Theatre Roscius is an independent, Los Angeles-based experimental performance & visual arts physical research theatre company founded on the idea that the body can heal through devised and physical storytelling. Theatre Roscius believes these stories must be shared and physically released. The simple act of sharing, when individuals gather to explore the many facets of being human, ultimately reveals our hidden similarities, and people otherwise easily mistaken for strangers, foreigners, or outcasts, when put together in one room, can find they have always known one another. Theatre Roscius aims to create innovative, relevant, and compassionate physical theatre.
At Theatre Roscius we produce original devised work that focuses on and enriches the mental and physical health and lives of women of all kinds. We seek to educate, support, and inspire female theatre artists at all levels of artistic development in order to produce theatre that enriches the mental + physical well-being of Black women and women of all backgrounds.
"I was instantly drawn into the whirlpool ahead of me, as all three women hypnotically circled the stage. Steady and silent tears streamed down my face, which I attributed to sheer fatigue, until I realized that the entire audience had been equally moved by what they were vicariously experiencing. I was transported to a different place entirely; specifically, any black box theater in San Francisco, where art and activism go hand-in-hand.
I was reminded of exactly why I love theater in the first place.
I was reminded of exactly why I love theater in the first place.
Theatre Roscius's focuses and creates physical pieces that reflect on the present, past and future social issues facing the lives of women. Theatre Roscius merges physical theatre with performance art using the body as the main vehicle to understand how generational trauma, grief, memory, mental health, and joy live in the body via the Black female perspective. We investigate physically, using movement to see how memories, trauma, and isolation live in the body. Do we pass down memories from one generation to the next? How does this exhibit itself gesturally into the lives of women who carry these stories in their bodies? Our work digs deep, and unflinchingly reflects upon the emotional lives of women. We use movement to explore our curiosities: fragility, femininity, security, tension and fear within the female story. Theatre Roscius's work is bold, brave, uncompromising, yet always honest and authentic.
Our short film Dear Nina was awarded the juror's choice award at the Women of African Descent Film Festival for Outstanding Achievement 2015. Our short film Out of the Dark / Into the Light had its U.S. premiere in 2018 at the 56th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Theatre Roscius's new movement play Medea Refracted will premiere in the Spring of 2025/2026.
Our work is dedicated to the amplification of avant-garde theatre by Black women, and women of color locally and globally. We are actively in the continuum of building and re-imagining what theatre is in Los Angeles and throughout America by focusing on the empowerment of women. We engage the body on a cellular and somatic level using movement as the catalyst to healing. The work we create is informed, inspired, and in service to the women in our community, artists, and our audiences.
