Steve Wargo

After working in New York theater as a director, producer, and writer for over two decades, I’m now working as the Chief Creative Officer of the Denver Immersive Repertory Theatre.

My theater work spans from new and traditional musicals to the avant garde fringe to environmental/immersive works. Favorite credits include (as director): the immersive concert experience "Kabarett Weimar"; seven NYC productions of my musical adaptation (with Dianne Adams McDowell) of "Charles Dickens’ 'A Christmas Carol'"; David Ives’ "Don Juan in Chicago" (first NYC revival); "The Duchess, aka Wallis Simpson" and "Orchidelirium" (both U.S. premieres).

As writer: "Triassic Parq: The Musical" (with Marshall Pailet and Bryce Norbitz) (NYC Fringe Best Musical ’10; Off Broadway ’12: Lortel Nom.; L.A. ’13: 11...

After working in New York theater as a director, producer, and writer for over two decades, I’m now working as the Chief Creative Officer of the Denver Immersive Repertory Theatre.

My theater work spans from new and traditional musicals to the avant garde fringe to environmental/immersive works. Favorite credits include (as director): the immersive concert experience "Kabarett Weimar"; seven NYC productions of my musical adaptation (with Dianne Adams McDowell) of "Charles Dickens’ 'A Christmas Carol'"; David Ives’ "Don Juan in Chicago" (first NYC revival); "The Duchess, aka Wallis Simpson" and "Orchidelirium" (both U.S. premieres).

As writer: "Triassic Parq: The Musical" (with Marshall Pailet and Bryce Norbitz) (NYC Fringe Best Musical ’10; Off Broadway ’12: Lortel Nom.; L.A. ’13: 11 Ovation Award Noms, Winner: Best Musical; San Franciso ’14: 8 SGBATCC Noms; Published and licensed by Broadway Licensing.); "Scooby-Doosical" with Keith Varney;
"Beyond the Veil," a ghost play; and "Fakespeare's 'Clew'", which was the first play to open before a live paying audience in NYC after the pandemic shutdown.

As producer: Keith Varney’s "I Got Fired: A Revenge Musical" (with Liz Ulmer, dir. Steve Bebout, NYMF ’10; Theater for the American Musical Award; South Korea’s Daegu International Musical Festival ’11);
the late, great Arthur Kopit’s revised "BecauseHeCan" (first NYC revival, dir. Nicholas Cotz).

In theater-adjacent work, I've has lectured on “A Christmas Carol” at Brooklyn College, and my essay, “Journey On,” on how the AIDS crisis impacted the development of the American Musical, was published in the trade journal “Musical Theater Today”.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and earned my BFA in Musical Theater from Syracuse University.

Scripts

Beyond the Veil

by Steve Wargo

Synopsis

Set in 1919 Massachusetts amid the Spanish Flu and WWI, "Beyond the Veil" centers on a grieving doctor confronting a series of tragic drownings plaguing his small town. He and a neighboring family seek the aid of a spiritualist medium to allay their anguish. Two séances ensue; one that goes horribly wrong, and another that goes horribly right.

"Beyond the Veil" is a gothic horror tale of séances, spiritualism...

Set in 1919 Massachusetts amid the Spanish Flu and WWI, "Beyond the Veil" centers on a grieving doctor confronting a series of tragic drownings plaguing his small town. He and a neighboring family seek the aid of a spiritualist medium to allay their anguish. Two séances ensue; one that goes horribly wrong, and another that goes horribly right.

"Beyond the Veil" is a gothic horror tale of séances, spiritualism, and spirits that questions the boundaries between the living and the dead and deals with the destructive power of unresolved guilt and grief, revenge, the cyclical nature of trauma, and ultimately redemption. The play explores how one person's pain creates a chain reaction of tragedy that affects an entire community.

Triassic Parq - The Musical

Book and Lyrics by Steve Wargo

Synopsis

Religion, identity, sex… and raptors! "Triassic Parq" is a raucous retelling of that famous dinosaur-themed film, this time seen from the dino’s point of view. Chaos is unleashed on their not-so-prehistoric world when one dinosaur in a clan of females spontaneously turns male!

"Flat-out ingenious." - The New York Times

"Bracingly dirty and surprisingly poignant." - The Los Angeles Times

"Monstrously funny...

Religion, identity, sex… and raptors! "Triassic Parq" is a raucous retelling of that famous dinosaur-themed film, this time seen from the dino’s point of view. Chaos is unleashed on their not-so-prehistoric world when one dinosaur in a clan of females spontaneously turns male!

"Flat-out ingenious." - The New York Times

"Bracingly dirty and surprisingly poignant." - The Los Angeles Times

"Monstrously funny... will leave you higher than a flock of pterodactyls." - TimeOut NY

"One of the most entertaining youth-culture musicals in years." - The New Yorker

"A miracle of theater magic. Comic gold, imbued with real emotion and depth." - OC Weekly

"90 minutes of dino-licious gender-bending mayhem." - NY1

"A laugh riot from start to finish. Downright infectious." - BroadwayWorld

WEIRDOS

by Steve Wargo

Synopsis

Three Weirdos on a heath in Scotland are trying their best to cast a spell on a certain Thane who shall not (cannot) be named. The results are decidedly mixed.

Three Weirdos on a heath in Scotland are trying their best to cast a spell on a certain Thane who shall not (cannot) be named. The results are decidedly mixed.

Fakespeare's "Clew"

by Steve Wargo

Synopsis

I took the now-classic movie “Clue” and transformed it into something classically classical: a full iambic-pentameter parody resetting the setting to England, 1606. The original’s Communists are now Catholics, and the Gunpowder Plot is still fresh on everyone’s minds. There is still blackmail and murders most foul, witty wordplay aplenty and multiple endings, all while two very opinionated Groundlings heckle the...

I took the now-classic movie “Clue” and transformed it into something classically classical: a full iambic-pentameter parody resetting the setting to England, 1606. The original’s Communists are now Catholics, and the Gunpowder Plot is still fresh on everyone’s minds. There is still blackmail and murders most foul, witty wordplay aplenty and multiple endings, all while two very opinionated Groundlings heckle the players, each other, and the audience. A raucous recreation and silly send-up of Elizabethan theater that slyly asks us “What constitutes a classic?”