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A New Play for Every Generation

Backstage at a 1990s tribute concert, the past is waiting for an encore.

In Manoli Kouremetis’ The Green Room, two veteran musicians find themselves reunited in the shabby backstage room where everything once seemed possible. Don Davis, a country-folk-rock performer with a failing body and a restless memory, has returned to the former Snacktime Theater for Grant Sutton’s 50th Anniversary concert. But Don is not really there for Grant. He is there for Betty Thrasher: singer, songwriter, former collaborator, and the one person who still knows exactly where the bodies, and the songs, are buried.

As the concert plays out on a television just offstage, Don and Betty confront the years between them: the music they made, the chances they missed, the wounds they left unattended, and the complicated legacy of a life spent chasing applause. What begins as a backstage reunion becomes a funny, bruising, and deeply human reckoning with aging, ambition, friendship, illness, race, regret, and the strange intimacy of making art with someone who knows your worst notes and your best ones.

Presented as part of ROŪGE’s Arts All Over Series, The Green Room offers audiences a first look at a new work in process: a play about memory, music, and the unfinished conversations that wait for us in the rooms where we became ourselves.

  • Manoli Kouremetis is a collaborator with ROŪGE, having previously contributed to last fall’s PlayNight series. His plays The Rendezvous and Saint Irene's have been staged at Zeiders American Dream Theater, and his play The Light Underground was featured at the Zeiders Fringe Festival. He produced the interdisciplinary piece "Love Is Hard Work," incorporating music and glass sculpting, in collaboration with visual artist Andy Harris at the Chrysler Glass Studio. Manoli has also worked with Virginia Stage Company’s Public Works program to present “Between Sound and Silence” for the Hampton Roads deaf and hard-of-hearing community. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various literary journals and publications. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University, where he serves on the adjunct faculty.

  • Skye Zentz is an Emmy Award-winning songwriter and community cultivator with a background in Arts and Education. She has taught songwriting and poetry at The Muse Writers Center and has written commissioned works for WHRO/PBS (GreenBeats), Old Dominion University Theatre, and The Elizabeth River Project. Her musical, GreenBeats Live, has toured K-5 schools in southeastern Virginia as part of the Virginia Stage Company’s education outreach since 2022. Skye has two cats, enjoys iced coffee and a good breeze, and is currently working on a full-length musical about Goblins.