Matthew Paul Olmos

A socio’political play featuring and inspired by the music of the band WAR.

The story reimagines the 1970 Los Angeles Chicano Moratorium, in which global majority communities march against the disproportionate number of brown and black lives being lost to war, while still battling day-to-day injustices in their own neighborhoods.

Set to WAR’s songs of community, peace, and protest, "sing it to the air…" explores the lives of those no longer willing to be treated as minority, while music brings them together in hope. Originally commissioned by BMG Music and WAR.

A Mexican family is caught in an almost ritualistic cycle of revisiting their past as they attempt to understand why their youngest son took a drastic turn in his life. Inspired by the upbringing of Richard Ramirez, also known as The Night Stalker, this play forces us to confront how we are all implicated in the unfathomable events we would rather blame away.

Inspired by the life of my mother. The story of a Mexican-American woman in 1971 Los Angeles as she experiences a first, nerdy love. Throughout the courtship, she experiences mysterious premonitions of what lies ahead in her life and how the ever’present machismo will ultimately bring her heartbreak as it gets passed down from fathers to sons; generation to generation.

A coyote howling. A home in disarray. A young woman alone. Soledad Vargas is in the city, fighting for her family’s right to live on their land. When hope starts to dwindle, how far will she go, and what will she be forced to leave behind? A modern myth drawn from the real life struggles of displaced communities around the globe, a home what howls... is a lyrically-rendered quest of youth activism standing against forces of injustice.

Three high school girls are bused into a neighboring affluent town as part of a controversial school integration program. However, a mysterious encounter sends a panic through both towns.

*Developed, in part, by the Lark Play Development Center
and Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group,
Dorset Theatre Festival, High Desert Play Development at New Mexico University, WildWind Performance Lab, JAW @ Portland Center Stage, Dorset Theatre Festival’s Pipeline Series,
and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab.
It was also developed through Cherry Lane Theatre’s Mentor Project; mentored by Taylor Mac.

We follow E. Howard Hunt and his wife Dorothy through their tumultuous marriage and struggles amidst a political cover-up designed to make any and all persons disposable in protection of the President. Dorothy Hunt, barely mentioned in history, was very early in her perception that The White House was forgoing morals for power and money; as well she refused to let the President cast aside those, and families of those, who had broken the law by direct order their government.

*Developed, in part, through The Lark, Echo Theater Company's Playwrights Lab and New Dramatists' Creativity Fund Workshop.

On November 22nd, 1963, just after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, two shooters from Dealey Plaza meet in an undisclosed location while waiting for their handlers to give instruction. An exploration of how we as citizens both vilify and pedestal our presidents;how easily our belief or aversion of a president can turn to radicalism.

A re'framing of the school shooting in Isla Vista, just outside the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the premature baby Mira looks to her Labor/Delivery nurse as a mother figure while she tries to survive her challenging first weeks. Elsewhere in the hospital, her teenage mother and uncompromising family clash over who is fit to even raise a child. Meanwhile, Mira’s father struggles to keep a promise made to his daughter nine months earlier on a mysterious beach, in an aging Chevy Blue Cassanova van.

The first of a three-play cycle exploring the U.S./Mexico drug wars. The first play is inspired by the "Bravest Woman in Mexico," follows a twenty-two year old woman who volunteers to replace a beheaded police chief when nobody else would accept the position; which sets a chain of reactions in her husband, the Narcos, and perhaps the entire country of Mexico.

Two warring drug cartels in which the reins of power shift, the method of delivery is ever'changing, and loyalty exists nowhere; this second play in a 3-play cycle about the U.S./Mexico drug wars explores the ridiculous machismo of narco culture as shown through a cast of all women, who break out into original song.

This is the final installment in this three-play cycle exploring the U.S./México drug wars. A young Méxican couple get caught up in the web of the drug trade between the two countries, changing their lives forever. But is their ordeal what it seems or a mirage of disinformation created by unseen forces? Somewhere between truth and illusion a mother from México searches for her missing daughter.

An American couple on holiday in Tijuana stumble off the beaten path, and are accosted by a Mexican couple in an alley. "What ensues is a complex encounter that challenges notions of boundary, safety, identity and what you would do for your family. It's a dissection of difference, of connection, of the borders and barriers we use to distance ourselves, and those dangerous moments when we cross over those borders and barriers." -Philip Himberg, Artistic Director Sundance Theatre Program

In part one, a put'upon family is run from their home by a settlement of people. In part two, a settlement of people get a surprise guest while simply trying to run a put'upon family from their home. Inspired by the Dog Catcher Riots.

An extended Mexican-American family in Los Angeles over Christmas; invisible children screaming from a flickering hospital; and two mothers dead'set on protecting their sons split apart the family, no matter what the cost.

A play-with-music about two families in an undisclosed town in contemporary United States that is divided by race and class; both sides will do anything to protect themselves after a bridge connecting the affluent and poor sides of town is shut down due to escalating tensions.
Featuring original music by April Dawn Guthrie.