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Memory, history, and culture collide with the starlit rooftop dreams of a myth-inspired character as Soledad and her partner, Hailstorm, redefine family on their own terms after the death of their eldest son in Iraq. blu, steeped in poetic realism and contemporary politics, challenges us to try to imagine a time before war.
Selected as the winner of the 2010 Yale Drama competition from more than 950 submissions, Virginia Grise's play blu takes place in the present but looks back on the not too distant past through a series of prayers, rituals, and dreams. Contest judge David Hare commented, "Virginia Grise is a blazingly talented writer, and her play blu stays with you a long time after you've read it." Noting that 2010 was a banner year for women playwrights, he added, "Women's writing for the theatre is stronger and more eloquent than it has ever been."
- GenresPlays
80 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
6 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Virginia Grise
8 books12 followersFrom panzas to prisons, from street theatre to large-scale multimedia performances, from princess to chafa – Virginia Grise writes plays that are set in bars without windows, barrio rooftops, and lesbian bedrooms. Her play blu was the winner of the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award and was recently published by Yale University Press. Her other published work includes The Panza Monologues co-written with Irma Mayorga (University of Texas Press) and an edited volume of Zapatista communiqués titled Conversations with Don Durito (Autonomedia Press).
Virginia is a Time Warner Fellow Alum at the Women's Project Lab, a recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing, the Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, the Loft Literary Center’s Spoken Word Fellowship and Pregones Theatre’s Asuncion Award for Queer Playwriting. Her work has been produced, commissioned and/or developed at the Alliance Theatre, Bihl Haus Arts, Company of Angels, Cornerstone Theatre, Highways Performance Space, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwright’s Center, Pregones Theatre, REDCAT, Victory Gardens and Yale Repertory Theatre. She has performed both nationally and internationally at venues including the Jose Marti Catedra in Havana, Cuba and the University of Butare in Rwanda, Africa.
As a curator, artist and activist she has facilitated organizing efforts among women, immigrant, Chicano, working class and queer youth. Virginia has taught writing for performance at the university level, as a public school teacher, in community centers and in the juvenile correction system. She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Virginia is a Time Warner Fellow Alum at the Women's Project Lab, a recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing, the Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, the Loft Literary Center’s Spoken Word Fellowship and Pregones Theatre’s Asuncion Award for Queer Playwriting. Her work has been produced, commissioned and/or developed at the Alliance Theatre, Bihl Haus Arts, Company of Angels, Cornerstone Theatre, Highways Performance Space, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwright’s Center, Pregones Theatre, REDCAT, Victory Gardens and Yale Repertory Theatre. She has performed both nationally and internationally at venues including the Jose Marti Catedra in Havana, Cuba and the University of Butare in Rwanda, Africa.
As a curator, artist and activist she has facilitated organizing efforts among women, immigrant, Chicano, working class and queer youth. Virginia has taught writing for performance at the university level, as a public school teacher, in community centers and in the juvenile correction system. She holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from the California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 16, 2018
BEAUTIFUL. Moving. Compelling. I read it in one sitting, and grateful the always amazing Professor Jennifer Flores Sternad assigned this to me for my very first Latine Studies class, in Spring of 2015.
June 2, 2025
Blu by Victoria Grise is a play rich in symbolism and emotional complexity, exploring the struggles of a Latine family attempting to escape the grip of generational trauma through the transformative power of love.
The symbolic weight of each character’s name immediately established layers of meaning that echoed throughout the play. Soledad, mother of three, carries a name that translates to “solitude” or “loneliness,” reflecting both her emotional state and her receding role in the family. Hailstorm, Soledad’s two-spirit partner, embodies Mesoamerican mythology, queerness, and gender fluidity. Their presence offers a kind of love that transcends Western binaries, rooted in ancestry and spiritual knowledge. Eme, the father of Soledad’s children, draws associations with the Mexican mafia (La Eme), but may also provide an avenue to perform the “M” in “masculine” or “man.” He symbolizes patriarchal power, hypermasculinity, and the contradictions of masculine love, at once protective and oppressive.
The children’s names are equally significant. Blu, the eldest son, reflects his name through his gang affiliation (possibly the Crips as he is often depicted doing the C-walk or crip walk), bleak life prospects, and ultimate fate. His character serves as a sobering portrait of young men seeking to escape cycles of violence. Gemini, his sister, appears attuned and open to spiritual dreams and celestial intuition—her name suggesting a connection to the astrological meaning of duality as her body sits on earth, but her head flies amongst the orbs she imagines. Finally, Lunático, often called Luna (or “moon” in Spanish), exhibits the madness and lunacy of his upbringing and seems doomed to repeat it. These layered names don’t just define the characters—they set the tone for a story steeped in metaphor and ancestral resonance.
Just as the names carry symbolic meaning, the dialogue of Blu deepens the surreal, almost mystical quality of the play. The cyclical nature of trauma and survival is echoed not only in the characters’ lives but also in the play's structure, as reflected in the dialogue. One of the most powerful techniques Grise employs is the repetition of lines by different characters in different moments, often in response to trauma. These mirrored utterances create a haunting chorus that transcends time, emphasizing how generational pain reverberates and repeats. Characters speak across timelines, collapsing past, present, and future into a single emotional experience. In this way, Grise’s dialogue pulses like an incantation, with lines repeated across time, events, and characters. This rhythm creates a liminal atmosphere—part dream, part nightmare—where the lines between past and present, real and imagined, blur and recycle the traumatic essence of their reality. In this way, the play invites the audience into the family’s cultural ritual, with its emotional and spiritual echoes reverberating through the characters’ lives.
As someone who grew up in San Antonio's hood, I found Grise’s dialogue both deceptively simple and psychologically weighty. Her use of choppy, hood language felt authentic in pattern, while being accurate in capturing the gravity, intimacy, and pain of marginalized communities without pretension. This was balanced by the poetically charged language that conveyed real-life traumas in a raw yet spiritually painful way, offering an intensely personal resonance.
This gang element displayed by the males in this play, while thematically important, presented a tension for me. On one hand, it risked reinforcing harmful stereotypes of Latines as inherently tied to violence and crime. On the other hand, having grown up in the 1990s and early 2000s, I can’t deny the reality of gang presence in our communities. Though I’d like to believe that era is behind us, violence ebbs and flows in response to broader social and economic determinants. It remains a deeply rooted part of some lived experiences.
In reflecting on this, I’ve come to see gangsterism as, in part, a desperate grasp at brotherhood and agency in a fractured world. It’s often a way for marginalized young men to assert identity, claim power, and create a synthetic familial structure where none exists. In such environments, survival can seem to depend on a binary choice: to terrorize or be terrorized. These are the perceived options when systemic support is absent.
Due to the play’s cultural and emotional depth, I consider Blu an excellent text for an ethnic studies course. It offers rich material for discussions of Latinidad, class, language, and criminality—not just in terms of participation but also the consequences of being caught in proximity to systems of violence. Additionally, the play provides fertile ground for exploring gender and love, particularly through Soledad’s relationships, which encompass both heteronormative and queer relational dynamics.
The contrast between Soledad’s relationships with Hailstorm and Eme captures this beautifully. Hailstorm represents a queer form of love—spiritually grounded and emotionally generous, yet constantly rejected. Eme’s version of love, however, is filtered through patriarchy and dominance. Initially protective, his affections shift into control and violence, especially as his gang affiliation escalates into direct threats to his family’s safety. Soledad’s navigation of these two dynamics—one rooted in aspirational liberation, the other in control—offers a powerful critique of heteronormativity and traditional gender roles.
The incorporation of Hailstorm’s indigeneity further complicates the layers and models of love reflected in this play. They are not only adverse to traditional models of gender and sexuality but also to Western mythology and meaning-making. In many Latine works, the effort to reconnect with Indigenous heritage can feel forced—perhaps because of how much colonization has distanced us from those roots. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to patch in erased history without knowing how. But Blu integrates indigeneity more seamlessly. Hailstorm, as a two-spirit character, naturally embodies this ancestral connection, serving as a bridge between those cultural and storied worlds without feeling misplaced or decorative.
Ultimately, Blu is a powerful and provocative piece that blends poetry, politics, and culture within the confines of a personal Latine family history. Its exploration of identity, love, trauma, and survival is both culturally specific and humanistically resonant. I found it to be an emotionally charged read, and I would love to see it brought to life on stage—spoken, chanted, and embodied.
The symbolic weight of each character’s name immediately established layers of meaning that echoed throughout the play. Soledad, mother of three, carries a name that translates to “solitude” or “loneliness,” reflecting both her emotional state and her receding role in the family. Hailstorm, Soledad’s two-spirit partner, embodies Mesoamerican mythology, queerness, and gender fluidity. Their presence offers a kind of love that transcends Western binaries, rooted in ancestry and spiritual knowledge. Eme, the father of Soledad’s children, draws associations with the Mexican mafia (La Eme), but may also provide an avenue to perform the “M” in “masculine” or “man.” He symbolizes patriarchal power, hypermasculinity, and the contradictions of masculine love, at once protective and oppressive.
The children’s names are equally significant. Blu, the eldest son, reflects his name through his gang affiliation (possibly the Crips as he is often depicted doing the C-walk or crip walk), bleak life prospects, and ultimate fate. His character serves as a sobering portrait of young men seeking to escape cycles of violence. Gemini, his sister, appears attuned and open to spiritual dreams and celestial intuition—her name suggesting a connection to the astrological meaning of duality as her body sits on earth, but her head flies amongst the orbs she imagines. Finally, Lunático, often called Luna (or “moon” in Spanish), exhibits the madness and lunacy of his upbringing and seems doomed to repeat it. These layered names don’t just define the characters—they set the tone for a story steeped in metaphor and ancestral resonance.
Just as the names carry symbolic meaning, the dialogue of Blu deepens the surreal, almost mystical quality of the play. The cyclical nature of trauma and survival is echoed not only in the characters’ lives but also in the play's structure, as reflected in the dialogue. One of the most powerful techniques Grise employs is the repetition of lines by different characters in different moments, often in response to trauma. These mirrored utterances create a haunting chorus that transcends time, emphasizing how generational pain reverberates and repeats. Characters speak across timelines, collapsing past, present, and future into a single emotional experience. In this way, Grise’s dialogue pulses like an incantation, with lines repeated across time, events, and characters. This rhythm creates a liminal atmosphere—part dream, part nightmare—where the lines between past and present, real and imagined, blur and recycle the traumatic essence of their reality. In this way, the play invites the audience into the family’s cultural ritual, with its emotional and spiritual echoes reverberating through the characters’ lives.
As someone who grew up in San Antonio's hood, I found Grise’s dialogue both deceptively simple and psychologically weighty. Her use of choppy, hood language felt authentic in pattern, while being accurate in capturing the gravity, intimacy, and pain of marginalized communities without pretension. This was balanced by the poetically charged language that conveyed real-life traumas in a raw yet spiritually painful way, offering an intensely personal resonance.
This gang element displayed by the males in this play, while thematically important, presented a tension for me. On one hand, it risked reinforcing harmful stereotypes of Latines as inherently tied to violence and crime. On the other hand, having grown up in the 1990s and early 2000s, I can’t deny the reality of gang presence in our communities. Though I’d like to believe that era is behind us, violence ebbs and flows in response to broader social and economic determinants. It remains a deeply rooted part of some lived experiences.
In reflecting on this, I’ve come to see gangsterism as, in part, a desperate grasp at brotherhood and agency in a fractured world. It’s often a way for marginalized young men to assert identity, claim power, and create a synthetic familial structure where none exists. In such environments, survival can seem to depend on a binary choice: to terrorize or be terrorized. These are the perceived options when systemic support is absent.
Due to the play’s cultural and emotional depth, I consider Blu an excellent text for an ethnic studies course. It offers rich material for discussions of Latinidad, class, language, and criminality—not just in terms of participation but also the consequences of being caught in proximity to systems of violence. Additionally, the play provides fertile ground for exploring gender and love, particularly through Soledad’s relationships, which encompass both heteronormative and queer relational dynamics.
The contrast between Soledad’s relationships with Hailstorm and Eme captures this beautifully. Hailstorm represents a queer form of love—spiritually grounded and emotionally generous, yet constantly rejected. Eme’s version of love, however, is filtered through patriarchy and dominance. Initially protective, his affections shift into control and violence, especially as his gang affiliation escalates into direct threats to his family’s safety. Soledad’s navigation of these two dynamics—one rooted in aspirational liberation, the other in control—offers a powerful critique of heteronormativity and traditional gender roles.
The incorporation of Hailstorm’s indigeneity further complicates the layers and models of love reflected in this play. They are not only adverse to traditional models of gender and sexuality but also to Western mythology and meaning-making. In many Latine works, the effort to reconnect with Indigenous heritage can feel forced—perhaps because of how much colonization has distanced us from those roots. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to patch in erased history without knowing how. But Blu integrates indigeneity more seamlessly. Hailstorm, as a two-spirit character, naturally embodies this ancestral connection, serving as a bridge between those cultural and storied worlds without feeling misplaced or decorative.
Ultimately, Blu is a powerful and provocative piece that blends poetry, politics, and culture within the confines of a personal Latine family history. Its exploration of identity, love, trauma, and survival is both culturally specific and humanistically resonant. I found it to be an emotionally charged read, and I would love to see it brought to life on stage—spoken, chanted, and embodied.
April 17, 2014
Absolutely fantastic. It makes a lot more sense if you have an understanding of Mesoamerican myths, especially of siblings Huitzilopochtli and Coyolxauhqui. Actually, it doesn't make more sense, it just becomes much more complex and interesting, and explains some of the repeated phrases and symbology presented by the characters. Deserves at least 2-3 reads. Quick read, too!
August 25, 2022
Unpopular opinion but I feel like the author is trying to be quirky but is trying a bit too hard. It's written like a millennial trying to be cool. Granted, I loved the experimentation with the different styles and how the story touches on so many themes and manages to weave them together, but it's trying too hard. Also who puts "old skool" with a "k" in the character list... And the names are ... a bit tacky...
November 28, 2023
eme: you do what you do and you gotta live with the consequences.
soledad: or you do it different, you know. (19)
gemini: please don’t tell me you don’t dream. sometimes the dreams, the dreams is all we got, bro. (28)
gemini: why do we always end up killing each other and our dreams? (47)
cazadora de astros remedios varo.
soledad: or you do it different, you know. (19)
gemini: please don’t tell me you don’t dream. sometimes the dreams, the dreams is all we got, bro. (28)
gemini: why do we always end up killing each other and our dreams? (47)
cazadora de astros remedios varo.
October 10, 2024
I’m not sure if I’m just missing something because I read this play, and I’m sure I would like it more if I saw it performed, but this just didn’t do it for me. Some nice lines and moments, I understand what we’re getting at, but as a play just for reading I do not recommend.
July 2, 2019
Play.
"you're nobody till somebody kills you."
"you're nobody till somebody kills you."
August 11, 2020
Sumptuous language, and an unforgettable play.
March 6, 2023
stunning. love the language and the theatricality of it, & it doesn't help that I got to see a beautiful production before reading
Read
July 23, 2024wow
March 29, 2023
This play had no right to make me cry like that.
December 7, 2014
It's no wonder that Blu won the 2010 Yale Drama competition. This is an amazing play. It spells out the tale of one Latino family, wondrously balancing both the lyrical and the gritty in its dialogue. There's some jumping in time, but it all weaves together well. Additionally, I love how Grise is able to use multiple people speaking along with each other (a chorus) in a striking way.
May 18, 2015
Pretty different than any other play I had read but I loved the way it was written. Very lyrical and poetic and it brought so many things into the conversation. Makes me want to read more of her works. :)
Might lengthen this review later~
Might lengthen this review later~
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews