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Driving through the fertile farmlands of Alberta, Canada, on the way to Edmonton might not seem the most likely way to get inspired to write a story about zombies.

But that's the way it worked for Chad Brummett.

Brummett, a member of Albuquerque's Tricklock Theater Company, was traveling to Edmonton with his friend Courtney Cunningham to help Cunningham with her solo-clown show, "Burden of Proof," when he started to flesh out an idea for his own one-person show about the living dead.

"It's really weird how this came about," Brummett said during a phone interview this week. "It just sort of popped into my head. For some reason, the Canadian landscape influenced me to think about zombies."

The result is Brummett's work in progress, "The Night the Living Dead Returned to Roswell," which will be presented at 6 p.m. Jan. 27 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center as part of the Tricklock Company's eighth annual Revolutions International Theater Festival.

"Living Dead" is one of three entries in the festival's Excavation Series, which was created in 2004 to help Tricklock Company members develop ideas and complete projects.

Feedback sessions with the audience after Excavation presentations provide playwrights, directors and performers with immediate criticism and thus suggest paths to follow or avoid as the work evolves into a finished product.

"I'm playing all these characters from Roswell that are involved in this zombie invasion," Brummett said. "Among the characters is an investigative reporter who has stumbled on this story the government has kept secret.

"Right now, the structure is that of a mockumentary, sort of a '48 Hours' approach to reporting the story."

The fact this idea started to take root in Brummett's brain while he was driving in Canada sounds less odd when you consider he's always been interested in zombie movies.

"They work on a very fun level, but smart filmmakers (think Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur, George Romero) also work these movies on a metaphoric level," Brummett said."

He set his story in Roswell because he likes writing about New Mexico.

"I love the Native American folklore here, like the skinwalkers," he said. "And there's lots of theories about government cover-ups floating around here, and Roswell is all so saturated with superstition."

Brummett is eager to get the audience response to "Living Dead."

"I still have a ton of work ahead of me," he said. "This will be introducing the characters to the audience and getting their reaction to the '48 Hour' reporting style, which is a fairly recent development."

In past years, the Excavation Series has led to polished Tricklock productions such as "Black River Falling" and "Belladonna."

"Black River Falling," which toured in Germany and Poland after its Albuquerque premiere, is Tricklock's own entry in this year's festival.

Using music, puppetry, minimal text and very stylized theatrical movement, the show tells the story of four sisters who are the only survivors of a natural disaster in 19th-century Wisconsin.

It's a good example of how links in the international theater community make ambitious festivals such as Revolutions a reality.

Teatr Figur, a theater company in Krakow, Poland, secured venues for and produced "Black River Falling's" Polish tour. That, in turn, led Tricklock to invite Teatr Figur to take part in this year's Revolutions Festival.

Teatr Figur will perform "Crime and Punishment," a puppet theater piece about punishment for naughty children, and also "The Smell of Elephants After Rain," which employs puppetry, shadow theater, juggling and more to tell the story of young Marco Polo and venerable Kublai Khan, their differences and their similarities.

The links in the festival chain don't stop there.

Cunningham, the performer Brummett was traveling with when he conceived "Living Dead," is directing him in that evolving show.

And "Burden of Proof," the Cunningham show Brummett traveled to Canada to work on, is part of this year's festival.

"I'm a big fan of 'Burden,' " Brummett said. "It's a really intelligent clown show, a touching, funny, vulnerable piece."

And while Brummett was in Canada working with Cunningham on "Burden," he found Niles Seguin, one of the comics taking part in Revolutions' "Free Speech Comedy Art Series," a platform for comedians who use stand-up to make change in the world.

Seguin will do his one-man show "Fear of a Brown Planet," a response to the entertainment industry's penchant for racial categorizing.

Also on this year's festival schedule are:

* The Do-Theater company from Russia.

* Kitka, a women's vocal group from Bulgaria and Ukraine.

* Kumail Nanjiani, a Chicago comic originally from Pakistan.

* Laren Weedman, a comic from Los Angeles.

* Comedian Taylor Negron from Los Angeles.

But Tricklock found one of its festival acts right in its own backyard.

Teatro Nuevo M‚xico, Albuquerque's Hispanic theater company, is performing "Electricidad: A Chicano Take on the Tragedy of Electra." It is playwright Luis Alfaro's resetting of Sophocles' Greek tragedy in an East Los Angeles barrio.

"The play is brand new for our company and for Albuquerque," said Michael Blum, co-artistic director of Teatro. "I think it's wonderful we get to participate in this terrific festival."

Blum said the National Hispanic Cultural Center suggested the play might be a good fit for Revolutions, and the Tricklock Company readily agreed.

"Electricidad" will be performed at 8 p.m. Jan. 25 and 26 at the Cultural Center.

"This is powerful stuff, very strong stuff, not family theater," Blum said. "It's about a daughter plotting revenge for her father, who was murdered by her mother, and how she ropes her brother into it.

"The real glory is the way it translates to East L.A. and living with gangs, living in a ghetto, the feeling of oppression. You can hear the helicopters flying over."

Playwright Alfaro has even preserved the ancient Greek device of the chorus to fill the audience in on details necessary to the story.

"In this case, the chorus is three neighborhood gossips who tell the audience things such as why there is a body in the front yard," Blum said. "The whole play takes place in the front yard of one house."

Which, like the Revolutions Festival itself, suggests that theater ------------------------ despite its limitless ideas and diverse styles ------------------------ is a small world after all.