Joe Calarco

In this funny, moving and wistfully haunting play, a deceased man guides us through his past and present, as his apartment fills to the brim with family, friends, friends of friends, and even total strangers. As the guests grapple, both with his loss and with each other, the action weaves from room to room, jumping through time by minutes and years. Separate Rooms is a stunning meditation on loss, friendship, and the traces of ourselves we leave behind. A Big Chill for the 21st Century.

"Bold, bustling...Astonishing. A funny slice-of- life-and-death drama whose trove of ranting, bickering, affectionate characters come complete with quirks, idiosyncratic ideas and fleshed-out backstories."
---The Washington Post

"Separate Rooms, a haunting and sometimes hilarious look at the tiny ripples and huge waves the death of a loved one can send through the lives of those left behind... sexy, entertaining, and wry, but also filled with moments of real depth and universal emotion... Separate Rooms is a play that’s both timely and timeless—and one that’s sure to have a long life beyond this initial production."
-- DC Theatre Scene

"Joe Calarco’s Separate Rooms is a play rich with humor and rife with emotional truths about life and death and adulting...enormously entertaining...A Big Chill–style tribute to the turning point of turning 30...it hits a generational nerve as it tickles to death."
-- DC Metro Theatre Arts

"Separate Rooms further distinguishes itself from much of the gay canon in its approach to sexuality and identity. 'No one’s struggling with coming out,' Calarco says. 'There’s no complication with, ‘My friend’s gay.’ In this show, it’s just part of the world and who they are in that world. There are six other characters in the play who are straight, and we see those relationships, too. It’s just about a group of people who are who they are, and who are living life, or trying, struggling, through a difficult evening.'”--- Metro Weekly

The play follows Buddy, a recently returned veteran from the war in Afghanistan, who comes to work in his father’s bar while he nurses wounds both physical and psychic. When father and son become entangled in a local tragedy, they are forced to confront the ghosts of their past, and reckon with the cruelties they have taken part in, both at home and abroad.

"Shattering. It’s at once a punch in the gut and a tug to the heart." -- DC Metro Theater Arts

"A transcendent piece of theater." -- Broward Palm Beach New Times

"A stunning world premiere. A triumph!" – Florida Theater On Stage

"Theater at its best. Establishes Calarco as a major force in contemporary theater." --- Around Town

"A gripping examination of bullying… about how in raising our sons to be men, we sometimes eat our young."--- Sun Sentinel

"A drama that will stir one’s emotions."—Florida Media News

"A deep, intimate portrait of what happens when social norms and expectations drive people to act in ways that are more damaging than fulfilling, more harmful than helpful, and how to break the cycles of violence and anger we think need to define us, especially men. Packs a tremendous emotional punch."-- BroadwayWorld

Time: Now. Place: A town in the United States of America where Winter is cold. Winter Break has just begun. Alternately hilarious and touching, the play follows nineteen teenagers, some who know each other, some who don’t, as they wrestle with friendships, breakups, loss, graduation, and their place in the world. WINTER BREAK is the 2020 Educational Theatre Association commission.

On the seventh anniversary of the bombing of an airliner, the loved ones of the victims are still trying to move on with their lives. Throughout a 24-hour period on a frigid spring day in New York, these strangers' lives interconnect and finally collide, taking them on a phantasmagoric journey toward closure.

"Mr. Calarco has a keen sense of dramatic encounters that are both funny and ominous. He has also created memorable characters, impressively developed by this cast. The theme of lost people resonates: the mystery of the dead who were blown up, and of the living who wander away or flee, leaving those who love them torn apart."-- The New York Times

"A vivid portrait of seven lives bound together by the residual grief of one tragic event. Touching and poignant...Calarco has crafted intriguing characters and has an ear for naturalistic dialogue that is both savvy and witty."-- Broadway.com

"This is the rare play where the gay and straight relationships are given equal opportunities for romance and disarray."-- Time Out

"Intoxicating...a thoughtful and intense examination of how people react to loss and gather the energy to surpass tragedy and carry on with their lives."-- Potomac News

A fierce thunderstorm has shut down airports up and down the East Coast. Two women, who appear to have nothing in common, are stuck in a waiting area at Reagan National Airport. Patty is a chatty southerner—a blue-collar woman from a red state—who is almost physically unable to tolerate silence. Margaret is a Washingtonian, reserved, educated, liberal and not interested in sharing her thoughts, or her table, with Patty. Forced together for a long night in a public place, the two strangers have no choice but to share a bottle of wine and begin to talk…and to listen. Their conversation is funny, difficult, deeply revealing and astonishingly frank. Patty and Margaret share details of their lives that lead them to a place of kinship neither of them could have imagined. Yes, Walter Cronkite is dead, but his wisdom and compassion lives on in this insightful comedy about what might be possible if people from opposite sides of the political aisle would stop shouting and take even one night to listen.

"Calarco demonstrates impressive maturity with his lively and insightful dialogue. The play's sermon against demonizing those with whom we disagree couldn't be more relevant. And with its disarming approach to the topic, this inexpensive play should have strong appeal for regionals and beyond." —Variety.

"…in a time as politically fractious as this, the mere idea of two women sitting and absorbing viewpoints they normally wouldn’t abide counts as revolutionary." —Washington Post.

"Joe Calarco's play is far more than a tale of opposites in close quarters and its comedy does not seek to make an imbecile of either woman. Instead, CRONKITE expertly unspools two very different stories not to pick at where they conflict but instead to lay bare where they closely align." —Metro Weekly.

"…very funny, thoroughly charming…The play is a ninety-minute treasure chest that keeps revealing new gems of wisdom and humor, right to the end." —North County Times San Diego.

Four young prep school students, tired of going through the usual drill of conjugating Latin and other tedious school routines, decide to vary their very governed lives. After school, one breaks out a copy of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and they all take turns reading the play aloud. The Bard’s words and the story itself are thrilling to the boys, and they become swept away, enmeshed in the emotion so much so that they break school rules in order to continue their readings. The rigidity of their lives begins to parallel the lives of the characters in the play: roles in the family, roles in society, and the roles played by men and women soon seem to make all the sense in the world, and then, suddenly, they seem to make no sense at all. Although they had been taking turns playing all the parts, two eventually emerge playing Romeo and Juliet exclusively, bringing a whole new dimension to the proceedings. Perceptions and understanding are turned upside-down as the fun of play-acting turns serious, and the words and meanings begin to hit home and universal truths emerge.

“Hot-blooded…Wrenching…[It] pulsates with an adolescent abandon and electricity of which Romeo himself might approve.” —The New York Times.

“R&J is a gem, the most inventive reimagining of a classic in years.” —The Wall Street Journal.

“A revelatory adaptation. One will never view the Shakespeare war horse without this production in the mind’s eye.” —USA Today.

“This is one of the most electrifying adaptations of Shakespeare I have ever seen. When it comes to originality, sexiness, and daring, it is right up there with West Side Story.” —The Telegraph (London).

“A superb version that will open your eyes and ears to the piece as if you were experiencing it with unjaded wonder for the first time.” —The Independent (London).

Six young Northern Virginia students find themselves thrust into a complex and violent world, a world made of poetry, reenactments, the guiding words of Frederick Douglass and the personal experiences of the students themselves. The heart of this complex world is the death of Freddie Gray, an event that forces each of these students to confront their own relationships with issues of race. As one young African American student, Jasen, finds himself compelled to seek justice, the others are forced to confront how close to home the issues of Baltimore actually are.