Roy Conboy

In a working class suburb a wounded vet, Rafa, relives a battle in his dreams. His lover, Claire, sits beside him trying to call him back with memories. A Hawk circles overhead waiting to take him on a journey. When Rafa momentarily awakens he doesn’t recognize his surroundings, and strikes out at Claire in self-defense. Then he’s gone again. She packs and tries to leave. She makes it to the street but can’t go any further. An old woman, Connie, who lives next door accosts her about the disturbances, as the Hawk descends and sits with Rafa, taking up the voice in his dream.

Connie urges her to defend herself by leaving. But Claire can't abandon her lover to fight this battle on his own. Rafa awakens, as Claire sleeps, and leaves, scattering his poetry across the neighborhood till he ends up on Connie’s porch, armed and fighting invisible enemies. The young vet and the old woman reach each other, connecting through their wartime memories. Then Hawk arrives, and finally carries him away.

"In Hollow Time – A Blues Mystery on the Recession", is a play with songs and spoken word set in the Mission District of San Francisco during the Great Recession. On the night of the great crash, a broker sits in his car 0n the street and watches on his IPhone as his fortune goes down the drain. He stumbles away into the rain. The play follows his journey through the Mission, as well as the journey of the private eye who is hired to find him. In parallel stories they explore the hidden corners and characters who are the backwash of the US economy and the Great Recession, until a night of darkness where all the stories collide.

This play has music but is not a traditional musical. You could say that it’s almost operatic in that it has a series of arias – songs, spoken word poems, and noir monologues.

It's currently available for both development and production.

A father lost in the forest. A daughter lost on the freeways. And two beloved tias trying to rebuild their broken family from beyond the grave. Twenty years and thousands of miles after the Vietnam War Angela hears her father’s voice on her broken radio, broadcasting jazz and how to make frijoles from a furtive pirate station far away in the Redwoods of the NorCal coast. With her tias whispering in her ears in dreams, Angela reluctantly journeysup the coast and into the forest to find at last her elusive father and learn the secrets of her family’s broken past.
Watch out, mi amor.
Cuidado, my child.
There in the rocks
The snakes run wild.

A young Chicano man haunts the door of his Vietnamese neighbor. He’s seen her in his dream of being lost at sea. But to her it’s not a dream, it’s a memory -- of flight, of a harrowing journey, of a loss, of a refugee sailing across the South China Sea. And he must keep her from slipping back into the waves, or be haunted by her story.

"Loca" is a multi-character play performed by 5 actors (3 women/2 men). Through an arrest and interrogation it tells the story of Tia Lola (Tia Loca), and her search for her lost daughter, through the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Raised in a male-dominated Mexican family, Lola’s rebellion opens the door on a life of turmoil seasoned with liberation, romance, explosive encounters, and comedy. Her journey takes her to Orange County, a police interrogation room, Community College, San Francisco, Tijuana, and both sides of the border. The piece is presented in a storytelling Teatro style, and includes songs. Think of it as a solo show performed by 5 people.

Tailor From Chihuahua tells interwoven stories of two different generations of a Latino family, tied together by a love of swing music, and worlds on the brink.

The contemporary story, set in Los Angeles, follows the life of Rick, an Iraq vet, a succesful television news personality, and a clandestine poet, who finds himself adrift in a country obsessed by the shadow war on terrorism, and forgetful of the war that haunts him. He loses himself in swing dancing to save his sanity. When he meets and reluctantly falls in love with a strong-willed social activist, he finds himself running afoul of his company’s security personnel, and his country’s paranoia.

In the historical story set in the late 30’s in Chihuahua and Los Angeles, Rick’s grandmother Amelia tells him the story of how she falls in love with a tailor named Alberto. But she is upper class, and her mother and her mother’s friends violently break the romance apart, sending Alberto into exile in Los Angeles, and Amelia into a forced marriage. In Los Angeles Alberto finds himself caught up in violent schemes of protection in the garment district. In Chihuahua, Amelia seeks the courage to escape.

In the dance halls and offices of Los Angeles, the stories and times cross paths, in complications of love, violence, and courage.

A poetic memory tale of crusing, music, and unrequited love set in the chaotic and war-torn days of 1970, "Coche" tells the story of a draft age latino man with a cool car who falls in love with a mercurial woman, is stalked by the draft, and encounters real stories of the Vietnam War come home. As his lover appears and disappears, as the draft board pursues him, as he wanders the streets, the beaches, and drive-ins of Los Angeles, all those strains meet together in a strange party where the cost of the home front comes calling.