The School of Theatre, Film & Television (TFTV) is proud to share that Associate Professor Elaine Romero is the 2024 recipient of the Professor Alberto Rios Outstanding Literary/Arts Award. The distinguished award is one of six presented annually by the Pete C. Garcia Victoria Foundation to recognize exceptional contributions by individuals within Arizona’s higher education community whose work significantly impacts the Latine community.
Named in honor of Arizona’s first poet laureate, ASU Regents Professor of English Alberto Álvaro Ríos, the Literary/Arts Award recognizes Latines who have contributed significantly to our understanding of the Hispanic community and culture through literary works, publications, films, books, and other print platforms.
Dr. Louis Olivas, the foundation’s president, said that Romero exemplifies the characteristics and accomplishments that are the trademarks of the award. “Based on Ms. Romero’s dedicated work as an established scholar, author and professor, not to mention her award-winning body of plays, the committee voted overwhelmingly in her favor for the award.”
“I was so thrilled when Dr. Olivas called to tell me I had won,” says Romero. “It’s particularly touching to have my work recognized. I have written over 120 plays, and it can be easy to think that the work of the playwright is invisible, or somehow not literature. This recognition is not just good for me, it’s good for the field. The work of the playwright is seen.”
Romero added: “To receive a gorgeous sculpture from renowned Chicano artist Zarco Guerrero to look over me and protect me as I write my truths will ensure the joy of winning this award will never be forgotten.”
At TFTV, Romero has been a valued theatre faculty member for over a decade. She teaches a variety of courses from Advanced Topics in Playwriting to an Introduction to Script Writing, where students are encouraged to write many short scripts to build a foundation. Her courses in Introductory and Advanced Dramaturgy focus on the global understanding of an individual work. Playwriting and Dramaturgy prepare students to be witnesses to the world in which we find ourselves. Countless mentees over the years include TFTV alumni Lance Guzman (BA Theatre Studies ’17), who was accepted into the highly competitive MFA Acting Program at CalArts School of Theater in Los Angeles, and award-winning playwright Fly Jamerson (MFA Theatre Arts, Generative Dramaturgy ’19).
Elaine Romero’s plays have been presented across the U.S. and internationally; she is also widely published and anthologized in over 50 publications. Among the highlights, her play Prosperita was commissioned and presented off-Broadway by the Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival and starred Liza Colón-Zayas (The Bear). Like Heaven received an ariZoni Theatre Award for Best Original Script. Secret Things, about the true history of Sephardic Judaism in the Southwest, was presented by 1st Stage in Virginia and was named an Outstanding Professional Theatre Production by DC Metro Theater Arts. Her banned play The Fat-Free Chicana and the Snow Cap Queen was featured in Banned Together for the Dramatists Guild Legal Defense Fund on the Broadway Podcast Network.
In 2021, the month-long RomeroFest featured her work at theatres nationally and internationally. Initiated by the Arizona Theatre Company, some of the collaborating companies included Artists Repertory Theatre (OR), Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre (AZ), InterAct Theatre Company (PA), Seven Devils New Play Foundry (ID), Winding Road Theatre Ensemble (AZ), the Justice Theater Project (NC), Teatro Travieso/Troublemaker Theater and Foro Shakespeare in Mexico City.
Revolutions/Revoluciones, in Spanish translation, was produced at the Los Angeles Theatre Center under Mexican director Bruno Bichir. The play is part of Romero’s war pentalogy, also featuring When Reason Sleeps (Headlands Center for the Arts, A-I-R, O’Neill Finalist), Graveyard of Empires (Goodman/16th St. Theatre), A Work of Art (Goodman Theatre/Chicago Dramatists, A-I-R), and Martínez in Taos (Arizona Theatre Company; workshop).
Romero’s work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Playscripts, and Simon and Schuster among others. She is a Steering Committee Member with the Latinx Theatre Commons. She has been a member of NBC’s Writers on the Verge, the CBS Writers’ Mentoring Program, and the NHMC’s Latino Writers’ Program. She is the playwright-in-residence at the Arizona Theatre Company.
The Pete C. Garcia Victoria Foundation was established in 2008 to help advance low-income communities in Arizona. Since then, close to 1,600 academic scholarships representing $1.9 million have been issued to Latine students pursuing college degrees.