The following is an original production of AZPM News.

I'm really interested in what it is to be human and us understanding how that relates to our countries, our cultures, our politics, our choices.

I believe that the future is not set, so we better do a really good job activating within ourselves what we want to have happen.

This is Speaking Personally, filmed on location at the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Mark McLemore, and today I'm joined by Elaine Romero.

You may know her as a professor in the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of Arizona, but just a few weeks ago she also got the title of a Guggenheim Fellow.

Thank you for joining us, Elaine Thank you for having me.

So I have to start this story by confessing in 1991 when I first moved to Tucson.

I came into the bus station, the old bus station location in downtown, and soon was taken by my friends to a place called Cafe Quebec.

And there there was this studious young woman who was working hard, clearly writing a doctoral paper, play, who knows.

But I see you often in those days there.

It seemed like a place where you felt comfortable to create, and you were always very focused on your work.

When I take you back to that time in your career and your life, what sort of things come to mind?

I know exactly what I was doing at the Cafe Quebec I was drinking a lot of coffee, and I was writing plays.

And in that moment, I only dreamed of this moment.

I really always believed in hard work, and I believed that if I could just access myself well enough and write well enough, that somehow that sound could be heard.

And what I was probably writing in 1991 in Cafe Quebec was my first commission by the Invisible Theater here in Tucson.

They had asked me to write a play for their audience, and I was very excited.

And I had decided to do a play that would be made up of monologues by women.

So I kept thinking of each woman running into the cafe and then telling her story, her song, through monologue.

And I would write it down.

So I was sitting in the-- I loved that window there.

I would write in the window, and I would write the monologue down.

And in a certain moment, I imagined a woman run into the cafe and go straight into the women's bathroom and lock the door.

And then she took out her foot, and she had-- and it was painted yellow because she had been filling herself in with a highlighter pen.

So I wrote the monologue, and I thought, "This is the stupidest thing that I have ever written.

I'm so embarrassed."

And I crossed it out.

And then I waited for the next character to come in so I could write the monologue, but nobody came.

And I thought, "Well, what about that woman with the yellow foot?

What about her?"

And so I tried to read my writing very carefully.

I finally was able to make it out, and I wrote it out.

And that monologue was the first thing that I ever published.

And I tell that story because I tried to kill that voice, which was me.

I think that the first creative impulse might be self-destruction because it's unfamiliar.

We don't know what this is, but I gave that person a chance, and she gave me this chance.

Do you remember what it was like seeing that monologue performed in front of an audience for the first time?

I do.

And the reaction?

Yes, it was performed by Norma Medina.

Somebody that I cared about walked out, and it was tough.

It was at the Cabaret Theatre.

But I do remember that it did hit an audience, and it always has.

And I always think it's interesting how we think if something's unfamiliar that it must be wrong, as opposed to realizing, "Oh, that might be us.

That might be our voice."

Well, I chose that moment to go back to because that's where your story began in my life, in a way.

But where did your story as a playwright truly begin for you?

My story as a writer started in childhood just from the beginning of beginning to write letters and wanting to already write poems, even before I knew the whole alphabet.

It was that strong.

It just wanted to happen from the first second.

My mother would read to us from this huge book she had of poetry.

It was real stuff.

It wasn't for children.

We became very familiar with the rhythms of language and meter and rhyme and all of that.

And that became really infused inside my body.

So I kept writing, and I would try a short story here.

I'd try a bad poem there.

And then when I was in college, my professors in the English department kept teaching plays.

And I found myself latching onto plays.

They also loved to act, so they were also in the plays.

So I'd go and see my professors in these plays.

And I just fell in love with dramatic literature first.

And then I started to go to the plays over and over and over, because there was something about the form that just would not let me go.

From the first play that I saw that I remember as a child going to see a melodrama, although my parents did take me to plays, I remember thinking that when I went to meet one of the actors at the end of the play that she was different up there than she was up close.

And I wanted to understand what that difference was.

I wanted to get underneath, like how could that be?

How could she be that way on stage and this way when I walk up next to her?

I wanted to understand that.

And I think that that curiosity led to me becoming a playwright.

One of the most interesting things that I found out about you doing research before this interview was that you're not a native Tucsonan.

I'm not.

But you might as well be.

I mean, you are so, you're, I think your spirit is so closely tied to the Sonoran desert and to the experiences of the men and particularly the women who live here, that it's hard for me to imagine you not always being a part of Tucson.

It's hard for me to imagine that as well.

My roots are New Mexican, and they go back hundreds and hundreds of years in New Mexico.

But I wasn't born there.

I was born in California, as my New Mexican family had relocated to California for economic reasons.

So I was born there.

And while I was in high school, my family relocated to Oregon.

And in my undergraduate time period, I got my degree in three years.

I just wanted to become a playwright.

I knew I finished that undergraduate degree so I could go on to graduate school.

UC Davis gave me a full ride and I went.

And in those three years, I wrote something like my first 20 plays.

I just kept writing and writing and writing.

And then I immediately relocated here.

And I definitely found my home.

I remember asking my professors about coming here and they said that's like they have the lowest number of theaters of any place.

I can't imagine you're going there.

That I think might have changed in the last 25 years or so.

It has changed a lot.

Yeah.

And I think that our community loves theater.

It keeps making theater and people find very little reason to leave anymore.

You're quoted in an interview as saying that your mother used to tell you, even when you were very young, that you had a Spanish mind.

What do you think that means?

What do you think your mother was trying to tell you about your spirit?

I love that she said that.

And I think it has to do with my understanding of both time and spirituality.

I'm very interested in the dead, something that we celebrate here in Tucson with Day of the Dead.

But I think I'm culturally infused in a way that sees not even really veil between life and death, this world and the next, my connections to my ancestors.

And I think that's the reason I resonate so strongly with Tucson.

It's a matter of course to do that here.

It's ordinary life to connect to the dead.

It's part of what we celebrate here.

And I think this is a bi-cultural community that welcomes that and feeds that.

But I just think about all the practices that I have that I do, whether it's going to El Tenerito and lighting a candle, or speaking to my grandmother in my head, or any of that, all of it feels like it's part of the Spanish mind.

But my mother probably means that she considers that an intellectual mind as well.

I would probably say that might be what she means.

But also that sometimes she thinks that when she reads my work that it feels like it could just be in Spanish.

And I feel that way too you expressed your joy over hearing your plays performed in Spanish.

Yes.

And recently, a few years ago, I had a play called, well, I originally called it Revolutions, but now I called it Revóluciones because my collaborator was from Mexico and all the people that we wanted to work with were from Mexico.

And so in the end he asked me, you know, can we do it in Spanish?

And I said, oh yeah, of course.

I just didn't imagine doing it in English and taking it from them.

So we did it in Los Angeles and we did it in Spanish.

And it was really exciting just to do the play that way.

And my friends are coming up to me and saying, don't you want to do it in English?

And I thought, no, these are my collaborators and we want to do it this way right now.

And I think that there's room for that.

Well, there are some estimates that you may have written about 120 plays at this point.

And I wonder what you have learned about yourself in terms of the themes you mentioned, life and death, but beyond that, the border, fathers and daughters, tell me what comes up when you set before a blank page to create a new story.

I like to think that beginner's mind really matters.

I like to think that I have to approach each play as if I haven't written one, because I want each play to tell me the form that it wants to have.

I want each play to confess itself to me.

And I don't want to beat that play into submission.

I want to listen to that play.

So I've written a war pentology, five plays about the US at war.

I've written a border trilogy, in addition to multiple plays that have to do with the border, including the one that I'm working on right now, Diablo Sakhi for the Guggenheim.

So just, I am very drawn to familial relationships.

And I'm very, but now in this moment in my career, I'm very drawn to the idea of small little human beings against the background of history.

And recently, I found myself with colleagues saying, I think I might be one of those tiny human beings right now against the background of history.

So maybe I was writing about us all along.

A feeling that many can relate to.

You were also quoted as saying that you still haven't uncovered all of the different pathways that plays open up to you that they offer.

Yes, I find myself playing with structure.

I love to play with time.

I'm interested in the folding of time and the past, present and future all at once.

I have a play called Hoverland.

And when I wrote that play, I thought it's the vertical history of the border, you know, that this idea that things happen all at once, and that if we can just fold things well enough, they can illuminate each other.

And maybe we can change things.

Maybe things aren't as fixed as we think if we start to think about the folding of time.

And I'm very obsessed with that as a concept.

And that's definitely part of what I'm working on right now with Diablo Sakhi is looking ahead into the future, not just into the past and the present, but really prognosticating in a sense into the future to think about those potentialities, what could happen, what might be, what might this United States look like?

And how can I put this in a play?

Both, maybe it's a warning.

Maybe it's an inspiration about what we can do.

I don't know yet.

And I don't want to know.

I love to keep myself in not knowing.

And I don't think that's a value of mine that will change quickly.

Because form, I could think about many plays of mine, where I sat down with scene cards and I shuffled time.

And I decided, Oh, I think I want to start with the ending or I think I want to start here.

And I love using the placement of scenes to really illuminate action, theme, all of it.

Because if I move a scene over here, the play means this.

And if I move it over there, it means that.

And I just find that really delightful as a writer.

I've heard of playwrights writing on cards before and then numbering them and sorting them in different ways to see how the story progressed.

Something influential on me was reading that Kurt Vonnegut learned that he liked to map his novels or outline his novels on wallpaper.

And he would unroll six, eight feet of wallpaper and take crayons and assign each character a different color crayon.

And then this character's life begins here and goes to here, but then this character begins here and goes to here.

And then he would think about, okay, the convergent moments.

And he would draw circles and it's like, okay, I'm going to, I need to write about this.

I need to write about this.

I need to write about this.

So I'm just curious what other techniques you may have used or have people taught you over the years that would add to your ability to think in an unconventional way about the process of storytelling.

Well, I would say given what you just described, I will sometimes deal with different layers of reality in a play.

And so I will use the cards to help me understand how to track the storyline of that layer of reality.

And so that's how I've used them.

And I put them on walls, I put them on the floor, you know, I get my collaborators in, we do color coding.

So it sounds similar to what you're saying about Kurt Vonnegut.

But I will confess that one time I was writing a play and I was at this place on the beach.

It's a place where I've written a lot of plays.

And I decided that these seashells would represent the scenes.

And I actually moved the seashells around to help me figure out how to structure the play.

And I was pretty sure I'd lost my mind.

So that happened.

I think that's a novel and interesting way to map it out because you're giving your characters a special kind of characteristic by identifying with them as different seashells, different colors and shapes.

So it makes sense to me.

Have you ever run into a genre that you found particularly difficult to write in?

Now, I'm thinking about the fact that I really, I have written a couple of novels.

I have written some fiction.

I haven't published my novels.

I don't find fiction necessarily hard, but I don't think I understand it in the way that I do plays.

I think that, I think I always approach everything as that I'm a writer.

I haven't tried to write music, for example.

So maybe I haven't written lyrics yet, but I would say that I believe I can write in any genre.

Maybe that's cocky.

That's what I think.

Like I believe in myself and I believe I'm a writer.

And that if that story needs to be in that genre, then I better learn that genre so that story can have its life.

That's my job.

Yeah.

I don't see naivety or whatever it was you just said I see eagerness on your part to do that.

Okay.

So let's talk about the recognition that you've now received.

So I know that the Guggenheim Award is something that artists from all over the country apply to each year and you applied for it before, but what was different about the last application?

What's fascinating to me is that I was an occasional applicant.

I would get it in when I could, and then sometimes I wouldn't get it in.

And I will say that last year when I applied, I think it's around September, October, I remember thinking, I need to be more mindful about how I do this.

I need to be more intentional about receiving this.

I've known other people who have received it.

I believe I could receive it.

I have a large body of work.

The Arizona Theater Company did Romero Fest and they did 17 of my pieces with international partners.

I know I have the work and how do I present it in such a way that shows a committee or a group of jurors that I'm worthy of receiving this in order to do this next play.

So I started by really thinking a lot about what my samples would be and showing a range of what I do.

And I felt really good about my samples.

And of course, the main piece is the play itself and just the urgency of writing Diablo Sakhi, which means 'the devils are here,' a reference to William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here.

I think the Devils are here.

And I think Passion is what sells any grant or fellowship application and I have it for this play.

But I heard that there was one small square piece of paper that felt crucial in the process.

Yes, there was.

I have an Altar at home that my husband built and I put a little piece of paper that said Guggenheim winner on it and I stuck it on there.

And every it sits right outside my office and every time I would walk into my office to work, I would see that little piece of paper reminding me that that I was imagining that happening.

And I think that worked.

It seems almost like a vision board concept, but also put on an altar that could be a transmitter.

Rather than it just being on a piece of poster board in your garage.

This was something you were a message you were sending out.

Because it has the power of your ancestors.

It has a power of everybody who's ever loved you.

It has the power of all those who wrote before you.

My own teacher, María Irene Fornés, who I recently published a play about her and her partner.

She was a Guggenheim winner and to feel like being part of a lineage and never knowing when you get to partake in that and knowing that that will continue that there will be a future one.

One of my students at some point and I'm happy for them ahead of time when that happens.

Well, I'm sure everybody when they talk about this recognition with you wants to know the exact circumstance of when you found out and what went through your mind and your heart at that time.

I received an email and the first word was congratulations.

I said, "Oh, because I thought I was getting a rejection."

You open those emails, you're like, "Because it says something like update on status."

You think, "Oh, that doesn't sound good.

That sounds like the beginning of a letdown."

It said congratulations, but then the next sentence said something that you've been nominated for a Guggenheim fellowship.

I thought, "Oh, I don't know what that means."

Then it says, "It won't be official until the board meets on April 15th."

April 15th was about a month away.

I thought, "Oh, okay.

What do I do now?"

I knew that the dean that I work with, Hasan Elahi, was a former winner.

And so I knew that he might be a good person to connect with about this.

So I knew he was traveling and he was actually in China at the time.

I said, "The next time that you land on Earth, call me and I can find it in him that this had happened."

He knew exactly about the confusing email because apparently they do wait until they meet and it's not official until they meet and they reserve the right not to give it to you.

Of course, I was pretty anxious for that even though I've never done anything wrong.

I was still like, "Oh, no.

I don't know what to do.

Did I say something political?"

Of course, I said something political.

I'm a political playwright.

They know that.

That's the work that they're funding, so that's okay.

It was all fine, but you have that moment of just not knowing.

But at every moment, I saw myself walking into this moment.

And I'm so excited to have this connected to me.

I have to admit, even though this might sound really geeky, I'm also really excited for the University of Arizona because they've absolutely invested in me and the idea that they will always... They actually have a page where they list the winners and it goes back to the beginning of the Guggenheim and your name will always be there, whether you stay at the university, whether you leave, and they have a little code that says they were here when they received it.

I get that credit forever, and so do they, and I think that's just kind of great.

To those who may not understand what a Guggenheim Fellowship entails, can you give me some idea of how life-changing this is going to be for you?

Sometimes, I think I'm still absorbing what that is.

The life-changing part is that it is a level of recognition of excellence.

It says you work with excellence, that you bring excellence in your work, and when people hear your name and they attach it to that, they give your work consideration.

They receive it in a different way, and I feel I have written my way to that receptivity, and I am so thrilled to think about that idea that people will know that I'm serious and know that my work is to be taken seriously.

I will use it at every moment to draw attention to the work because the plays exist on their own, right?

These characters exist on their own and these stories, and I'm being given this privilege that I will lend this privilege to my community, to my students, to the University of Arizona, and to my plays, and I'm hoping that we can ride that privilege and tell the story of this place and this border, of the wars that we're in, of this democracy, and if we can do all that, then I will have done my job.

Well, I cannot think of a better way to end this interview than with those words.

So thank you for sharing them with us, Elaine.

Congratulations on your recognition, and many, many of us will be looking forward to that next play.

Thank you so very much, Mark.

Thank you.

For AZPM, this has been Speaking Personally.

I'm Mark McLemore, joined by Elaine Romero.

Thank you for watching.