Name Diane Rodriguez | Role Theatre direction | |
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Awards Obie Award for Ensemble Performance Movies Terminator 2: Judgment, La Bamba, Psycho III, Which Way Is Up?, Zoot Suit Similar People Rico Rodriguez, William Wisher - Jr, Luis Valdez, Ed Vassallo, Tracey A Leigh | ||
by appointment with Diane Rodriguez
Diane Rodriguez is a prominent American theatre artist who directs, writes and performs. Schooled in activist art, she received her BA in Theatre Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara. An OBIE Award winning actor, she is known for using comedy to confront various forms of oppression, often with special attention to issues of gender and sexuality. She is a producer and director at Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles and an Artistic Associate of Cornerstone Theater Company. An enduring influence in Chicano theatre, she was born in the 1950s to American parents from farm working families. She co-founded two theatre companies, El Teatro de la Esperanza (Theatre of Hope) and Latins Anonymous, and was a leading actress for the seminal Chicano theatre group, El Teatro Campesino (Theater of the Farmworkers).
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She joined El Teatro Campesino during the mid-1970s. In political sketches for Cesar Chavez and full-length works, she honed her comedic skills performing on a variety of stages from flat bed trucks to ancient European Greco Roman amphi-theatres. In 1988 she co-founded the comedy troupe Latins Anonymous as a response to the Hollywood stereotyping of Latino actors.
Rodriguez then served as director of the Latino Theatre Initiative at the Mark Taper Forum from 1995-2000.
She began directing in 1991 and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Directing Award in 1998. She has directed and developed the work of Nilo Cruz, Lynn Nottage, John Leguizamo, Jose Cruz Gonzalez, John Belluso, Octavio Solis, Culture Clash, Oliver Mayer, Migdalia Cruz, Cherrie Moraga. She received Best Direction nominations for her work on Leguizamo's Spic-O-Rama and Culture Clash's Border Town.
She won an OBIE Award (OFF-BROADWAY) Award in 2007 for playing multiple roles in Heather Woodbury's Tale of Two Cities (Best Ensemble).
In January 2015, it was announced that President Obama nominated Diane Rodriguez to the National Council on the Arts, whose purpose is to advise the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts on matters of policies and programs.