By Elaine Romero Directed by Dámaso Rodríguez WALK INTO the SEA a LIVE VIRTUAL READING by ELAINE ROMERO
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ART MAGAZINEVolume 38 Special Edition Walk Into the Sea by Elaine Romero directed by Dámaso Rodríguez WALK INTO THE SEA A LIVE VIRTUAL READING BY ELAINE ROMERO Dámaso Rodríguez, Executive Artistic Director J.S. May, Executive Director Kisha Jarrett, Managing Director CAST Karl ...................................................................................................... Osvaldo González Virginia ................................................................................................ Vonessa Martin* Edward ................................................................................................ Matt Sepeda CREATIVE TEAM AND CREW Playwright ............................................................................................ Elaine Romero Director ............................................................................................... Dámaso Rodríguez~ Dramaturg ........................................................................................... Luan Schooler Production Manager ............................................................................ Kristeen Willis# Stage Manager ..................................................................................... Carol Ann Wohlmut^* WHAT IS ROMEROFEST? A month-long celebration of the diverse, thoughtful and impactful works of Elaine Romero, Arizona Theatre Co’s Playwright-in- Residence, with digital performances by theatre companies across the U.S. and in Mexico in March. RUN TIME: APPROXIMATELY 90 MINUTES OUR MISSION Artists Repertory Theatre’s mission is to produce intimate, provocative theatre and provide a home for a diverse community of artists and audiences to take creative risks. ANTI-RACIST STATEMENT Artists Repertory Theatre recognizes that we are a predominately white organization and operate within systemic racism and oppression, and that silence and neutrality are actions of complicity. We recognize the critical role the arts play in our culture and national conversation, and accept our responsibility to make positive change through our work, our practices, and our policies. We commit ourselves to the work of becoming an anti- racism and anti-oppression organization, and will work with urgency to end racial inequities in our industry and our culture. The video and/or audio recording of this performance by any means is strictly prohibited. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Actors’ Equity Association, founded in 1913, represents mre than 49,000 actors and stage managers in the U.S. Equity negotiates wages and working conditions, providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. Equity seeks to foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of our society. www.actorsequity.org ~ Stage Directors & Choreographers Society ^ Artists Repertory Theatre Resident Artist # The scenic, costume, lighting, projections, and sound designers are represented by United Scenic Artists. This theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. ARTISTSREP.ORG 2 FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT hen I was 17, my family relocated from Southern California to rural Oregon. I finished high school in Amity and stayed on to go to Linfield. In Oregon, I had no gymnastics team or beach to Wdistract me. The rain kept me inside, at first, so I kept on writing and writing. The computer system at my college kept losing my plays, so I would simply write them over and over again. A ferocious rewriter honed through bad hardware. Within a year of coming here, I had written my first play . in the middle of nowhere. I did not know how to become a playwright. The plays at Linfield College (now University) were remarkable. I kept returning to see them again and again. I was embarrassed to see them more than once because people were beginning to notice. I had outed myself, but it was there in McMinnville that I found myself overtaken by the theatre. I realized that I felt no separation between me and a play. We were, in essence, one. When I watch other theatre artists, and frequently playwrights, watch plays, I see myself in them. The way plays have them in their hold. They don’t let us go. Eventually, my family moved to Portland. I have the privilege of spending big chunks of time here each year. I love this city. I have my favorite haunts and negotiate the whole city from my parents’ house in West Linn. I always tell people I’m from Oregon. Oregon made me a playwright. Elaine Romero (she/her) An award-winning U.S. playwright, Elaine Romero’s plays have been presented across the U.S. and abroad; she is widely published and anthologized. Revolutions/Revoluciones, Wetback, Like Heaven, and Bloody River were all produced last season. Revolutions/Revoluciones was produced in Spanish translation at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, under the direction of famed Mexican director, Bruno Bichir, with a cast from Mexico. It’s the final play in Romero pentalogy, includingGraveyard of Empires (16th St. Theatre), A Work of Art (Goodman Theatre/ Chicago Dramatists), and her play-in-progress, When Reason Sleeps (Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist-in-Residence), Martínez in Taos (Arizona Theatre Company). Modern Slave, commissioned by Ford’s Theatre, was presented at the 2017 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. It was developed at A Contemporary Theatre (Seattle), Victory Gardens Theatre (Chicago), and The Road Theatre (LA). From her Arizona/Mexico border trilogy (Mother of Exiles, Wetback), her Arizona Theatre Company commission, Title IX, was included in the 2017 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. At Erik Ehn’s Silent Playwrights’ Retreat at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, she drafted, Halsted, about her husband’s stroke. Romero has been the fortunate recipient of the TCG/Pew National Theatre Artist-in-Residence grant, the NEA/TCG Playwright-in-Residence Program, the Blue Ink Playwrights Award, the Sprenger-Lang New History Foundation Award, the Chicano/Latino Literary Award, and many others. Romero’s work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Playscripts, Simon and Schuster, among others. She wrote the short film,A Sentiment, about the 19th Amendment (U.S. Women’s Right to Vote) on commission for Burning Coal Theatre/The Justice Theatre Project. Chatham Life and Style named the piece in the top five of the 19th Amendment Project, which featured some of the U.S.’s top women playwrights. She had two Viral Monologues produced this summer, Oyster (24-Hour Plays/Arizona Theatre Company: Arizona Edition) and Shackle (24-Hour Plays/ New Sanctuary Coalition). Oyster has been picked up by Dramatists Play Service. Romero is a Steering Committee Member with the Latinx Theatre Commons. She, also, serves as the Southwest Regional Rep for the Dramatists Guild of America. She has had the good fortune of being a member of NBC’s “Writer’s on the Verge,” the CBS Writers’ Diversity Program, and the NHMC’s Latino Writers’ Program. She previously taught film and television writing at Northwestern University. Romero is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre, Film, and Television at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, and the Playwright-in-Residence at Arizona Theatre Company. In March 2021, a national festival, RomeroFest, is featuring her work at various theatres nationwide. ARTISTSREP.ORG 3 EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S BIO Dámaso Rodríguez Dámaso (he/him/él) is in his eighth season as Executive Artistic Director of Artists Repertory Theatre (ART), Portland’s longest-running professional theatre company, which became a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) under his leadership. Plays developed during his tenure have been produced in New York, Chicago, London, and throughout the U.S. Acclaim for ART developed projects includes the Dramatists Guild Foundation Award, the Edgerton New Play Award, NEA Funding, American Theatre Magazine’s Most Produced Plays list, and coverage in the New Yorker and the New York Times. In 2021, the Oregon Media Production Association honored ART with the Creative Innovation Award for the company’s pivot to digital mediums in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. He is a Co-Founder of L.A.’s Furious Theatre, where he served as Co-Artistic Director from 2001-2012. From 2007-2010 he served as Associate Artistic Director of the Pasadena Playhouse, where he directed main stage productions and oversaw programming for the Playhouse’s second stage, including its Hothouse New Play Development Program. He has directed a broad range of new and classic plays including over 20 Artists Rep productions, along with work at the Pasadena Playhouse, Intiman Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theater, Seattle Rep, A Noise Within, The Playwrights’ Center, The Theatre@Boston Court, Odyssey Theatre, The Blank Theatre, The Road Theatre, The Zephyr Theatre and Furious Theatre. Dámaso is a recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, the Back Stage Garland Award, the NAACP Theatre Award, and the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Award. He was honored as a Finalist for the Zelda Fichandler Award by the Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation and was named a Knowledge Universe Rising Star by Portland Monthly. His productions have received or been nominated for dozens of awards including the L.A. Stage Alliance