Anne García-Romero

She/Her

Website: www.annegarciaromero.com

Location:

South Bend/Mishawaka, Indiana

Sandboxes played in:

Playwright + Educator

Degrees & Certifications: 

MFA in Playwriting, Yale School of Drama

Ph.D. in Theater Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Affiliations:

Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theater at the University of Notre Dame

Alumna of The Goodman Theater Playwrights Unit, Chicago Dramatists and New Dramatists

Founding member of Latinx Theatre Commons

Fornés Institute member

What do you teach:

Playwriting and Theater Studies

Teaching Philosophy, in a nutshell:

As a teacher of playwriting, I empower my students to hone their unique voices as playwrights. I also emphasize the development of their analytical as well as intuitive skills. I encourage them to embrace artistic excellence, be good listeners and supportive of their fellows. I base many of my in-class writing exercises on my training with María Irene Fornés (1930-2018), which utilize visualization, drawing and found materials to create characters as an entry point to developing a new play. I also expose my students to a range of culturally and aesthetically diverse playwrights as models to inspire their writing. 

Most memorable performance:

Every time I am in the audience for a production of one of my plays, it is memorable, inspiring and illuminating.

Most embarrassing performance moment:

I feel embarrassed when aspects of a play get away from me during a difficult production process. 

Something we wouldn’t know if you didn’t tell us:

As a child, I was an award winning guitarist and performer in Massachusetts, where I grew up, culminating in an appearance on a local TV talent show, Community Auditions, on which I won a large trophy for singing and playing a song that I wrote about the miracle of live theater. The refrain of that song is "Only the miracle of the stage can come over you, and only it can change you." My twelve year old self somehow knew that the path before her would lead to a life in the theater. Recently, I've begun to reconnect to my childhood love of music. We'll see where it leads me next.