Taps flowed, pizza was passed around and old friends joked together in the basement of JC’s NYPD pizzeria. As the cast and crew of Mother Road Theatre Company’s upcoming production of The Killer Angels gathered for its first rehearsal, the air hummed. I felt that familiar flutter as the first page of the script turned. Here we go! I thought to myself. This is the best part—the part where the magic of making a play all begins.

The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival returns Wednesday, Oct. 16 through Sunday, Oct. 20 at a number of venues around The City Different including Lensic Performing Arts Center, Center for Contemporary Arts, The Screen and more. Night one kicks off with a 60th anniversary screening of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot at 3pm at Jean Cocteau Cinema and caps off with opening night film, Just Mercy at 7pm at Violet Crown. Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Brie Larson star in this dramatic true story of Harvard grad Bryan Stevenson, who heads to Alabama to defend people who were wrongly condemned because they could not afford legal proper representation. Dozens more thought-provoking features, documentaries and shorts from filmmakers around the world follow. Tickets for the opening night film and party are $30. Learn more at santafeindependentfilmfestival.com

Jesus Christ Superstar's four-night run at Popejoy Hall commences on Thursday, Oct 17 at 7:30pm and continues through the weekend with an Oct. 18 performance at 7:30pm. There are two performances of the Grammy Award-winning pop opera on Saturday, Oct. 19 with a matinee at 2pm and an evening show at 8pm as well as two shows on Sunday, Oct. 20 at 2pm and at 6:30pm. Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice wrote this one so, in concert with a national touring company, expect some high class musical hijinks as seen through the eyes of Judas, the most unreliable narrator of all time. Plenty of super-cool songs populate the narrative, including stuff you may vaguely recall from childhood if your folks were also going to guitar mass when the double-album version of this first appeared in American pop culture in the early to mid-1970s. Tickets for this all-ages theatrical experience cost between $58 and $98, so render unto Caesar and all that.