Beto O'Byrne

Beto O'Byrne is a multiethnic playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He has written 14 full-length plays which been produced in major cities including New York City, Austin, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. He has been nominated for numerous awards and has participated in playwright festivals across the United States. He is perhaps best known for founding the multiethnic theater collective Radical Evolution.

Biographical Information

Beto O'Byrne was born and raised in White Oak, a small city in the northeastern part of Texas. Ethnically, he self-identifies "as a mixed-Latino of Mexican and Irish heritage from the complicated state of Tejas". In 2002, he received a bachelor's degree in Writing from Northwestern State University, and in 2010 graduated from the University of Southern California where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dramatic Writing. After graduate school, O'Byrne began working as the artistic director at the Austin Latino Theater Alliance (ALTA). He greatly expanded the organization, creating the ALTA Performing Arts Showcase and an "annual Chicano holiday theatrical" that brings together many of Austin's Chicano community members, organizations, and artists. While working with ALTA, O'Byrne also directed his first major production, La Pastorela.

In 2011, he moved to Brooklyn, New York where he co-founded the Radical Evolution Performance Group with fellow theatre maker Meropi Peponides. Since 2011, O'Byrne has lived in Brooklyn working at Radical Evolution, producing and writing theater pieces. In 2015, O'Byrne became a founding member of La Coopertiva of NYC Latin@ Theater Artists. As of 2017, he continues to work with Radical Evolution.

Notable works

Among the Sand and Smog (2006) Clover and Cactus (2010) Stumble and Fall (2010) Into the Pines (2011) year: 365 poems (2012) To Live is to Fly (2014) The Golden Drum Year (2015) Loving and Loving (201) The play was produced by the Cellar Theater at the San Pedro Playhouse in 2008. Since then, it has not been produced on a large scale.

Clover and Cactus

O'Byrne's 2010 play Clover and Cactus was commissioned by the Watts Village Theater Company (WVTC). The play tells the story of the St. Patrick's Battalion, a battalion of Irish-American immigrant soldiers who fought in the Mexican–American War. Theater critic Karen Jean Martinson stated in her review, "As the characters sounded the battle cry in the final moments of the play, I felt the urge to yell out in solidarity with them, with the hope that we can forge such bonds across the lines that currently divide us".

The Golden Drum Year

His most recent production, The Golden Drum Year (2015), is an adaptation of 365 poems written every day during O'Byrne's first year living in New York. The play is centered around the character Eugene, a young man who has recently moved to New York City and the people and experiences he encounters during his first year living there. This coming of age story was described by critic Rachel Abrams as "an artsy, expressionistic love poem to a diverse and dynamic NYC, and to anyone who’s searched for their purpose and their people in a new city". Critic Michelle DeBella writes that the play "assures us that despair is only temporary and if we wait it out, joy is just around the bend". The play was developed by Beto O'Byrne and Meropi Peponides, directed by Simón Adinia Hanukai, and produced by Radical Evolution. Its first staging ran through October 2015 at University Settlement in New York City.