DOOR TO BALLOON/The Last Frontier Theater Conference in Alaska

I recently returned from Valdez, Alaska, where my play, Door to Balloon, was presented at The Last Frontier Theater Conference.

The experience was easily one of the most enjoyable, most fruitful ones of my life and I feel so grateful for having had the opportunity to participate, to explore and share my work, to meet so many excellent people, and to get a taste of Alaska.

Photo by Annie McCain Engman

It was very hard to leave and I hope, very much, to return.

Big thank yous to all the people-- and there are so many-- who made this possible.

much love,

ROMERO

THE SHADES OF ORCUS

On February 4th, 2017, I will be performing in a workshop presentation/staged reading of the new play The Shades of Orcus by Missoula theatre artist Joshua Kelly.  The performance is at 7:00 pm at The Public House in downtown Missoula.

I am playing Thomas Warren, an art critic who has made himself infamous for his major work—a collection of reviews detailing the art, beauty, and performative nature of suicides.  So yes, this play is kind of dark.

The play is asking some fascinating questions and I look forward to stepping inside of these worlds and exploring them with some very smart, talented people.


Big thank yous to playwright Joshua Kelly and director Thaine Bertin for including me in this process.

much love,

ROMERO

Thank You to Cone Man Running

Big thank yous to Cone Man Running Productions in Houston, Texas, for their inclusion of my short play, Goodb(eye), as part of their very fun 5 Minute-Mile project during November of 2016.

As they describe:

"32 plays are selected for the production.  Eight are scheduled to perform each night.  The next six are drawn at random at the start of the show.  The last six are voted on by the audience based on the title, descriptions and the actors involved!  It’s a different line up every single night!"

Whitney Zangarine (Madeleine) and Bryan Maynard (John) in Goodb(eye); Houston TX.

My own play was concisely described as:  "A man and woman, a secret romance, static electricity passes through the phone wires, as a giant eye inexplicably hovers over the city."

I was very happy to have my work included in this project, and grateful for the extra effort Cone Man Running made to send me a video of the play, taken during the final dress rehearsal:

My thanks to Bryan Maynard and Whitney Zangarine for their performances, and to Michael Weems for organizing the project.

Thank you also to Brad McEntire and Audacity Theatre Lab for originally commissioning me to create this work for their Eye in the Sky project (originally featuring actors Lydia Mackay and Jeffrey Schmidt), which began way back in 2009.

much love,

ROMERO

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

PLASTIC THINGS and DELAWARE MUDTUB now up on Amazon

My two published young audiences works, Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings and Delaware Mudtub and the Mighty Wampum, are now posted on the Amazon.com website.

Published by YouthPLAYS (and also for sale or licensing options through their website), this additional listing on the market giant Amazon will hopefully extend each of these play's lives in exciting ways, while making it easier to find for those who are looking for them.

For a quick link to the plays on Amazon:

Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings

Delaware Mudtub and the Mighty Wampum

Big continued thank yous to YouthPLAYS and to all of the amazing artists and people who originally brought these works to life.

much love,

ROMERO

LULLABY/Goodbye to Drexel

On Wednesday, May 27th, 2015,  three of my students and I shared The Most Beautiful Lullaby You've Ever Heard at Drexel University as an open rehearsal/studio presentation.

This intimate presentation (staged in the dressing room of the URBN Annex Black Box Theatre) was a satisfying way to conclude my six-plus years of teaching and creating at Drexel.  Grateful for the experience to work with these talented, bright students for one final project, we approached this short process (we met for 5 times for a total of 12 hours) as an exercise, exploring the play and its challenges as best we could with the time and space we had to work in.

The Man (Alex Cummiskey), The Narrator (Laura Allan) and The Woman (Lexi Pozonsky).  URBN Annex Green Room, Drexel University; Philadelphia PA.  Photo by John VanZelst.

The process was highly enjoyable, as performers Laura Allan ("The Narrator"), Alex Cummiskey ("The Man"), and Lexi Pozonsky ("The Woman") all proved to be brave, creative, and enthusiastic in their exploration of the play's darker content, in it's non-linear structure, and in it's demanding physicality.  Their bold choices, openness to explore, and thoughtful questions led to further discoveries in a play that I have been working on for over 10 years and through at least half a dozen presentations.  The experience was so enjoyable that I regret only that there wasn't more time available to explore the play further together.

I was also happy to have shared this work with a small, intimate audience of Drexel students, staff, and friends.  It was wonderful to witness the ongoing support these students have for one another, and to share this work with a handful of my own students who I have become very close to.

The Narrator (Laura Allan) and The Woman (Lexi Pozonsky).  Photo by John VanZelst.

Big thank yous to Alex, Laura, and Lexi for their excellent work and the gifts of their time and talent and to all the wonderful spirits who have breathed into this play over the past ten years.  Thank you as well to all the good folks at Drexel, and to all the students whose intelligence, creativity, and sincerity continually inspire me to be the best version of myself.

Much love,

ROMERO

EYE IN THE SKY on YouTube

A few years ago, the wily artists at Audacity Theatre Lab created a project-- an experimental epistolary radio theatre project-- in which they commissioned playwrights around the country to create a radio play based on the following shared prompt:

"For one week in the middle of the summer, a giant eye appears in the sky, over the city.  At the end of seven days, it disappears as suddenly as it originally materialized."

Gathering a wealth of work, and through collaboration with a number of multi-disciplinary artists, Audacity put together several episodes of recordings of these plays.  I feel lucky to have been one of the commissioned playwrights, and to share Episode Two with cool cat Daniel Talbott.

My short work, Goodb(eye) appears roughly four and half minutes into this recording, with some fine voice work by Jeffrey Schmidt and Lydia Mackay.

You can listen to Episode Two HERE.

Big thank yous to the folks at Audacity TheatreLab for putting this project together and for continuing to share our work.

Much love,

ROMERO

DELAWARE MUDTUB Published by YouthPLAYS

While working in the forests and mountains of Idaho, it is somehow fitting that my play, Delaware Mudtub and the Mighty Wampum, went into publication.

Maria Konstantidies as the Old Fox, Tyer Garamella as the Pond, and Katie Croyle as Turtle, as Turtle tells the story of Fox's mother.  Plays & Players, Philadelphia: March 2014.

An interactive, immersive young audiences play, it is now in print thanks to the good people at YouthPLAYS (who also published my previous young audiences work, Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings).

Big thank yous to the countless number of excellent artists and people who brought this play to life, and who took such great care in expressing it so wonderfully earlier this year at Plays & Players in Philadelphia.

It is my hope that this opportunity will allow me to share this work with many more people and that the wonderful animals in this play-- Turtle, Fox, Heron, the Otters, Wolf, and Bear-- will continue to live on through the joyful creativity of many more future embodiments.

To visit Delaware Mudtub and the Mighty Wampum at YouthPLAYS, click here.

much love,

ROMERO

STELLAR CELLAR at Charm City Fringe Festival

This week I will be sharing a work, Stellar Cellar, that I've collaborated on with a lovely and talented ensemble of artists for the Charm City Fringe Festival in Baltimore, Maryland.

 Stellar Cellar, as performed at La Petit Salon; November 2013; Baltimore, MD

Scheduled for performance dates on November 5,7,8,9, we will be sharing our work with four audiences at the unique venue, Church and Co. on Falls Road.

This work was originated by Christine Ferrera as a live radio talk show about wine, in which the show's host, Ferrera, traveled deeper into her life of memories and subconscious, echoing through the different wines, taking the audience on a multi-layered wine-tasting experience.

After the piece played numerous places, it was re-imagined to include some of my writing, which introduces a couple of wild animals into the piece (a fox and a bear), adding additional worlds to explore between ground and sky (and beyond).

The full synopsis reads:

Stellar Cellar is a journey through a woman’s subconscious, an evocation of Dionysus and a radio talk show about wine. As the host samples each wine, her memories are conjured: funnel cake and dippin’ dots on the boardwalk, monks in Macedonia, the loss of her virginity in the back of a Honda Civic. Call-in questions, a car salesman from beyond the grave, and a dystopian weather and traffic report move her further into the deep layers of her psyche… until a fox and a bear appear revealing the sorrows of the animals. Expect songs of love, sleep and the apocalypse. 

In all cases, there are some wonderfully talented folks who have created and brought this work to life, and it is a performance that has some size and some lovely theatrical surprises.

The Red Fox and The Great Spirit of the Black Bear, illustrated by Christine Ferrera.

Charm City Fringe Festival Presents: 

STELLAR CELLAR
A radio show about wine leads deep into the forest...

Created & Performed by:
TEMPLE CROCKER
DAN HANRAHAN
CHRISTINE FERRERA
SARAH LLOYD
DANIEL FRIEDMAN
& GREG ROMERO

SHOWS:
11/5 @ 7pm,
11/7 @ 6pm,
11/8 @ 10pm,
11/9 @ 3pm,

AT CHURCH & COMPANY
3647 Falls Road (2nd Floor)
Baltmore, MD 21211

$10 + $3 Festival Button (One-time purchase)

For tickets: https://charmcityfringe.tixato.com/buy/ccf-presents-stellar-cellar

For more info about the Fringe Festival: http://charmcityfringe.com/

Stellar Cellar show page: http://charmcityfringe.com/tickets/2014/9/10/stellar-cellar

More about Stellar Cellar:  http://fiftysevenhundred.org/upcoming-performances/stellar-cellar/

Much love,

ROMERO

Listening in Idaho

Returning to city life after living three months in a National Forest, it is bittersweet to look back through journal entries from my summer working for the Forest Service.  This entry, scrawled in faded pencil on tattered parchment, comes from September 10th, 2014, two days before my assignment ended:

"Reflecting back and remembering some important things before I leave Idaho.  I saw a wolverine and a black bear in the same day-- encountering an aliveneness that I want to always be in touch with.  I climbed a mountain and was humbled to discover how inexpressible it was.

Taken during my hike to Custer Lookout, Salmon-Challis National Forest; Idaho.

And this aliveness and impossible expression is out here, away from the cities, and it is where I want and need to keep connected to.  It is out here that I see the largeness, feel the expansiveness of things, free from the moorings of category, compartments, all creating new understandings.  Because it is out here where things really speak to each other."

Thank you, mountains of Idaho, and all the lovely things that live and breathe with you.

--GR

One of my Plays is Currently Benefitting Animals in Arizona

My short play, The Race, is currently running in Prescott, Arizona, thanks to the good folks at The@trics Theatre.  As bonus, the event, Pet Plays, is a benefit to raise funds for the Yavapai Humane Society.

As someone who LOVES animals, this brings me great joy.

As the poster indicates, there are four performances, running from June 6th - 8th, all taking place at First Congregational Church.  I wish I could be there to see all these pets.

It also brings me great joy that this play, which steps inside of a dog's dreams, also honors two dear friends who I originally wrote the play for -- Ann Taylor and Timothy Verret -- over ten years ago while living in Austin, Texas.  I'm so happy that The Race lives on, and in such a purposeful way.

Big thank yous to The@trics Theatre and best of luck to them and to all the awesome animals receiving love from the Yavapai Humane Society.

much love,

ROMERO

PLASTIC THINGS, Victoria

Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings performs tonight in Victoria, British Columbia, thanks to the good folks at Kate Rubin Theatre and Drama Studio.

The studio's Youth Performance Company will present this Theater for Young Audiences work tonight, June 5th, 2013, at 8:00 pm at the Intrepid Theatre Club, and I enjoy thinking about this play (and its characters-- a Plastic Water Bottle, a Blue Crab, a Turtle, a Parrot, all the broken-down objects in The Gyres) being performed by young actors (which will be a first-- previous productions in Philadelphia and Phoenix were performed by adult actors).

Photo from Kate Rubin Studio's Teen Acting Intensive

This performance also marks the first time one of my plays has been produced in Canada, which is a really thrilling new threshold for me.  I'm so happy that my work is living outside of my own country.

This performance is also the first of my plays to ever be licensed through a publishing company, also  thrilling new territory for me, and for that I am grateful to the good folks at YouthPLAYS, Inc.

Big thank yous again to everyone who helped create this work, and to everyone who has made the continued sharing of this work possible.

much love,

ROMERO

P.S. To visit the publication page of Plastic Things, you can visit YouthPLAYS, Inc.

Space 55 Opens PLASTIC THINGS in Phoenix

It has been a good year already for my play Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings.  Published earlier this month by YouthPLAYS, this all-ages play opens today, January 26th, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Brought to life for its second production (the premiere by Little Fish Theatre continues to tour the Philadelphia/NJ-area), the good folks of Space 55 have put together an impressive group of artists who will present the work each Saturday and Sunday through February 10th, for nine performances total (2:00 pm and 7:00 pm shows on Saturday, 2:00 pm on Sunday).

This production, directed by the lovely and talented Michelle Kable, will include live music, puppetry (including a shadow-puppet version of "the Gyres"), and will feature a set made of recyclable materials, all in the intimate environment of Space 55's downtown Phoenix home.

For more information about the show, you can visit Space 55's website HERE.

I am grateful to Space 55 for taking on this work, and for continuing and expanding its life.  Big leg-breaking thank yous to director Michelle Kable, and performers Mack Duncan, Ron Foligno, Pina, and Dilcia Yanez.

much love,

ROMERO

PLASTIC THINGS Published by YouthPLAYS

I am completely excited to announce that my play, Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings, is now published by YouthPLAYS, Inc., a Los Angeles-based publisher and licensing house.

The Oldest Sea Turtle Who Ever Lived (Josh Totora), Reginald the Blue Crab (Kevin Chick), and Sam the Plastic Water Bottle, from the Little Fish Theatre production; Philadelphia, PA; September 2012.  Photo by Charlotte Leigh.

As my first attempt at writing a theater for young audiences play, this experience, from conception to presentation to publication, has been a thrilling, rewarding journey, introducing me to new collaborators and new audiences.  This project is one of the highlights of a very satisfying body of work.

It is my hope that, in addition to the productions already in progress, the publication of this play will give this work a continued and sustained life, playing out over and over again with audiences and imaginations of all ages.

It is my hope that Sam the Plastic Water Bottle, Reginald the Blue Crab, Billie the Parrot, and The Oldest Sea Turtle Who Ever Lived will get to play together for a very long time.

To visit the Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings' publishing page, visit YouthPLAYS here.

Sam's Father (Kevin Chick) and Sam's Mother (Maryruth Stine) caught in The Gyres.  Photo by Charlotte Leigh.

Big congratulations and thank yous to Little Fish Theatre for originally commissioning and trusting me to create this play, and for all of their support during the process.  Also, big congratulations and thank yous to the members of the 2012 Winter Studio at Drexel University, whose creativity and exploration inspired the first draft of Plastic Things.  Big thank yous also to Charlotte Leigh, who, by good fortune, happened to photograph one of our performances.  And huge thank yous to Jonathan Dorf and Ed Shockley of YouthPLAYS, Inc., for believing in this play, and for their generosity during the publishing process.

much love,

ROMERO