Romero
The world premiere of Romero was staged as a ritual container for memory, rupture, and spiritual reckoning rather than a literal historical reconstruction.
- Year
- 2025
- Company
- University of Missouri
- Project
- Drama
- Location
- Columbia, MO
When I first read Xiomara Cornejo's Romero, I knew the scenic design had to hold more than history; it had to hold ghosts. Set in the final hours of Archbishop Oscar Romero's life, the play bends time and invites the dead to speak. It is not realism. It is ritual.
The world emerged from the tension between sacredness and rupture. A cruciform arch stood at the center, part cathedral and part memory portal, while a fractured platform and textured black floor anchored the action in both earth and spirit.
The play's nonlinear structure required a space that could shift between beach, church, war zone, and afterlife without literal transitions. The design left room for silence, projection, masks, and witness, allowing the room to carry spiritual reckoning as much as image.
Creative team
- Playwright
- Xiomara Cornejo
- Director
- David Crespy
- Scenic Designer
- Brandon PT Davis
- Costume Designer
- Mark Vital
- Lighting Designer
- Vincete Williams
- Sound Designer
- Michael Webb & Joseph Seevers
- Projection Design
- Cherie Sampson
- Puppetry
- Lil Lamberta & Claire Bronchick
Links
Million Dollar Quartet
The Merry Wives of Windsor Cove
The Glass Menagerie
Bell, Book, and Candle
Head Over Heels
Romeo & Juliet
Much Ado About Nothing
¡LOTERIA: GAME ON!
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Romero
Urinetown
An Inspector Calls
All's Well That Ends Well
Little Shop of Horrors
Tomás and the Library Lady
The Penelopiad
Company
American Idiot
Parliament Square
An Enemy of the People
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Boeing, Boeing
The Bald Soprano
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
The Man of La Mancha
Dial “M” for Murder
All My Sons
Last Train to Nibroc
Rich Girl