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, including Graveyard 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, will feature her work at various theatres nationwide.