BIG IRON FIRES at Montana Rep

On Sunday, October 9th, 2016, my short play, Big Iron Fires, will be presented by Montana Repertory Theatre as part of the year-long project, "5 on 5 Play Slam".

In the fall of this year, Montana Rep selected 18 local writers to participate in this project, whereby we would receive a prompt, then have exactly one week to write a 15-minute play in response.  5 of these plays are then selected for a presentation, each play receiving two hours of rehearsal.

This process is endeavored 5 times from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2017.

I am very interested in many aspects of this project: what kind of plays will be created?  What overlap is there between the plays that are written? What information (creative, cultural, structural) can be gathered from the writing as a whole?  How might the individual and collective writing evolve during the process?  What prompts are most fruitful, and why?  What kind of community will develop among the project's writers and contributing artists, and audience?  What experiments are possible?  There are a lot of fun things to discover.

For this particular iteration, our prompt was "Guns", and I very much look forward to the responses from the other participant writers.

For my own work, Big Iron Fires is a bit of an experiment that I am very excited about, partly because I don't know what will happen.

Big thank yous to Montana Repertory Theatre and Greg Johnson (who is also directing my play) for organizing this project, and for including me in the journey.

And best of luck to all the participant writers!

For additional reading about the project, check out the Broadway World press release.

Much love,

ROMERO

GOODB(EYE) in Houston

From November 9 - 19, 2016, my short play Goodb(eye) will be playing at the Obsidian Theatre in Houston, Texas, as part of Cone Man Running Productions experimental project, The Five Minute Mile Play Festival.

Five Minute Mile selected 32 five-minute plays (out of 389 submissions), with each performance presenting 20 of them.  But they don't know which 20.  In fact, no one will know which 20 plays will be performed on a given night, until the show begins.  Each night, Cone Man will present 8 plays already decided upon, 6 plays will be voted on by the audience when they arrive, and 6 plays will be selected at random. 

It sounds like a totally fun experiment, and I'm very happy to have one of my plays participating in the chance randomness of it all.

Big thank yous to Cone Man Running for selecting this work and for Audacity Theatre Lab for originally commissioning me to write this piece as part of the Eye in the Sky project (and thank you for your voices Lydia Mackay and Jeffrey Schmidt).

Much love,

ROMERO

THE GREAT ONE in Sarasota

On November 19 & 20, 2016, my short play, The Great One, will be presented by The Players Follies as part of their annual Play Reading Festival in Sarasota, Florida.

The play is one of 11 short plays selected for this event, showcasing works that express the theme "The Fabric of Our Lives", a poignant exploration for a theater group made up of members all 50 years of age and older.

This particular work came very early in my own writing development, and is one of my very first plays.  Inspired, like many of my plays, by elephants and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, The Great One was originally presented in Austin, Texas 15 years ago, delivered by Ann Taylor.  The play had another showing, roughly a year later, with Audacity Theatre Lab in Dallas, Texas, performed by Rasa Hollender, directed by Brad McEntire.

I am very happy that this work will step into performance again, and very grateful for the good folks of The Players Follies for bringing it back to life.

You can read the Follies announcement here.

Much love,

ROMERO

TWO BUBBLES, Eight Years in Print

On August 12, 2016, my ten-minute play, Two Bubbles, achieved its eighth year in print, thanks to the good folks of Playscripts, Inc.

Brendan Ahearn, Tiffany Feng, Brad McEntire, Laurie Farris, Jeff Hernandez, and Shannon Marie in Two Bubbles, Audacity Productions / Rover Dramawerks, Plano, Texas (2002). Photo: Carol Rice.

Originally written in a few hours (from roughly midnight until about 6 am) as part of Rover Dramawerks' and Audacity Theatre's "One (More) Day Only" project in 2002-- a 24-hour new play festival-- it has been in production in Plano and Austin, Texas, and Wilmington, Delaware, with some of my very favorite people (you know who you are, and thank you).

It was my first play to be published, and it makes me very happy to know that, because of this printing, my work is out there, independent of me, engaging with people and places (for example, I know that it sits on one of the shelves of The Drama Book Shop in New York City, as they have been a frequent purchaser of this title).

And while this publication hasn't made me rich (my average annual royalties are less than $ 15) or famous (ironically, there have been no productions, that I know of, since it's publication), its accomplishments are more personal and important than that to me.

The more important numbers to me are that this title has sold over 1,300 copies, and now my own written words live in these 14 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States.

Big thank yous to all the awesome people that have engaged with and helped create this play, you have born and sustained the life of a work for almost 15 years now.

Much love,

ROMERO

P.S. If you don't already have a copy and would like one, it would be so awesome for you to go HERE.

The Trigger Gene closes

On Saturday, May 28, 2016, we closed the 5-performance run of Rita Kneiss Barkey's The Trigger Gene, to an energetic, full audience at The Crystal Theatre in Missoula.

I feel very lucky to have had this experience, working with a strong, caring group of talented people, almost all of whom I just met (and all of whom I hope to continue working with).  It was a great first theatrical experience in Missoula, and I am very thankful to this group of artists for trusting me and gently demanding the most from me.  I am very proud of the collective work we all did together, and I think the production was a success in many ways.

Sarah (Robin Rose) and Terry (Greg Romero) in The Trigger Gene; Missoula MT.  Photo by Michael Stafford).

Acting in this new play was a really important experience for me personally, forcing me to confront some vulnerabilities I had been able to avoid for some time.  Taking a break from acting for so long, I was surprised to discover how hard it was (all the layers and worlds and intentions and sensitivities involved in a single moment), much harder than I remember, making me wonder if, in previous roles, I'd ever fully appreciated all of the detail and possibilities involved in creating a performance.

I am very happy to have put back in touch with these creative muscles I'd let atrophy a little.  Now exercised, I am curious to keep using them, open again, for the first time in a while, to an expanded view of possibilities.

Big thank yous to the whole Trigger Gene team-- Diane, Diego, Howard, Nathan, Rita, Robin, Shaun, and everyone else who contributed and participated.

--ROMERO

The Trigger Gene

Later this month I will be performing in The Trigger Gene, a new play by Missoula playwright Rita Kneiss Barkey.

This is the first substantial role I've had in a full theatrical production in quite some time-- certainly my most involved performance since my project, Thirty-Three, which was nearly 7 years ago, and one of only a handful of performances in the past 15 years since I graduated college.  This experience has stretched me and humbled me in many ways already, for which I am really grateful. 

 
With help from the good folks of Third Ear Productions, we go into performance at Missoula's Crystal Theater from May 19-21, 27-28, and I am very much looking forward to the continued work on this part, and sharing the play with an audience.

Many thanks to those who are working on this project with me, it has been a very rewarding journey so far.

For more information on the performances, please visit here.

much love,

ROMERO

PLASTIC THINGS in Kingston, Jamaica

It makes me so happy that Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings continues to live on, most recently finding new audiences in the excellent waters of the Caribbean.

 Reginald the Blue Crab and Sam the Plastic Water Bottle (Edna Manley College; Kingston, Jamaica).

From March 11-21, 2016, this young audiences play was presented by the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts at the Dennis Scott Studio Theatre, in Kingston, Jamaica.  I was unable to attend the performances, but the show's director, Pierre LeMaire, tells me that his students had a good experience working on the play, the school audiences enjoyed it, and that it was quite interesting to talk with the students after the show about pollution and recycling.  This is all excellent, and a huge gift.

The Gyres (Edna Manley College; Kingston, Jamaica).

This play is well-journeyed, having been in performance in Philadelphia (with the workshop at Drexel, the Philly Fringe production by Little Fish Theatre Collaborative), several schools in New Jersey (as part of Little Fish Theatre's touring production), Phoenix (thanks to the good folks at Space 55), and internationally in Victoria, British Columbia (Kate Rubin Studio Theatre), and now, Jamaica.  I'm so very grateful for all of these experiences, and continue to be humbled by them.

Reginald, Sam, and Billie the Parrot (Edna Manley College; Kingston, Jamaica).

 

Big thank yous to the Edna Manley College and Pierre LeMaire, and continued thanks to: Cara Blouin and the original, wonderful Drexel ensemble; Chris and Josh Totora of Little Fish for believing in me and commissioning the play; to the wonderful actors in the Fringe production and tour; and to Jon Dorf and YouthPLAYS for publishing the script.

Much love,

ROMERO