Interview: christopher oscar peña and Kristoffer Diaz on Their New Plays, the Current State of Theatre, and More

This week something very special is happening over at Profile Theatre. All three playwrights featured in the current season - christopher oscar peña, Kristoffer Diaz, and Lauren Yee - have been in residence as they work with local actors to develop new plays. This weekend, there will be public readings of two of the plays, REGGIE HOOPS by Kristoffer Diaz and OUR ORANGE SKY by christopher oscar peña, as well as an artist talk featuring all three. See the schedule and get your tickets here.

I had the opportunity to chat with peña and Diaz about their projects, the importance of residencies like Playwright Convening, and the current state of theatre in America. This is an edited version of that conversation.

What projects are you working on as part of the Playwright Convening residency?

Kristoffer Diaz: I'm working on a play called REGGIE HOOPS. It's about a young mixed raced woman who's an assistant general manager of a professional basketball team. When the play begins, she's just lost her job and is back home with her family trying to navigate what happens next. It's a play about family, about legacy, and, in a lot of ways, about New York City.

christopher oscar peña: My play is called OUR ORANGE SKY. It's a sequel to HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN SON, which is the first play of mine in Profile's season. That one is about me as a 16-year-old kid, while OUR ORANGE SKY is about where I am in my life right now.

In most of the plays we see about Latinx folks, we're usually undocumented, we're not educated, we're struggling to pay our bills, and that's very much not my experience. My play is about a kid who comes home after accomplishing a very difficult goal that he set for himself and realizes he's not as happy as he thought he'd be. It's about what success means, the price of that success, and the sacrifices we make. It's also about the experience of immigrants - my family is from Honduras - who come to this country at great cost and whether it's worth it. I think of it as a post-American dream play.

Kristoffer Diaz: There are a lot of connections between our plays. Mine is also about a migration of sorts. It's centered on a family that moved from the Bronx to the suburbs, but it's the same idea of leaving your home for a "better life." And it's also personal.

My family is Nuyorican, which means Puerto Rican from New York City, and my parents and I were the first to move out. We moved into a modest apartment building in the suburbs - it wasn't a big leap, but it made a huge difference in my upbringing. What's fascinating to me is grappling with the question of what we left behind. I don't have that NYC sense of the world. I don't speak Spanish. I feel good about the life that I'm living, but what do you lose as someone who didn't get to be where everyone else is from?

christopher oscar peña: I just want to add that one of the reasons I love Kris's work is that he really loves sports. I like to make the joke that Kris is one of two straight playwrights in American theatre. He writes about things like wrestling and basketball - these are plays that most people in American theatre don't write, and certainly they're plays that most audiences don't get to see.

What we're trying to do is invite in all of the people we grew up with who were never welcomed into the theatre, never told that their voices mattered, their stories mattered, their worlds mattered. We're thrilled to be in this season together because I've never seen a theatrical season with two Latino playwrights, let alone three writers of color.

Kristoffer Diaz: We see so often with Latino characters in a play that they're defined by that identity. I'm thrilled for an audience to get to see not just one play challenging that, but two. It's a rare opportunity.

On that topic, theatre has been going through a long-overdue racial reckoning. What's your take on where we are right now?

christopher oscar peña: I was scheduled to be part of a theatre season in New York at a predominantly white theatre, and then the Black Lives Matter movement happened, and my play got pulled. They had a lot of reasons why it wasn't the right time, and ultimately they ended up producing two plays by Black playwrights in that spot.

Right now, we have a lot of Black artists being elevated, which is wonderful - we want more and we need more. But then the white people in power were like, "We've solved racism," without realizing that the conversation also needed to include Latinos, people from the Middle East, Asian artists, etc. There are many people who were not actually part of that conversation. I think the white artistic directors didn't really think about the whole picture. There are some bandaids that make it look like they're solving the problem, but the real problem I think is that they're not actually trying to solve the problem, they're just trying to not look like they're being racist.

Kristoffer Diaz: We want more of everything, but more of everything is hard to do. A single season can't represent everybody. But I will say that the two most exciting things I saw on Broadway this season, AIN'T NO MO' and KPOP, closed immediately. AIN'T NO MO' was spectacular, and KPOP was one of the greatest nights of theatre I have ever experienced, by no small margin. Both of these shows should be running to the end of the season, if not longer. The problem is that we don't do the work to support them.

So, when smaller theatre companies, like Profile, decide they're going to produce a season like this one, it's important that they sell them to Latino audiences, but also that they reach out to their typical audience to let them know that there's something really interesting and compelling going on here.

As one of Chris's "two straight playwrights," something that was game-changing for me starting out was my exposure to queer writers and queer plays. It fundamentally changed my view of the world. So, we want to reach our people - that's important - but we want to reach other people and let them know they're welcome, too.

christopher oscar peña: Picking up on what Kris said about audiences on Broadway, one of the big problems is that we get blamed for not showing up. But usually the theatres haven't invested the time and energy to get people to show up. Profile has been really great about this. When they programmed the season, they asked, "Other than our general audience, who do you really want to come to your show?" And they're actively reaching out to and inviting those communities.

Going back to Playwright Convening, how do residencies like this help you in your creative process?

christopher oscar peña: I'm happiest when I'm working and when I'm with creative people. For me what's most important is being with a community of artists, having this time with actors to hear how they respond to the play, and to build the work with them. Kris and I have known each other socially for years, but it's really meaningful for us as artists to be here and have our plays in conversation.

Kristoffer Diaz: I'm also very happy when I'm working, though I'll be honest, I miss my wife and kids a lot right now. One of the best things about working in the theatre is working with good new actors. The questions that they ask and their approach is so smart. This group of folks we're dealing with has impressed me since day one.

In places like Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Austin, anywhere there's a good theatre community, there are always actors, often actors of color, who have been toiling away on stage sometimes for decades. They'll be doing Shakespeare, and they're the nurse or the spear carrier or whatever - they work a ton, but they don't get the chance to stand in front and carry a show. A really rewarding part of this type of experience for me is to support the work that these actors have been doing and maybe help shine a light on them.

Who are some of your current favorite playwrights or plays you've seen recently?

christopher oscar peña: My favorite play of the year is FAT HAM, which won the Pulitzer. It was extraordinary and everyone should go see it. For playwrights, I love Ngozi Anyanwu, A. Rey Pamatmat, Morgan Gould, who I think is one of the funniest human beings in the world and also an exceptional director. Those are three people I'm obsessed with.

Kristoffer Diaz: I think Chris and Lauren are ridiculously good. Rajiv Joseph is one of my favorite people in the theatre. The writer who I call "the conscience of the American theatre" is Dominique Morisseau. When she speaks about something, I sit up and take notice. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Quiara Alegría Hudes. I'll stop there, though there's 50 people I'm leaving out. There's no shortage of shockingly impressive writers right now. It's hotter than ever.

Any final comments for our readers?

Kristoffer Diaz: I'm eternally grateful to the American theatre. It's treated me very well, both in terms of my career and in terms of what it has put in front of my eyes to change who I am as a person. It's a beautiful, messy beast, just like our country. There's a lot of goodness and joy and value in this field we are so fortunate to participate in. At the same time, it needs to get better. We have to fix it.

christopher oscar peña: Earlier, Kris said that he went to see queer theatre when he was young, and I think that's a great reminder of theatre's potential to show us other worlds and change who we are. So, when we fight about not being included, it's because we know the potential and power of theatre and we want more of it to get out into the world and make it a better place.

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