steve romagnoli

Would you---could you---let out of prison someone who murdered your sister? That is the question at the heart of "White Fox Blues."

When she was a young woman, Latoya Simmons was shot and killed by her boyfriend. Her twin sister, Trina, raised Latoya’s baby boy, Malik, and has never forgotten, or let Malik forget, the pain and injustice of a life cut tragically short.

It is Trina’s birthday, a commemoration charged with memory and emotion. What’s more, Trina is unaware that Malik has secretly been working to get his stepfather released from prison with the help of his college mentor, Dr. Toyin Etiko, on her way to visit the family home. Also, unbeknown to Trina, the father of her sister’s killer is not only a white man but also seeking to enlist Trina to help free his son.

A twisted and very dark humor emerges in a house once used as a station stop on the Underground Railroad, a source of generational family pride. Suddenly and without warning, it becomes a dangerous place again, the collisions between family, lovers and enemies bringing into being a hyper-reality in which the characters face their own histories and each other. The intellectual and physical violence is graphic and cathartic, filled with fusillades of revelation, confrontation, and reversal.

"White Fox Blues" wrestles with the demons of Luck and Fate and the choices people make when put to the test of removing their masks of mendacity and self-deception.

Would you---could you---let out of prison someone who murdered your sister? That is the question at the heart of "White Fox Blues."

When she was a young woman, Latoya Simmons was shot and killed by her boyfriend. Her twin sister, Trina, raised Latoya’s baby boy, Malik, and has never forgotten, or let Malik forget, the pain and injustice of a life cut tragically short.

It is Trina’s birthday, a commemoration charged with memory and emotion. What’s more, Trina is unaware that Malik has secretly been working to get his stepfather released from prison with the help of his college mentor, Dr. Toyin Etiko, on her way to visit the family home. Also, unbeknown to Trina, the father of her sister’s killer is not only a white man but also seeking to enlist Trina to help free his son.

A twisted and very dark humor emerges in a house once used as a station stop on the Underground Railroad, a source of generational family pride. Suddenly and without warning, it becomes a dangerous place again, the collisions between family, lovers and enemies bringing into being a hyper-reality in which the characters face their own histories and each other. The intellectual and physical violence is graphic and cathartic, filled with fusillades of revelation, confrontation, and reversal.

"White Fox Blues" wrestles with the demons of Luck and Fate and the choices people make when put to the test of removing their masks of mendacity and self-deception.

Located in Central America, in a remote region between the jungle and the sea, "Crackerjack's Saloon" is run by Darla and Sophia, the daughter and wife of the incarcerated owner of the bar.

The action begins when an American shows up carrying a distressed treasure map leading to the Black Madonna---a statue lost in a shipwreck carrying Spanish enslavers and their enslaved African captives. As legend has it, the indigenous Bribri slayed the Spaniards but freed the enslaved Africans, incorporating them into their tribe. In a twisted nod to "The Maltese Falcon," the Black Madonna is solid gold underneath her black lacquered veneer.

Calling upon two Afro-Caribbean fishermen and a local Bribri man, the American finds the statue, revealing the legends to be true: the Black Madonna is, in fact, solid gold and encrusted with diamonds.

Enabled by greed and latent racism, the discovery of the statue not only exposes gold, but the myth of the American Dream and the reality of imperialism down through the ages. The Black Madonna is a tale of murder and mayhem in a darkly comic hurly-burly of clashing cultures and values. Filled with fusillades of revelation, confrontation, and reversal, the play is a moral detective story, a tragedy of errors, and a familial fairytale, all seamlessly woven into a tapestry of transformation and insight.

Recently released from prison, a black woman, Crystal, returns to NYC in search of work and her disabled daughter, Kalisha. Upon her arrival, she becomes acquainted with a young white couple, Martin and Mia, who offer help in finding her a job. Taking place shortly before, on and after the fall of the Twin Towers, the play fractures memory and desire through a kaleidoscope of clashing identities and treacherous intentions. A tale of murder of mayhem, Blood Will Have Blood, radically reconfigures Macbeth to unmask the twin demons of caste and racism and, in so doing, exposing the myth of the American Dream. Set against the backdrop of 9/11, the play explores the notions of grace and karma in a dark yet often comedic hurly-burly of familial bonds and fissures.

If you were enslaved during the 18th century, would you consider the Founding Fathers any differently than someone in Auschwitz would consider Mengele or Hitler? "In the Boat," boldly addresses our great American capacity for selective memory, especially regarding the misplaced adoration of our founders (including Alexander Hamilton who bought slaves for his wife's family).

"In the Boat" reveals the love between two of George Washington's slaves. Then, in alternating scenes, the black actors double as Martha Washington and three of the Founding Fathers. Taking place in 1796, it is a time when the country is in the midst of a great partisan divide not unlike our own. A time when "fake news" first becomes ascendant and, through the secret bidding of Hamilton and Jefferson, the "scandal-monger" is created, emboldening both sides with talk of secession and civil war.

"In the Boat" does not hold any punches. The Founding Fathers do not dance and sing happy songs. Rather, their actual words, actions and complicity are put on display without mitigation. But, In the Boat, is also a love story imbued with a dark comedic sensibility that buoys the lovers as they navigate the cruel waves of their storm tossed world. A tale of slaves and slaveholders, "In the Boat" will challenge what we think we know and what we pretend to forget.

SYNOPSIS:
The archetypal painting, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” has been hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than a century. In it, there is a black soldier rowing beside the General’s knee. Who was this man? Many have claimed him to be Prince Whipple, a slave owned by William Whipple, one of the Founding Fathers. Recent research, however, has shown that neither master nor slave was with Washington at the time of the crossing. Other black men have been suggested including James Brown, an aide to Washington, who founded the saloon now called the “Ear Inn” in NYC. It’s hard to get a bead on the truth when the painting itself was created over seventy years after the fact and, like most mythic remembrances, is riddled with inaccuracies. But the one thing we can be sure of is the fact that there were black men who fought for “freedom” during the war only to remain enslaved after it was won.
Inspired by that unknown black man in Washington’s boat, this play attempts to explore the ongoing adoration of the so called, “Founding Fathers,” and our complicity in adhering to those myths that seek to subvert and bury the truth at the expense of all those who have suffered and continue to suffer.
The cast is composed of five black actors and one white actor. In alternating scenes, the black actors playing slaves double their roles as Martha Washington and three of the Founding Fathers. The one white role is based on the historic figure, James Callender, who was traditionally disparaged as a drunk “scandal-monger” and dismissed by historians despite of (and because of) his speaking truth to power and revealing the underlying corruption and mendacity of Washington, Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson.

"Eating Dirt" is a multi-racial reconfiguration of "Rashomon." Drawing on personal experience, including teaching at the Bedford Hills Maximum Security Prison for Women, the play creates a charged, hallucinatory world: multi-racial, gender-stressed and class-riven. It is a dangerous place but the collisions between family, friends, lovers, and enemies bring into being a hyper-reality in which characters confront their histories, their various silos of identity, and face each other as human beings despite conventional norms or social pigeonholes. The ever-present intellectual and physical violence is graphic and ritualized, a play both philosophical and forceful, filled with fusillades of revelation, confrontation, and reversal.
Synopsis: Missy, an African-American woman finds a homeless and brain damaged white man, Luke, wandering through town. She takes him home to become her slave, despite the objections of her lover, Machiko. Before getting in the accident that left him brain damaged, Luke was an All American football star and high school hero. Missy's uncle, Floyd, has just been released from prison and is returning home while Luke's brother, Butch, has also returned to town to reclaim Luke. An indictment of systematic racism and tribal loyalty, "Eating Dirt" shuffles time present and time past to test the taboos underlying love, gender and race.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-levy/steve-romagnolis-skip-to-_b…

Thomas and Chavonne, a bi-racial couple, decide to visit his old friend, Simon, who Thomas hasn’t seen in years. Simon lives with Yo-Yo, a young woman Simon brought back from Africa and married. As the two couples become acquainted, they proceed to heavily drink and get high while debating such topics as: genital mutilation, altruism, affirmative action, Otta Benga (African pygmy who was housed in the Bronx Zoo monkey house), the nature of evil, the suffering of God, and the illusions that make romantic love possible. As the evening progresses, however, the philosophical conversation turns sinister as secrets are revealed and mayhem is unleashed.

"Chasing After the Wind," is a multiracial, "Long Day's Journey Into Night," for the 21st Century. While emotionally challenging, it is saturated with an ongoing dark but comedic sensibility.

IAGO is a reconfiguration of "Othello" set in the tumultuous and brutal world of American boxing. A true anatomy of a psychopath, IAGO promises to be timeless yet timely, especially so in our new world of “alternative facts” and demagoguery.

A pitch black comedy shuffling time present and past to reveal the limits of moral decision making and family loyalty.