Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (she/they) is a trans Guatemalan artist, born in Guatemala City and raised in Norwalk, CT. Her works are spiritual and physically adventurous narratives driven by dance, poetry, and passionate characters that give Queer BIPOC voices a space to interrogate core wounds and offer them a path towards healing.

Esperanza’s plays have been supported by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Roundabout Theatre, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, the Stanford Department of Theater and Performance Studies, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival, and New York Theater Workshop. 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...

Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel (she/they) is a trans Guatemalan artist, born in Guatemala City and raised in Norwalk, CT. Her works are spiritual and physically adventurous narratives driven by dance, poetry, and passionate characters that give Queer BIPOC voices a space to interrogate core wounds and offer them a path towards healing.

Esperanza’s plays have been supported by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Roundabout Theatre, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, the Stanford Department of Theater and Performance Studies, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival, and New York Theater Workshop. 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, the Kennedy Center's Latinx Playwriting Award and Paula Vogel Playwriting Award (Finalist), as well as a Relentless Award Honorable Mention for their play Color Boy. Her play Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams is a finalist for the Leah Ryan Prize, the 2024 O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Van Lier Fellowship at Rattlestick Theater, and will be developed through New York Theater Workshop’s 2024 Summer Dartmouth Residency.

Along with writing, Esperanza is an active producer and was one of the 2022 Producing Artistic Directors of the Yale Summer Cabaret, where their collective commissioned and produced an entire season of new plays by Queer BIPOC writers, including Maia Novi’s Invasive Species and a.k. payne’s BurnBabyBurn: An American Dream. Most recently, her monologue, Soledad’s Journey, was featured in Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival’s Bliss: A Collection Commissioned Scenes and Monologues, where it was performed by Indya Moore at the Public Theater.

She is currently a Teaching Artist for the Public Theater, a Drama Teacher at Brooklyn Prospect Charter High School, and a Lecturer in Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, where she produced the 2024 Carlotta Festival of New Plays. BA: Princeton. MFA: Yale.

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Scripts

Lupe Finds Me in the Garden of Dreams

by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

Cast Size
3—4
Genre
biography,
docudrama/historic,
drama,
fantasy,
movement/physical,
period,
verse

Estrella is at a spiritual crossroads. She becomes the Old Hollywood actress Lupe Velez on the last night of her life to find the answers to her questions, and the two people who hold them are Anna May Wong and Gary Cooper, her lifetime's greatest relationships. Lupe finds me in the garden of dreams spans years in cinematic history to raise the questions: what are the costs to being a queer artist of color in...

Estrella is at a spiritual crossroads. She becomes the Old Hollywood actress Lupe Velez on the last night of her life to find the answers to her questions, and the two people who hold them are Anna May Wong and Gary Cooper, her lifetime's greatest relationships. Lupe finds me in the garden of dreams spans years in cinematic history to raise the questions: what are the costs to being a queer artist of color in today's industry? What would happen if we found a way of creating ourselves and our work outside of it?"

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Color Boy

by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

2
Cast Size
4
Genre
comedy,
drama,
experimental,
fantasy,
movement/physical

Miguel is halfway through his first year teaching at a charter school in Los Angeles when he begins dreaming about his long-ago color guard days. The more Miguel rejects the wounded boy in his dreams, the more his present life begins to unravel. Fusing the art of color guard, dance, and poetry, Color Boy is a queer choreo-drama about the power found in healing our younger selves in adulthood

Miguel is halfway through his first year teaching at a charter school in Los Angeles when he begins dreaming about his long-ago color guard days. The more Miguel rejects the wounded boy in his dreams, the more his present life begins to unravel. Fusing the art of color guard, dance, and poetry, Color Boy is a queer choreo-drama about the power found in healing our younger selves in adulthood

When The Party's Over

by Esperanza Rosales Balcárcel

1
Cast Size
9—12
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.

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

1
Cast Size
6
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."

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 Size
7
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.

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 Size
5
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.

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.