Greg Romero

Greg Romero

Greg Romero is originally from Louisiana, Cajun blood on both sides. His plays, site-specific projects, and sound-art collaborations have been presented in performance spaces, found spaces, and through the airwaves of the United States as well as Switzerland, Canada, The United Kingdom, and Jamaica. Romero was selected as the first-ever ArtsEdge Resident, was one of three playwrights to inaugurate the...
Greg Romero is originally from Louisiana, Cajun blood on both sides. His plays, site-specific projects, and sound-art collaborations have been presented in performance spaces, found spaces, and through the airwaves of the United States as well as Switzerland, Canada, The United Kingdom, and Jamaica. Romero was selected as the first-ever ArtsEdge Resident, was one of three playwrights to inaugurate the Philadelphia Dramatists Center/Plays & Players Playwriting Residency, and was a pilot member of Hyde Park Theatre's Playwright's Group. He may be the only playwright to have presented a play in the bathrooms of Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New Plays.

He is an alum of the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, The Last Frontier/Valdez Theater Conference, The William Inge Theater Festival, The Midwest Dramatists Conference, and his works are published by Heinemann Press, Next Stage Press, YouthPLAYS, and Playscripts. Romero received a BA in Liberal Arts from the Louisiana Scholars' College and an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin where he held the James A. Michener Fellowship.

Currently based in Houston, Texas, he is a proud member of the Rec Room Arts Writers Group, and is the Head of the Playwriting & Dramaturgy program at the University of Houston, where his students bring non-facts and real baked goods to class.

He is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, loves wildlife, and being outside.

Plays

  • The Babel Project
    FULL-LENGTH: Workers are building a Tower of Babel for the present moment. The Foreman makes them forget by stealing language. A weeping willow carves into the skin of a quarry man, an electrician hears the ocean, an office worker sings a whale song, and the Wing Man—an angel—falls in love with the Bartender. Speaking through work sounds, replacement words, animal noises, broken gestures, and hundreds of...
    FULL-LENGTH: Workers are building a Tower of Babel for the present moment. The Foreman makes them forget by stealing language. A weeping willow carves into the skin of a quarry man, an electrician hears the ocean, an office worker sings a whale song, and the Wing Man—an angel—falls in love with the Bartender. Speaking through work sounds, replacement words, animal noises, broken gestures, and hundreds of floors of the tower, Babel’s workers try to remember why they are standing on their heads, what the scars mean, what are those clowns doing, and why they must break everything.
  • Big Iron Fires
    ONE-ACT: Gwen goes off-script so she can listen to you. Nina and Treplev show up lost. A volunteer comes onstage and is given a loaded gun. A Marty Robbins song, country line-dancing, can we get the lights down please?
  • Bulldozers
    ONE-ACT: Barbara gathers the community together to destroy them with luxury apartments. Elise brings the deviled eggs. The audience is included. And a wolf watches it all, closely.
  • Coyote Makes the World
    TEN-MINUTE: Phyllis and Ramon are - all at once - both coyote and human. And they're about to perform a comedy show, making the world out of whatever the audience wishes, until Phyllis does something - right in front of everyone - her father told her never to do. Can the show get back on-track? What do we really see? What are the tiny, cared-about things being carried around by the wind, who are we, and how do we keep dancing?
  • Daphne Becomes the Arctic
    TEN-MINUTE: Daphne stands on the ice, not knowing how she got there. An Inuk woman, Tatkret, calls from the other side of the polynya. A car radio, somehow, plays a trauma across the distance. And a polar bear, Nanuuk, roars through the landscape, splitting everything open.

    Content Warning: Emotional violence caused by sexual assault.
  • Delaware Mudtub and the Mighty Wampum
    FULL-LENGTH: Turtle carries the world on her back, leading us into the performance space, taken over by nature. The Red Fox stares back at us, her smile unveiling her sharp teeth. Silent, determined, the Great Blue Heron enters, searching. Otters Earle and Pearl raft together, joyfully drifting with the current of the Delaware River. The ground vibrates, the wolf’s howls grow closer, the moon’s reflection sings...
    FULL-LENGTH: Turtle carries the world on her back, leading us into the performance space, taken over by nature. The Red Fox stares back at us, her smile unveiling her sharp teeth. Silent, determined, the Great Blue Heron enters, searching. Otters Earle and Pearl raft together, joyfully drifting with the current of the Delaware River. The ground vibrates, the wolf’s howls grow closer, the moon’s reflection sings a lullaby, and the animals must survive the land and each other, weaving together the wampum belt of their lives.
  • Door to Balloon
    FULL-LENGTH: A stand-up comedian might be dying of heart failure right in front of you. Is that a joke? Five female haz-mat workers measure radiation and expand the universe—losing a face, losing a stone, losing time— in the Nevada Proving Grounds of the Mojave Desert. And who keeps lowering the dumbwaiter to the teenagers locked in the basement? Knock knock. Annie hands you a plate full of cowboy cookies...
    FULL-LENGTH: A stand-up comedian might be dying of heart failure right in front of you. Is that a joke? Five female haz-mat workers measure radiation and expand the universe—losing a face, losing a stone, losing time— in the Nevada Proving Grounds of the Mojave Desert. And who keeps lowering the dumbwaiter to the teenagers locked in the basement? Knock knock. Annie hands you a plate full of cowboy cookies and you can’t tell if you’ve been poisoned. Where are all the songs coming from, who will win the staring contest, will the comedian last the night, what do we do with that giant knife, and what are the Siamang gibbons howling about?
  • The Elephant and the Light in Claire's Suitcase
    TEN-MINUTE: Claire carries a suitcase holding memories of the life she doesn’t know she is leaving. Bruce, almost-remembered, enters, repeatedly, with a wedding cake. They walk together through the fragments to the top of the mountain while an elephant, illuminated from the lantern in Claire’s suitcase, transports things from one place to another.
  • Falling Down the Mountain of Great Storms
    FULL-LENGTH: The building you are sitting in right now is situated on top of a fault line. Did you know that? Audra, a young Cajun, fights through the catastrophes. Lanette tells the story of Skywoman by candlelight. A Great Blue Heron pulls fish from the Atchafalaya while Hedgehog rips a branch from a dogwood tree. Barry works on his dancing thirty seconds at a time. And Fox brings us all outside to plant...
    FULL-LENGTH: The building you are sitting in right now is situated on top of a fault line. Did you know that? Audra, a young Cajun, fights through the catastrophes. Lanette tells the story of Skywoman by candlelight. A Great Blue Heron pulls fish from the Atchafalaya while Hedgehog rips a branch from a dogwood tree. Barry works on his dancing thirty seconds at a time. And Fox brings us all outside to plant actual seeds in the actual ground, where everything is moving.
  • Foxing
    TEN-MINUTE: They start with a dance then exhaust themselves further. They are led by a human who is also a fox named Beatrice. Aaron and Charlie drink water, do burpees, transform into wild animals, and unfold pieces of paper the fox keeps handing them, confronting the most difficult moment they can't bury.
  • Jean Yeets Her Hawaiian Shirt into the Ocean
    TEN-MINUTE: I'm breaking up with you. We're on vacation! I've put you into a hotel nicer than this one, I think you'll like it. Jean, it will never happen again. The server is rockin' a totally bad ass wig and sprinkles fresh rosemary on top of the bisque. A deer grazes through a pine forest, listening for the owls. The elevator doors keep closing. Tectonic plates move underneath the...
    TEN-MINUTE: I'm breaking up with you. We're on vacation! I've put you into a hotel nicer than this one, I think you'll like it. Jean, it will never happen again. The server is rockin' a totally bad ass wig and sprinkles fresh rosemary on top of the bisque. A deer grazes through a pine forest, listening for the owls. The elevator doors keep closing. Tectonic plates move underneath the ground, just a little, just enough.
  • LARPing (written with Brian Grace-Duff)
    FULL-LENGTH (60-70 minutes): You are now at the center of Hollow’s heart. Britta is the Dungeon Master and rolls to hit. John makes up songs about popcorn while breaking the rules. David sweats out a strip tease for his dream girl. And Jenny blasts the best music at The North Pole. Which of these characters are real? What is normal? What is play? And how brave are we–how vulnerable can we get–in revealing who we are and what we need?
  • The Last Fantasy Package
    TEN-MINUTE: Beverly shows up with a broken arm at Fonzy's Fantasies, looking for the last fantasy package - with the sunset ending - but Amanda tells her they don't do that anymore. Candace, equal parts professional-looking human female and wild gray wolf, gets a look at Beverly and brings in The Transporter. Beverly blows on the right straw, blows on the left straw, then blows on the right straw again. A dance is included.
  • The Milky Way Cabaret
    FULL-LENGTH: An alcoholic magician tries to win his family back through a disappearing act. Staked outside The Milky Way Cabaret, a pair of clown-costumed assassins reveal everything. And the grown-up version of the magician’s daughter travels back in time, through black holes, to try to save her father’s life.

    Is humanity bigger than the universe? Is a heart bigger than a planet?

    ...
    FULL-LENGTH: An alcoholic magician tries to win his family back through a disappearing act. Staked outside The Milky Way Cabaret, a pair of clown-costumed assassins reveal everything. And the grown-up version of the magician’s daughter travels back in time, through black holes, to try to save her father’s life.

    Is humanity bigger than the universe? Is a heart bigger than a planet?

    Set in a South Philly nightclub, The Milky Way Cabaret is a theatrical event inspired by the magical, time-travelin’, heart-exploding, meatloaf-making, hula-hooping, elephant-piss drinking people of the city of Philadelphia.
  • The Most Beautiful Lullaby You've Ever Heard
    FULL-LENGTH: The Man and The Woman stand at the edge of the water. They take a blank piece of paper from their pocket. They imagine all of the things it could possibly be. They meet at a bar for the first time over and over and all at the same time. They fold the paper into a sailboat. They sit in their apartments and press their faces against the glass. They place the sailboat on the water and give it a...
    FULL-LENGTH: The Man and The Woman stand at the edge of the water. They take a blank piece of paper from their pocket. They imagine all of the things it could possibly be. They meet at a bar for the first time over and over and all at the same time. They fold the paper into a sailboat. They sit in their apartments and press their faces against the glass. They place the sailboat on the water and give it a gentle push. They journey through their broken pasts, broken futures, and broken skin, revealing everything to find the beautiful place together inside of the knives.
  • Of Plastic Things and Butterfly Wings
    ONE-ACT: A plastic water bottle named Sam has lost her parents in The Gyres, a swirling ocean landfill twice the size of Texas. With help from a blue crab with a giant claw, a parrot who thinks she is a seagull, and The Oldest Sea Turtle That Ever Lived, Sam embarks on a family-friendly, music-filled, epic journey to save us all from the lonely, swirling vortex of thrown-away things and lost hope.
  • Radio Ghosts
    FULL-LENGTH (60 - 65 minutes): William Tell sees the world as one giant hologram after shooting his son in the face. Lorna carries an extra pair of rubber boots as she speaks through the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Abernathy, a physical scientist - and also a wolf - howls through the rings of Saturn in a 24-hour diner that is also a wilderness. What if someone was trying really hard to reach you and you couldn't hear them?
  • Two Bubbles
    TEN-MINUTE: Three versions (past, present, future) of a young couple stay up all night trying to break the record.
  • Zöe Through the Subway Dog Door
    TEN-MINUTE: In the darkness we hear a large object hitting another large object. And then the sounds of the subway. An Australian sheepdog leads her owner across the ocean. Sir, can you hear me? I'm just going to check your pulse. His eyes are dilating. A love song, through a dog door, about the stars as they empty into the basin. Try to hold your eye-lids up.