Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (they/them) is a trans Guatemalan-American artist, born in Guatemala City and raised in Norwalk, CT. Their work blends dance, fantasy and poetry to dramatize the interior, the unsaid, for queer people of color seeking to heal core wounds. Esperanza’s plays have been supported by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Roundabout Theatre, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Princeton...
Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (they/them) is a trans Guatemalan-American artist, born in Guatemala City and raised in Norwalk, CT. Their work blends dance, fantasy and poetry to dramatize the interior, the unsaid, for queer people of color seeking to heal core wounds. Esperanza’s plays have been supported by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Roundabout Theatre, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts, and the Stanford Department of Theater and Performance Studies, and the O’Neill Theater Center. They have worked with The Public Theater, HBO, United Talent Agency, and are a former Teach for America corps member, having served in Huntington Park, CA as a 5th Grade ELA teacher. Last summer, they formed a collective with other Queer Black and Latinx artists at Yale who were then selected as Producing Artistic Directors for the 2022 Yale Summer Cabaret's season, Summer of Love, the theater's first season ever dedicated to new play productions and workshops by Queer BIPOC writers. Esperanza is the recipient of the Princeton Ward Prize for Fiction, the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Scholarship, the Paul Greene Award from the National Theatre Conference, and the Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award (Finalist) and Latinx Playwriting Award. BA: Princeton '17, MFA: Yale '23

Plays

  • Color Boy by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 2 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, fantasy, movement/physical
    The play follows Miguel, a young, Queer middle school teacher in Los Angeles whose younger self confronts him about a wound he's been ignoring since he quit his color guard team as a teenager. As his younger self becomes louder, Miguel's life in Los Angeles begins to unravel until he can't ignore the past anymore and must heal the wound in order to move forward with his life.
  • When The Party's Over by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    9–12
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 4 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, fantasy, immersive, movement/physical, musical
    During their last few days of undergrad at an Ivy League school, Danny, a Queer first-generation Latinx student comes to terms with personal and familial traumas as they prepare to graduate. A blending of reality, fantasy and hip-hop/modern dance, When The Party's Over explores the way the mind carries, then heals from trauma in an enhanced state.
  • If the Dancer Does Not Dance by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy + 6 more
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy, immersive, movement/physical, musical, parody/spoof, satire, tragedy
    Dance sometimes feels like a slow killing of the mind and body." A group of up and coming competitive dancers trying to break into the industry are cast in a famous choreographers farewell performance. They travel to the middle of the woods to develop the work, with every moment of their destructive artistic journey captured for the world."
  • Crashing by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: adventure, dark comedy + 1 more
    Genre: adventure, dark comedy, drama
    Enzo has been away in LA trying to make it as an actor for years, and must travel back to Connecticut to reconnect with his family after his mother passes. At the funeral he learns that he has been left custody of Gabe, his younger brother with autism. He takes Gabe on a drive across the country, all the while grieving his mom and other wounds from the past.
  • Spring on Fire: A Guatemalan Story by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, fable/folktale + 4 more
    Genre: drama, fable/folktale, fantasy, period, political, tragedy
    Deep in the Guatemalan jungle during the bloody Civil War, a Mayan mother and daughter fight
    to stay together as soldiers from the capital and spirits from the past invade their crumbling
    village. As the war unfolds, each character must confront their beliefs, whether in their Gods,
    their country, or their families, to survive.