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Noah Diaz making run for his dream at Yale School of Drama and theater companies nationwide
Noah Diaz making run for his dream at Yale School of Drama and theater companies nationwide
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appearing in the August 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Noah Diaz proves there’s no prescribed way to follow your passion. In 2017, the Council Bluffs native and Omaha theater darling received a full ride scholarship to the prestigious Yale School of Drama without majoring or even minoring in theater as a UNO undergrad.
He’s already a rising star in Yale’s vaunted graduate playwrighting program after winning accolades for acting and directing here. Though he didn’t formally train locally, he said, “I’ve received so much second-hand training from the people I’ve worked with over the years. I’ve worked with a staggeringly high number of talented people on stage and off. I have mentors, big and small,” said Diaz, who’s been home over the summer.
“In many ways I was raised by my mentors from whom I received theatrical and life lessons.”
Feeling he already had theater covered, he studied special education and communication disorder and creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Meanwhile, his play The Motherhood Almanac opened theater doors for him here and outside Nebraska. The Sheltebelt staged it. He did a residency with it at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in Idaho. Two New York City theater companies workshopped it. Encouraged by fellow playwright Ellen Struve, he applied to name graduate theater programs. Like a feel-good turn in a play, the one school he assumed he had no real chance at accepted him into its illustrious ranks.
“I thought it was never really going to happen for me,” he said. “It was hard not to recognize what kind of capital ‘I’ institution Yale was and how impenetrable it appeared. But there actually seemed space for me there and then it was space I was heartily welcomed into.”
He learned of his acceptance on his mother’s birthday.
“We had already planned having a dinner that night with the extended family. My mom said. ‘The only gift I want is to share the news myself with everyone.'”
His first year in New Haven has been “astounding” and “profoundly rewarding.”
“It’s a really intense program. We don’t have many breaks. It functions as a conservatory. We are often in classes six days a week from 8 a.m. until about 2:30 p.m. and then we’re in rehearsals from 2:30 to 11 p.m. It’s similar to how medical students are in classes and then go on their hospital rotations.
“I’m busy every day. I’m very tired. My mind was prepared but my body wasn’t. It’s a matter of gritting yourself and barreling through. In so many ways it was the longest year of my life and yet the shortest. It requires such exertion of energy, not just creatively, mentally or emotionally but physically as well. I wrote five plays over the year, one of which went up to a workshop production in the spring, in addition to many others I started and abandoned.”
His apartment is close to the venerable campus, which he said “reminds me of Hogwarts in Harry Potter.”
As an arts and letters Ivy Leaguer, his life is consumed by studies, rehearsals, writing and craft analysis.
“I live alone which is smart because I do a lot of writing and I need a lot of quiet. A huge challenge for me personally in this program is generating work so quickly and so frequently. I’m learning themes that constantly keep reoccurring in my work, what that’s telling me about myself, why I’m interested in exploring these things and what dramatic structures I keep leaning on.
“I have a lot of conversations with my colleagues about knowing the difference between what is a playwright’s voice and what is a playwright’s schtick. The difference, at least for me, is honing my artistic voice and not simply relying on the same bag of tricks. I’m proud of this first year body of work because I’ve tried things – somewhat reinventing myself or at least challenging myself in new ways. That’s intentional.”
The work doesn’t all just stay on the page either.
“This particular playwriting program is a little unusual in that we are offered a production each year.”
He’s written three new scripts over the summer.
“My second year production starts rehearsal the first day of classes or shortly thereafter, so I have to prepare options to present.”
There’s no shortage of stimulation.
“I’m working with incredible people in my cohort. They are so talented and smart. My faculty – Sarah Ruhl, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Amy Herzog, Robert O’hara, Jackie Sibblies Dreary, Young Jun Lee – are all luminaries still working in the field. It enriches my learning experience,”
With notable alums on stage and screen, the school is a recognized talent pool that industry producers, directors and agents scout. Diaz has already heard from some.
“I’ve been really fortunate that a lot of people have been reaching out. I’ve been taking meetings, I’ve been in touch with fantastic companies. This summer alone I’ll be at three different theater companies across the country developing my work.”
He was in Chicago for the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) Carnaval of New Latinx Work in July. This month his Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally is part of the Two River Theater Latinx festival in Red Bank, New Jersey and a workshop at The Lark in New York City.
Diaz said the example of other Omaha playwrights has emboldened him to forge ahead with his own career.
“Our community of playwrights inspire me. Because of all the people who’ve come before me, it never really crossed my mind that I couldn’t. I saw people doing it and I just always kind of had that feeling, Oh, when it’s my time, I will do it, too.”
He’s excited that two more Omaha theater nerds, actresses Roni Shelley Perez and Bailey Carlson, recently made the big move to NYC.
“I hope that line continues.”
He’s not forgetting where it all started for him.
“I thank Omaha in so many ways for having prepared me and supported me. It’s really great to know they have my back. I plan to be back every summer for the Great Plains Theatre Conference.”
He was back for this year’s GPTC, where his star Yale prof, Sara Ruhl, was the honored playwright. He also had a reading of his You Will Get Sick at the Shelterbelt.
He wishes playwrights had more showcases here.
“There are not many places for playwrights to go and yet these playwrights continually write and persevere to tell the stories they need to tell. That tenacity and initiative to write in a town that isn’t always ready to hear the stories they do write is exciting to me.
“What I love about the playwrights in our community is that so often it’s not about accolades or attention but rather generating and creating pieces of art important to them. That’s something I try to do. I try to tap into whatever it is I personally need to tap into.”
One of his Yale plays, The Guadalupes, cuts closer to his life than anything he’s written. It explores questions he has about his own racial identity and his relationship with the Hispanic side of his family.
“It’s about my grandmother, my grandfather and my father and mother. It’s this deeply personal play about being both white and Hispanic and the irreconcilable differences between the two. It deeply affected me. It was well received, which was great.
“I think for any writer of any form the history that you carry will always seep into the work. But this one was directly about my family, so that was a first for me. I don’t know if l’ll be doing that again anytime soon, but I did get that one out of my system.”
As things continue moving fast for him, he takes comfort in the surety his Yale degree will mean something.
“We’re told that regardless of what you think your personal career trajectory will look like, you will be working in your chosen field. They’re not promising us Tony Awards or Pulitzer Prizes, but having gone to this university and through this program, I will be able to live and work and pay my bills as a writer.”
“That (prospect) is so fulfilling and rewarding to me.”
Image by Debra S. Kaplan
Follow him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/public/Noah-Diaz) and Twitter (twitter.com/diaz_noah).
Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work atleoadambiga.com.
Noah Diaz: Metro theater’s man for all seasons and stages
Theater prodigies of the kind portryaed in the Wes Anderson film “Rushmore” have their antecedents in real life and just like in that story, they spring up in the most unexpected places. Omaha’s Noah Diaz is the latest Omaha theater prodigy and he finds himself in some very good company historically speaking. Perhaps the best known American theater prodigy, the late Orson Welles, first emerged as a stage presence to be watched at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois before he brazenly announced himself to the world in Dublin and then New York City. Across the pond, Kenneth Branagh, born in Belfast, first asserted his thespian bent in elementary school in Reading, Berkshire after his family’s move to England, and then he displayed his precicious talents at London’s Royal School of Dramatic Art. Back home, Omaha has had its own share of youth-must-be-served stage lights. The most famous of them all, Henry Fonda, was encouraged to try his hand at theater by Dottie Brando, mother of future stage-film icon Marlon Bramdo, at the Omaha Community Playhouse. A young Henry found his calling three and threw himself into all aspects of the craft – from building, painting and taking down sets to acting on stage. Dorothy McGuire soon followed him in the fold. They appeared together in a 1930 production at the Playhouse. Older than her, he left first to pursue a life in theater. Her family moved from Omaha and she soon left home to pursue her own career in theater. They both made it, of course, and two and a half decades after they shared the stage in Omaha in that 1930 show, they returned, this time as Broadway-Hollywood stars, to perform together in “The Country Girl” as a fundraiser for the new Playhouse. Now comes Noah Diaz, who by his early 20s has racked up more theater credits than most players twice or three times his age. He’s also been nominated for and won a slew of local theater awards for his acting. But he’s also a director and his work behind the stage has received raves as well. But it turns out his real calling in theater may be as a playwright. An original piece he’s written, The Motherhood Almanac, is being workshopped around the country and makes its world premiere here in January at the Shelterbelt, which is his theater home. Not to put pressure on him, but he may just be the latest in a recent line of Omaha-bred theater talent – Andrew Rannells, John Lloyd Young, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Quiana Smith, Kevyn Morrow – to make it to Broadway one day. Remember his name.
Noah Diaz: Metro theater’s man for all seasons and stages
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appeared in El Perico
Noah Diaz has been a force of nature in metro area theater since age eight. Still just 23, he owns 90-plus credits and multiple Omaha Theatre Arts Guild and Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards nominations and wins.
He’s also a feted writer-director. He’s in good company as a local theater prodigy. A young Henry Fonda and Dorothy McGuire blazed early trails at the Omaha Community Playhouse before Broadway and Hollywood stardom. More recent stage-screen stars Andrew Rannells and John Lloyd Young got their performing starts as kids in Omaha theater.
Diaz, a University of Nebraska at Omaha student, is set on making theater his life but he only recently concluded that writing, not acting, may be his calling. A play he’s written, The Motherhood Almanac, is creating buzz. He served a residency with it at the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in Idaho. Two New York City theater companies will workshop it in 2017. It premieres at Omaha’s Shelterbelt Theatre on January 27.
He said it was in Idaho he discovered his true “theatrical path,” adding, “I’ve been directing a number of things recently and I’m enjoying directing very much. But I think I might be a playwright. I think that might be what I want to do. That was like a very crystal moment of clarity for me.”
As a kid, Diaz and his cousins put on shows for their parents, but he’s been been writing since childhood, too. Almanac began as a poem he wrote as a youth.
“Over the years it expanded and kept unfolding. That poem turned into a handful of different poems that turned into scenes that turned into stories. It was two years ago I sat down and pieced it all together and understood what I had written. It’s a fragmented, nonlinear story with seven actresses about mothers across time and space. It’s my answer to the question – what does it meant to love somebody other than yourself.
“I’m constantly working on it, developing and workshopping it.
That’s why I’m opening myself up to these opportunities to work with different companies and actresses.”
He’s always had the internal drive and discipline writing requires, just as he’s long known he was meant to do theater.
“It’s always been a thing I’ve just understood about myself since I was young.” His parents encouraged his theater interests. “They recognized where my passions lay and they were about fostering my achieving that.”
His pursuit has landed him on virtually every metro area stage, including the Omaha Community Playhouse and The Rose. “By sheer tenacity I’ve wracked up a number of credits and a lot of experience.” No matter where he does theater, he’s younger than his fellow creatives, “I’ve been very fortunate to have had zero run-ins where age is an issue.. I’ve worked with actors who are so open with their process that they’ve allowed themselves over to me. It’s a profoundly high compliment in my book.”
He added, “The only thing I find tricky to maneuver is simply getting the work – being given opportunities. Directing work is hard to come by. It’s scary for people to put a full production in a 23 year-old’s hands. Luckily, I’ve made an artistic home at the Shelterbelt. They’ve been great to me. They’ve given me a number of opportunities.”
He counts theater veterans as teachers.
“I’ve worked with a staggeringly high number of talented people on stage and off. I’ve learned from them, I’m still learning from them. I have mentors, big and small, everywhere. I think in many ways I was raised by my mentors. I received theatrical and life lessons working in shows.”
He admires writers who sacrifice to get their stories told. “I’m so inspired by local playwrights like Ellen Struve, Beau Berry, Kaitlyn McClincy, Laura Leininger-Campbell, Nick Zadina, Joe Basque.” He’s collaborated with some.
He sees a vibrant local stage scene with “a big surge of people wanting to make theater.” He also sees gaps that need addressing. “I’m a very big advocate for accessible theater,” said Diaz, a special education and communication disorder major. He played a deaf character on stage in SNAP Productions mounting of Tribes. “Opening possibilities and opportunities for inclusivity in theater is important to me. Theaters can do better in terms of offering interpretive performances. I taught a deaf integrated acting class at the Rose (Theater) and I will be training to be an audio describer for the blind.”
Since he’s done so much so early, Diaz often gets asked – why haven’t you moved away yet to try Broadway or Hollywood?
“It’s simply about going when I’m ready. I’m still in school. I’ll be applying to a number of MFA programs this fall for playwriting.
Hopefully I’ll be be accepted to one to begin in the fall of 2017.
“I will move away eventually and work.”
Chicago’s vital theater community is a likely landing spot. He’s well aware of those who’ve left here to find stardom.
“If great success comes my way, that’s cool, but I’m more interested in doing the actual work itself.”
Meanwhile, he’s not giving up acting quite yet. “I will still continue to do it because I enjoy it.”
For details and dates on Almanac’s run at the Shelterbelt, visit http://www.shelterbelt.org/.
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