Christian St. Croix
● About
“Bio?”
Christian St. Croix was born in Evanston, Illinois, though he considers Sacramento, California his true hometown because it’s where he threw his first punch and kissed his first boy. He now makes his home in San Diego, creating lo-fi, slice-of-life stories salted with strange wonders that reflect his voice as a queer, Black playwright. The first in his family to work in the arts, St. Croix came up without the opportunity for higher education. His roots are in the people who worked the campus cafeterias and cleaned the classrooms after the college kids left. He discovered playwriting later in life and made it his way of honoring the ghosts, dreamers, worker bees, and lovers from the fringe of society who shaped him.
St. Croix’s breakout play Monsters of the American Cinema has traveled the country, earning praise from the Los Angeles Times for its “exhilarating freedom” and “capacious empathy.” Along the way, he’s earned the Dominic Orlando and Carlo Annoni International Playwriting Awards, with work honored by the O’Neill, the Craig Noel Awards, and the San Diego Fringe.
His other plays roam across genres and landscapes: We Are the Forgotten Beasts, a modern Western set at a Mojave motel; ZACH, a sun-soaked ’90s comedy hailed by The Seattle Times for its “multiple layers”; and We Lovers, a lantern-lit romantic anthology the Union-Tribune called “mesmerizing.” St. Croix continues to create for theatres that champion bold, unflinching voices, including Rogue Machine, ArtsWest, and Diversionary.
Awards &
Production History
● Selected Plays
Fights, Feelings, Finales
Monsters of the American Cinema
“St. Croix has written these characters with unflinching honesty. There’s grit in his depiction of their battered lives and capacious empathy in the way he honors their impressive resilience.”
— Los Angeles Times
“There’s plenty to admire in St. Croix’s writing, from sly jokes slipped in sideways among his naturalistic language to his use of a simple but effective motif of monster movies and their true villains.”
— The Seattle Times
“…a funny, touching story of the monsters within… moving and cleverly written…”
— San Diego Union-Tribune
After his husband's death, Remy Washington, a Black man, inherits a drive-in movie theater and takes on the unexpected responsibility of raising his late husband’s straight, white teenage son, Pup. The two form a bond over their shared love of classic monster movies, but when Remy discovers Pup’s cruelty toward a gay classmate, their connection begins to fracture, and the real horrors start to emerge. Monsters of the American Cinema is a haunting, funny, and unexpectedly tender tale of fatherhood and loss that the Los Angeles Times hails as "exhilarating."
Read the script on NPX
“There are multiple layers to St. Croix’s story... I admit, I was trapped by this ’90s nostalgia trip, and I left ready for the next episode.”
— The Seattle Times
“A loving throwback to the teen sitcoms of the ’90s.”
— The San Diego Union-Tribune
“A witty, nostalgic, and challenging piece.”
— ArtsWave
A satirical comedy that lovingly skewers the popular tropes of the 90s teen sitcom, ZACH introduces us to the lives and loves of two teens of color at an affluent, majority-white Southern Californian high school. P.J., a lovesick surfer boy, and Gina, a budding fashionista, are overjoyed when they're invited into the inner circle of Zach, the white, charismatic, prank-happy new kid at school. But when Zach plans a prank that goes too far, P.J. and Gina must race to stop him before it's too late - and along the way, learn to see their peers, and themselves, with fresh eyes.
Read the script on NPX
ZACH
“For those not familiar with St. Croix, he’s a much-in-demand Black queer playwright who tells poetry-sprinkled stories inspired by his own childhood and the people in his life. Like many of St. Croix’s other plays, We Lovers is sprinkled with ghosts, monsters, and the supernatural.”
— The San Diego Union-Tribune
“St. Croix’s writing is beautifully evocative and poetic. His imagery is lush, lyrical, and sometimes demands patience and close listening; in return, it rewards the reader with stories that feel at once intimate and epic.”
— Broadway World San Diego
In the woods outside a small town, four young locals gather in a moonlit clearing to tell love stories that blur the line between the ordinary and the otherworldly. By lantern light, they share tales of a man who falls for a fallen angel, a woman who crosses a desert of monsters for someone she lost, a final girl who makes the ultimate sacrifice, and two sweethearts racing against a falling sky. We Lovers blends slice-of-life storytelling with homespun magic, telling quiet tales of heroes and dreamers, friends and lovers.
Read the script on NPX
We Lovers
O’Neill Finalist Seeking World Premiere:
Archie has always been responsible, shaping his life around small comforts and a quiet plan to open a bookstore filled with fantasy novels and kindergarten art. Just days before it opens, his stepbrother Nick calls from the bottom of a drug spiral that has dragged him across California, and Archie drops everything to bring him home.
On the road back to Sacramento, they spend a night at a Mojave Desert motel, where they meet Bree, a grieving housekeeper clinging to her father’s stories, and Lolo, a rodeo cowboy chasing a future that may never come. Over the course of a single night, the four slip into the strange and fantastical worlds they once ruled, childhood worlds of winged lions, pirate queens, space rangers, and alien sidekicks. But even the most beautiful imagined worlds may not be enough to protect them from what waits in the tall grass.
We Are the Forgotten Beasts, an O’Neill Finalist, is a tender, offbeat Americana odyssey about the beasts we create and the ones we become.
Development:
2025 - Reading – San Diego Black Arts Collective, The Old Globe, San Diego, CA
2023 - Reading – Cygnet Theatre, Finish Line New Play Series, San Diego, CA
2022 - Workshop – Third Culture Theatre, Nexus Festival, Los Angeles, CA
2022 - Reading – Garry Marshall Theatre, New Works Festival, Burbank, CA
2022 - Reading – New Village Arts, Final Draft New Play Festival, San Diego, CA
Read the script on NPX
We Are the Forgotten Beasts
Monsters of the American Cinema | Rogue Machine Theatre, Los Angeles, CA | Photo: Jeff Lorch
We Lovers | Scripps Ranch Theatre, San Diego, CA | Photo: Daren Scott
Monsters of the American Cinema | Prologue Theatre, Washington, DC | Photo: Chris Banks
Monsters of the American Cinema | Know Theatre of Cincinnati, OH | Photo: Dan R. Winters
ZACH | ArtsWest Playhouse, Seattle, WA | Photo: Jennifer Crooks
Monsters of the American Cinema | Urbanite Theatre, Sarasota, FL | Photo: Sorcha Augustine
Monsters of the American Cinema | Buffalo United Artists, NY | Photo: Lawrence Roswell
We Lovers | Loud Fridge Theatre Group, San Diego, CA | Photo: Daren Scott
Monsters of the American Cinema | Pandora Productions, Louisville, KY | Photo: Danny Alexander
Monsters of the American Cinema | ArtsWest Playhouse, Seattle, WA | Photo: John McLellan
Monsters of the American Cinema | Diversionary Theatre, San Diego, CA | Photo: Simpatika
Monsters of the American Cinema | Kitchen Theatre Company, Ithaca, NY | Photo: Rachel Philipson
We Lovers | Hollywood Fringe, CA | Photo: Courtesy of Phone Tha & Adrián Genesius Barrón
Monsters of the American Cinema | Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective, Asheville, NC | Photo: Carol Spags
ZACH | Loud Fridge Theatre Group, San Diego, CA | Photo: Brittany Carillo
VIDEOS:
We Lovers | Hollywood Fringe, CA
Monsters of the American Cinema | ArtsWest Playhouse, Seattle, WA