Kristoffer Diaz – 7 questions

Playwright, Kristoffer Diaz

This is our first installment! Yay, 2009! First up we have playwright Kristoffer Diaz. He’s a wonderful writer. A good guy. Very smart and funny. Get to know a bit about him:

How did you get started in theater?

I was an athlete in high school. I had a free weekend between the end of basketball season and the start of baseball season, so I somehow decided I’d go to auditions for the spring show. I got cast. I discovered that there were lots of girls in theater. I never left.

The other part of that story — the more noble part, maybe — is that I saw John Leguizamo’s Spic-O-Rama Off-Broadway in 1993, and it absolutely changed my life. I learned that theater didn’t have to be Shakespeare or Broadway musicals; it could be personal stories about people that looked, sounded, and felt like me. I probably could have told you then and there that I’d do theater professionally.

What was the first play you performed in? The first play you wrote?

Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite. I said six words. I wore a tuxedo and bright orange sneakers that I spray-painted myself. The first play I wrote was a one-act called Vincenzo’s New School Libations. It was written while I was doing a summer abroad in Florence, Italy. I lost all copies of it somehow. I miss that play. The first full-length I wrote was Welcome to Arroyo’s, which is probably the single most important thing I’ve ever accomplished in my life. It proved to me that I could be a writer, and that I could write things that could speak to other folks the way Spic-O-Rama spoke to me.

What are you working on now?

Writing-wise, I just started a new play that I think is going to be a farce about the first female player in baseball’s major leagues. I’m also preparing for a workshop of my play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Victory Gardens in Chicago, and I’m one of the writers for Brink!, the anthology play at this year’s Humana Festival.

If you weren’t a theater maker, you’d probably make…?

More money.

Your artistic philosophy?

Do it because you care about it. I don’t know if that’s a philosophy exactly, but it’s what comes to mind. The worst feeling in the theater is when the show ends, the lights come up, and the only word that pops into your head is “so?” I don’t mind if people leave my plays thinking that I can’t write, or I don’t know anything about the world, or I’m too pretentious or not pretentious enough — I just don’t want them to think that I don’t care about what I’ve written. A veteran playwright once told my class that everything we write should be as “urgent as a suicide note.” I believe that. I write because the words need to come out.

Artists that inspire and/or challenge you?

Danny Hoch. Eisa Davis. Quiara Hudes. Jorge Cortinas. Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Tanya Saracho. Lin-Manuel Miranda (his Tony Award speech pops up in my head constantly). The Roots. Fiona Apple. Jay-Z (and man, I fought this one for a long time). Junot Diaz. The Rock, Ric Flair, and a host of professional wrestlers. A huge list of actors that’s way too long for me to go into without forgetting somebody massively important. David Lindsay-Abaire. Sarah Ruhl. Mayda del Valle. Beau Sia. John Leguizamo. Banksy. Anton Dudley. Andrea Thome. Rajiv Joseph. I’m going to stop now.

09 resolutions?
Spend more time cultivating relationships and following through on them. The business is more of a business than I think most of us realize. Things get done because of relationships. I figure you can fight that, or you can cozy up with the folks you like and get things done. I also want to finish a first draft of a new play, secure at least three full productions in 09-10, develop stuff I’ve already written, and basically explode into the collective consciousness of the theater world, all in the next 12 months. I think it’s doable.

Thanks, Kris. Check out his site. Go to his blog.