Jeannie Barroga

Jeannie Barroga

Jeannie Barroga has been a Bay Area-based playwright and workshop teacher at various institutions and within theater writing programs. The complete collection of The Jeannie Barroga Papers is now in Stanford University Green Library’s Special Collections being processed for the public.
Commemorating the collection, readings of her play AURORA were presented throughout the Bay Area and Valley...
Jeannie Barroga has been a Bay Area-based playwright and workshop teacher at various institutions and within theater writing programs. The complete collection of The Jeannie Barroga Papers is now in Stanford University Green Library’s Special Collections being processed for the public.
Commemorating the collection, readings of her play AURORA were presented throughout the Bay Area and Valley institutions and performance spaces including Stanford University/Palo Alto High School, University of the Pacific, and Foothill College.
Ms. Barroga is a Dramatists Guild Member.
Selected highlights of awarded plays are BUFFALO'ED, on the presence of African American soldiers in the 1899 Philippine War, awarded the Wallace Alexander Gerbode/William & Flora Hewlett Foundation Playwright Collaboration Grant. The play premiered at San Jose Stage in 2012; a second production was staged at Kumu Kahua Theater in Honolulu 2016. WALLS on the Vietnam Memorial designed by Maya Lin and awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence Grant has been produced across the country, is published, and anthologized. BANYAN, a fantasy metaphor on 9-1-1’s impact on a young shredder in an Enron-like stockroom, was awarded the Arty Award for Best Original Production. That play garnered eleven of 37 nominations.
Selected national productions are RITA’S RESOURCES at Pan Asian Repertory, New York; EYE OF THE COCONUT, her first main stage production at Seattle’s Northwest Asian American Theater; WALLS at San Francisco’s Asian American Theater with subsequent productions; and TALK-STORY, at multiple theaters. Gaining notoriety, WALLS was and continues to be produced, published, and taught in national and international institutions. The play had also been awarded an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Award. She then received the Maverick Award in Los Angeles from Women’s Playwrights.
She founded the Playwright Forum, now TheatreWorks’ New Works.
Ms. Barroga had read scripts before becoming TheatreWorks’ first Literary Manager with a brief stint in that position at the Oakland Ensemble Theater. She also served as Interim Artistic Director for both Asian American Theater Company and Bindlestiff Studio.
Other projects include novels TURN RIGHT AT THE WATER BUFFALO (a mother-daughter trip to the politically simmering Philippines post-Marcos era heats up their personal encounters) and MARKED, a mystery paranormal novel.
She has been an indie film co-producer for Encounters on Earth and on YouTube.
Barroga was an actor in the international cult film I AM A GHOST, Live Oak Theater with Those Women Productions (a 2018 Theatre Bay Area Best Anthology Production Finalist), at CentralWorks, and with Playground. She toured her one-woman show A GOOD FACE throughout the West Coast including the Mark Taper Forum, Stanford University, Warehouse Rep, Seattle Center, etc.
For the National Asian American Theater Conference, she directed AATC’s chosen play at LaMama’s, New York following other directing roles at TheatreWorks, Brava Theater Center, etc. A favorite project of hers was shaping personal scenes with and directing residential recovery clients at Brava Theater.
She held writing workshops and served on grants panels nationwide. Based in San Francisco by the early 1990s, Barroga traveled from Honolulu to Boston for lectures and workshops including Seattle, Colorado Springs, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and New York. She co-produced both SOMA webisodes on YouTube and Encounters on Earth shorts on Vimeo. For the California tour of The ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO, Barroga served as consultant to producers at the Bob Hope Theater, Stockton and at Skyline College, San Bruno.
Personal Details: Barroga was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a second-generation of Filipino parents in America. With five siblings all educated in the Midwest among only a few others in a Filipino immigrant community, After the University of Wisconsin, Barroga moved to Palo Alto, California in the early 1970s. She secured positions at Stanford in both the Pediatrics and the Alumni departments with further employment at a young magazine eventually renamed Mother Jones. She returned to the Midwest, married, gathering more magazine and graphic arts employment all the while ushering for the Milwaukee Pabst Theater. Back in Palo Alto by the early 1980s, she kept graphics jobs while honing her playwriting skills. Her idea to start a playwrights’ group, Playwright Forum, spun her career forward. She remains in the Bay Area with her husband of eighteen years and two brother cats.
Website: www.jeanniebarroga.com Twitter @jeanniebarroga Related: www.iamaghost.com

Plays

  • AURORA
    Obsessions, Loss, Resilience [NOTE: Title and Characters are the last pages of the pdf]
    Grady consumes true crime episodes wearing away Will’s patience; nephew Wonder Jay is mesmerized by video games; Hank needs to bag a buck--a family's coping methods. Tenacious D lyrics: "Wonder boy what is the secret of your power Wonder Boy won’t you take me far away from the mucky muck now..."
    ...
    Obsessions, Loss, Resilience [NOTE: Title and Characters are the last pages of the pdf]
    Grady consumes true crime episodes wearing away Will’s patience; nephew Wonder Jay is mesmerized by video games; Hank needs to bag a buck--a family's coping methods. Tenacious D lyrics: "Wonder boy what is the secret of your power Wonder Boy won’t you take me far away from the mucky muck now..."
    Grieving parents, Hank And Marcie, smolder in thick air and guilt while June’s ghost observes them all. A courtroom waiting game plays out. “AURORA” deals with the aftermath of a family tragedy eclipsed by nationwide mass tragedies. Aurora, CO was the July 2012 site of a dozen deaths of which the accused pleads insanity 20 miles away for a single murder, loved ones reflect on a similar plea.
  • BUFFALO'ED
    The Buffalo Soldiers were primarily in the U.S. cavalry assembled during the Civil War. Their bravery
    impressed everyone and they were ‘invited’ to participate in more wars for ‘freedom’ worldwide: Spanish-
    American War: San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cuba, additionally Hawaii and Alaska, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion,
    then the Philippine-American War, known in the Philippines as the War for...
    The Buffalo Soldiers were primarily in the U.S. cavalry assembled during the Civil War. Their bravery
    impressed everyone and they were ‘invited’ to participate in more wars for ‘freedom’ worldwide: Spanish-
    American War: San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cuba, additionally Hawaii and Alaska, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion,
    then the Philippine-American War, known in the Philippines as the War for Independence. A footnote in
    history, a segment of these Buffalo Soldiers joined the Philippine cause. This is a fictional dramatization in
    part extracted from personal letters and actual military reports.
    View Private Trailer: https://vimeo.com/335938142 [Vimeo site, somach forart] Password: BUFF2019
  • M
    Setting: electrical storms, fireballs and meteors stimulate swerves in reality:
    Jason, buried in his thesis on M (string theory) pursues Jane, echoing Eric’s fruitless pursuit of Maddy, Jason’s mother. Alternate realities clash, mirroring each’s Past and Present, all while pajama-clad Einstein narrates – a circle game. TECH NOTES: blinding column of light, a tear in the wall between realities; rapid...
    Setting: electrical storms, fireballs and meteors stimulate swerves in reality:
    Jason, buried in his thesis on M (string theory) pursues Jane, echoing Eric’s fruitless pursuit of Maddy, Jason’s mother. Alternate realities clash, mirroring each’s Past and Present, all while pajama-clad Einstein narrates – a circle game. TECH NOTES: blinding column of light, a tear in the wall between realities; rapid lighting changes for split scenes Now and the 1970s
  • GADGETS
    A family, reminded with former expectations, deals with
    the mother's oncoming senility.
    TIME: Present
    PLACE: Kitchen; basement room; flea market; yard
    [NOTE: ACT I under Documents/current draft; ACT II under Documents/sample script]
  • Banyan
    post-9-1-1: In a conglomerate's secret room, a paper shredder, Ona, lures her brother Ian, to visit -- for "roots" -- the Philippines. Familiar Wizard of Oz icons double their roles and affect Ona's escape from her own cage. The play parodies the chaotic moment in history of falling buildings and dwindling confidence in leadership where opportunists cover their tracks and 'munchkins" demonstrate resilience.