a SToRIES FOR SCOUNDRELS Artist Spotlight

A Profile of Elaine Romero, Playwright 

by Emily Fuchs

Follow Your Bliss 

Romero was reading before kindergarten, spending her days with books and diligently shaping lines into letters and words onto the pages of a little notebook. Romero credits her mother for adding authors such as William Blake to her early repertoire of language. 

“She really instilled in my ear a poetic rhythm. And that's a rhythm that I have carried throughout my life,” she says.

Plays began to flow. Seeds had been planted. 

Romero’s father encouraged creativity, asking her and her three brothers, “What is your bliss?”  

He urged his children to “follow their bliss,” to listen to their instincts and do what brings fulfillment, not just an income. 

For Romero, childhood and family experiences became fodder for the stories she wanted to tell.

While she was a young girl, her father’s new job moved the family from Northern California to the suburbs of San Juan Capistrano, in Orange County. Traveling on interstates to visit grandparents in San Diego required stops through U.S. border checkpoints, she says.

Anxiety filled young Elaine in these moments. “Even though we were all born in the U.S., it was always a real feeling to drive through there and to know they were looking for Mexicans. That was the perception from my little child's point of view.” 

Old, Dead White Guys

Welcoming everyone to a metaphorical and literal table is at the heart of her practices. It’s not unusual to find Romero chatting with a student or a colleague over coffee at local cafés, discussing diversity in characters and socially relevant plots.

 “I love to watch her make connections between people. You know there are a lot of writers that I've worked with, that are very much, ‘Close the door. Go work on my piece. Stay away from me.’ But Elaine is very much about, ‘How can we bring as many possible people to the table as we can?,’” says Bryan Falcón, artistic and managing director of Tucson’s Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre. 

After many short walks from his office to a nearby coffee shop, Falcón often would find himself striking up conversations with another café regular. Like Falcón, Romero was a frequent customer at EXO Roast Co., with its thick brick walls and large windows welcoming the sunlight. About a mile from the University of Arizona campus, EXO sits east of Tucson’s Fourth Avenue, surrounded by lofty mesquite trees. 

 From their conversations, Falcón knew Romero loved theater and taught at the university. However, Falcón didn’t realize at first that the woman, with whom he had struck up a two-year running friendship over coffee and theater, had written a play that had stuck with him since his MFA directing curriculum at Western Illinois University.

 “The Fat-Free Chicana and the Snow Cap Queen” was a welcome departure from the older, Eurocentric library of plays so often taught in theater curriculums, like Moliere, Shakespeare, and Beckett. Falcón says he realized the “delightful moment (when) you know the connection into a world that before seems so distant.”

“And now, it is quite personal, and we're doing work that is exciting, and it's because Elaine's heart is so huge, and she has done such good work for American theater,” he says. 

Falcón sees Romero’s accomplishment as a testament to the progression of theater and the important role of diversity. 

“What I studied in grad school was the old dead white guys. Here we have a Latinx playwright, being discussed by other great minds and asking questions about ‘What is her approach? What is her voice? Why is she great?’ And that's just amazing to me,” Falcón says. 

A Play is a Play

Before the pandemic, often tired or over-caffeinated students would file in to attend Romero’s Introduction to Dramaturgy class. Set inside a windowed conference room on the second floor of the UA Marshall building, the classroom features furniture placed so groups of undergraduates are able to communicate with each other.

Calm and steadfast, Romero sits at the end of the table, facilitating conversation and listening intently as her glasses-framed gaze never wavers from each speaker, her long hair never obscuring her face. Her intensity might seem intimidating, but that quickly dissipates with a smile, a measured tone and a poet’s approving snap of the fingers.

Romero received a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at Linfield College in 1984 and would go on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting at University of California, Davis in 1987. 

At 19, Romero contemplated life as a teacher. “I remember I was just walking on campus and I thought, ‘Well, why are you going off to teach people what other writers are when you don't know what you have written? Why don't you give yourself a chance?” 

So, Romero threw herself into playwriting. Now, years after this revelation, she inspires other writers to find their own inner voice. 

While many could be daunted by meeting a well-known figure in their field, that’s not the case when encountering Romero. After closing a matinee performance of Luna Gale with Tucson’s St. Francis Theatre in 2017, Cole Potwardowski was introduced to Romero, who was in the audience.

Feeling a bit intimidated, Potwardowski says he thought, “Whoa, it's a playwright! Certainly, I want to make a good impression.” 

But Potwardowski says he felt “a good vibe” and a genuine curiosity to find out, “Who is this? Who is this woman? Who is this person?”

Potwardowski signed up for Romero’s Introduction to Dramaturgy course at the University of Arizona for the Spring 2018 semester, then he continued with her playwriting course the next semester.

 “It doesn't feel like a class. It feels like you're going to work,” he says. “We're going to get some shit done.” 

Romero guided Potwardowski by showing him that writing for oneself was the key.

 “She kind of lit a match that had gone out,” he says. “Just being able to write again and write something, write something you value, not something another person values.... And then leaving the class feeling a little more fleshed out because we were able to write and express, maybe (get) those demons out whatever it was inside,” Potwardowski says.

To Thine Own Self be True

“She holds the space and attention for people in a way that not many other people do. And it's a little bit magic in that way,” playwright Fly Jamerson says.

Until Jamerson met Romero, they had not yet realized they could express and discuss their identity in their work. A play could be what they wanted it to be, no matter the form, structure, or content.

 “It’s the kind of idea that I had in my heart that I didn't feel like I was allowed to have right until you meet other people who also believe that. And then it gets a little bit stronger.” Jamerson says. 

After Romero gave writing prompts on the feminist slogan “the personal is political” in her Advanced Playwriting class, Jamerson says they realized and found the way to weave their gender identity into their work.

Jamerson received guidance from Romero in writing the play Frozen Fluid while they were in the University of Arizona MFA Generative Dramaturgy program. Jamerson’s play shapes the magical realism of three scientists grappling with identity, faith and gender, a concept that was encouraged by Romero. 

“I think that also is very quintessentially Elaine. That she has the capacity to guide people to those kinds of spiritual realizations in themselves.”

Jamerson says they were encouraged to write about their personal experience or political ideology.

 “I've now come to articulate that it's part of my mission as a writer to represent theatrical spaces for trans actors to work right in, stories that are important to them and authentic to them…. Part of her magic is that is the ability to wake that up.”

Telling Her Stories

Romero’s plays draw on her own life, growing up female, Latina, living near the U.S.-Mexico border and other experiences. Her border trilogy of plays — Wetback, Title IX, and Mother of Exiles — was performed as a part of RomeroFest through Tucson’s Winding Road Theatre Ensemble, The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre, and The University of Arizona, respectively. The trilogy highlights the myriad topics and themes that run through Romero’s body of work.

In Wetback, Amalia, a Mexican American school principal, grapples with racism in her district while also secretly sheltering an undocumented immigrant in her home. The play was inspired by increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and hate crimes against immigrants. 

Influenced by the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Title IX is about generations of women educators combatting sexism, sexual harassment in the workplace and the progress (or lack thereof) in gender equality over the course of four decades. 

Mother of Exiles discusses how arming teachers could impact border politics and safety as a Latina teacher returns to her home in the Southwest to teach young students. 

In the Wild of the Work 

Romero’s prolific playwriting grows from an attention to discipline that she found in physical activity as a young girl. Growing up as a gymnast, she diligently worked out five hours a day. Today she continues with a disciplined Pilates and yoga practice. The habit has translated to her writing, she says.

“I do credit being an athlete and the commitment of being an athlete with my understanding of what it would take to be a writer,” Romero says. “That same kind of discipline that I used to do gymnastics, I applied to the word.”

Stamina is needed to rewrite and rework upwards of 20 drafts of a play. It’s part of the process to accept changes and strive to create a play that is an invitation to the audience into a story of shared humanity. The story must shape itself, not be forced, Romero says.

Romero says she sees the strength of humanity and wants to “talk about the human spirit in this moment” through her work as a playwright.

“These plays that were made for humans, I can engage with that, and really that's all that matters. There is no perfect way to do a play,” Romero says.

“We want to say, ‘We don't know and we want to keep not knowing.... And I think if we do that it'll surprise the audience as well.” 

Romero’s work weaves together historical events and personal experiences. Stories enmesh diverse characters against a backdrop of events on a grand scale, revealing intimate moments of fragility in her character dynamics. However, solely autobiographical work is new for Romero. Her experiences find their way into her work, such as her husband’s unexpected health concerns. 

Chicago’s Halsted Street is lined with restaurants, buildings of brick and concrete, along with being home to the Steppenwolf Theatre and Chamber Opera Chicago. It was in one of these restaurants where her husband, Brad, had a stroke. 

Watching a loved one regain their strength, amid the interrupted interaction between the brain’s synapses and the body, is the focus of her newest play Halsted. The workshop performance was one of the first in the RomeroFest digital lineup. 

Despite her husband’s long and sometimes arduous period of recovery, Romero is grateful for even the most incremental improvements in his physical ability and strength. 

Her appreciation of healing extends to producing virtual productions a year into the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I feel huge gratitude, and this perhaps has to do with some of my life philosophies. Instead of worrying about what I don't have, I celebrate what I do have, and that might go to my husband's brain as well as I write,” Romero says. Her voice wavers while remembering, and she laughs gently.

“Instead of worrying about ‘Oh, he isn't doing this right now.’ You know, there's always hope. But he's doing this, and I feel like in life we have to take that. We have to,” Romero says. 

— End—

Author’s note: Emily Fuchs studied at the University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film and Television from August 2017 to December 2019 and was a student in Elaine Romero’s Introduction to Dramaturgy Class in the Spring 2018. 

About the Writer

Emily Fuchs graduated from Pima Community College in 2017 with an Associate of Fine Arts in Theatre Performance, and Graduated from the University of Arizona in December of 2019 with a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Studies. She has participated in two previous Scoundrel and Scamp productions, ​The Trial of John Brown​ (Lizzie Harding), and ​Blood Wedding​ (A Girl/Wedding Guest). As a dramaturg, she has assisted in Arizona Repertory Theatre’s ​Top Girls​ and ​The Wolves,​ as well as Winding Road's production of ​Good People​. Fuchs is a current graduate student in the University of Arizona School of Journalism.