,” said Bingham of RJC. “I don’t think Santa Fe had ever seen a troupe like the Snarling Beasties, either. We’re a small town and to have artists of this scale, mixing with the community, really takes theater here to another plateau.”

Not that the community has embraced the new festival with open arms. Ticket sales are adequate but not at the sell-out level. Santa Fe audiences are notoriously skeptical and the festival must compete with such institutions as the Santa Fe Opera and the chamber music festival. The fact that both the Santa Fe Theatre and the New Mexico Rep had closed “ugly,” as Platt put it, leaving behind debts and ill will, has clearly not helped matters.

“There’s definitely a wait-and-see attitude,” said the artistic director. “I think some people were surprised that we managed to get up on our feet this fast.”

It’s not surprising, then, that the theme that seems to unite Santa Fe Stages’ offerings this year is the notion of spiritual quest, often in the face of daunting obstacles. It’s particularly apt for a Santa Fe festival. There is something fitting about watching the travails of Hamlet or of John the homeless Iroquois, and then emerging into the bright sunlight and azure skies of a city named Holy Faith.

“It’s a place that makes you clearheaded,” Platt said, “but there are also elements of dream and magic and fantasy that are a part of the landscape.

“And folly too,” he adds. “You have to be a little nuts to start up a theater in this political climate. But I think the only criteria you can apply is one of passion and fire. Every production has to say, ‘This group of people had to do this!’ ”