John Guerra

John Guerra

John Guerra is a Latine writer and dramaturge from Carpinteria, California. Companies he has worked with include: the Blank Theatre, Coin & Ghost Theatre Company, the Fountain Theatre, Rogue Artists Ensemble, the T. Schreiber Studio, and the Vagrancy Theatre Company. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at the California Institute of the Arts (2015), he is also a 2019 Sundance Institute LA Theatre...
John Guerra is a Latine writer and dramaturge from Carpinteria, California. Companies he has worked with include: the Blank Theatre, Coin & Ghost Theatre Company, the Fountain Theatre, Rogue Artists Ensemble, the T. Schreiber Studio, and the Vagrancy Theatre Company. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at the California Institute of the Arts (2015), he is also a 2019 Sundance Institute LA Theatre Intensive fellow, and a member of the Ghost Road Theatre Ensemble.

Plays

  • Room by the Sea by John Guerra
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: adaptation, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: wheelchair users, labyrinth + 6 more
    Genre: adaptation, drama, fable/folktale
    Keyword: wheelchair users, labyrinth, coming of age, Greek mythology, intergenerational, classical mythology, Icarus, minotaur
    Every day, the boy in the wheelchair sits on a ledge and dreams of flight, while his architect father frets about their future. That is, until the king of their small island nation makes the architect an offer: he will make the architect’s son comfortable and wealthy for the rest of his days. And in return, all the architect must do is complete one last job. The project? To create a structure that is bigger on...
    Every day, the boy in the wheelchair sits on a ledge and dreams of flight, while his architect father frets about their future. That is, until the king of their small island nation makes the architect an offer: he will make the architect’s son comfortable and wealthy for the rest of his days. And in return, all the architect must do is complete one last job. The project? To create a structure that is bigger on the inside than out--a place so vast and complex that a person could wander its halls for a lifetime and never go the same way twice. But what could this impossible structure be for? And what will it mean if the architect is successful?

    "Room by the Sea" is a story you know. It’s a story of parents, children, class, and coming-of-age. But it is also the story of something else. Something monstrous.

  • The Last, Best Small Town by John Guerra
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: adaptation, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: housing crisis, Latino + 7 more
    Genre: adaptation, drama, period
    Keyword: housing crisis, Latino, American Dream, Our Town, 2008 financial crisis, Southern California, Race, class, rural America
    THE LAST, BEST SMALL TOWN tells the story of two neighboring families --one Latinx and one white--who live in the small southern California town of Fillmore. As the first decade of the 21st century unfolds, the children of these families come of age, fall in love, and suffer loss, as they continually hunt for their place in a world that can no longer promise them a better life than their parents.
  • Real Bohemiens by John Guerra
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: American Dream, LA County Homeless Crisis + 2 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: American Dream, LA County Homeless Crisis, Art and Artists, journalism
    Harry and Logan have not seen each other since they were teenagers. Now years later, a chance encounter on the street has spurred Harry--a reporter for the "LA Times"--to write a story about the friend he grew up with who now lives out of a tent behind a strip mall.
  • The Dry Years by John Guerra
    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: Water Crisis, california + 6 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical
    Keyword: Water Crisis, california, rainmaking, magic, storytelling, unreliable narrator, Latino, Mexican
    The Dry Years begins—as stories so often do—with an arrival. It begins the day a pair of lawyers showed up and started buying “useless land” for more than it was worth. By the time folks realized why, it was too late. The lawyers had stolen their water at the point of a pen and built an aqueduct to bleed them dry. Ten years later, this rural California community stands on the edge of collapse. That is until a...
    The Dry Years begins—as stories so often do—with an arrival. It begins the day a pair of lawyers showed up and started buying “useless land” for more than it was worth. By the time folks realized why, it was too late. The lawyers had stolen their water at the point of a pen and built an aqueduct to bleed them dry. Ten years later, this rural California community stands on the edge of collapse. That is until a stranger drives out of the desert, offering a solution to all their problems: Rain.

    Inspired by the strange but true story of Charles Mallory Hatfield—Southern California’s most famous (and infamous) practitioner of the pseudoscience of rainmaking—this is a story about stories. The ones that are true, the ones that aren’t, and the ones that are somewhere in between.