SOL 5: NOAH DIAZ

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noah diaz
​the playwright

Noah Diaz is a playwright and screenwriter from the Iowa/Nebraska border. Productions include You Will Get Sick (Roundabout Theatre, NYT Critic’s Pick), Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (co-production The Playwrights Realm/Baltimore Center Stage), and The Swindlers (Baltimore Center Stage). Commissions from La Jolla Playhouse, Roundabout Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan, Baltimore Center Stage, Audible/Amazon Studios, and Arena Stage. His work has been developed with Berkshire Theatre Group, Two River Theater, The Sol Project, First Floor Theater, and The Playwrights Realm, where he was a Page One Resident Playwright. Noah is a recipient of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize, a five-time recipient of playwriting awards from The Kennedy Center, and a nominee for the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award. In television, he has written on Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu), Up Here (Hulu), Joe vs. Carole (Peacock), and is currently developing projects for ABC, Hulu, 20th Television, The Walk-Up Company, Nyle DiMarco, and the team at Eva Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment. MFA: Yale School of Drama.

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Photo by Jess McGowan

RICHARD & JANE & DICK & SALLY
​the play

Noah Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally sees the harsh, realistic evolution of characters who became part of America’s collective unconscious via a series of iconic 1950s children’s books by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp. In Diaz’s theatrical universe, Dick (now Richard) and Jane are grown up; Richard is recently widowed and hasn’t spoken to Jane in ages, while his children are retreating into the realm of fantasy. Richard’s son Dick sports his mother’s clothes in hopes of conjuring her, and his daughter Sally—who is deaf and feeling the crushing weight of her father’s desire for her to fit into the hearing world—converses with the family dog, Spot. In this dramatic comedy, Diaz makes a stunningly lyrical off-Broadway debut that exposes the gap between the idealized archetypes we internalize as children and the often painful real-life experiences that drive our emotional development as adults. ​
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BALTIMORE CENTER STAGE
the partner theatre

Founded in 1963 and designated the State Theater of Maryland in 1978, Baltimore Center Stage provides the highest quality theater and programming for all members of our communities, including youth and families, under the leadership of Artistic Director Stephanie Ybarra and Executive Director Michael Ross. Baltimore Center Stage ignites conversations and imaginations by producing an eclectic season of professional productions across two mainstages and an intimate 99-seat theater, through engaging community programs, and with inspiring education programs. Everything we do at Center Stage is led by our core values—chief among them being Access For All. Our mission is heavily rooted in providing active and open accessibility for everyone, regardless of any and all barriers, to our Mainstage performances, education initiatives, and community programming.

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TAYLOR REYNOLDS
​the director

Taylor Reynolds (she/her) is a New York-based director and theatremaker from Chicago and one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of OBIE-award winning The Movement Theatre Company in Harlem. Her work focuses on dissecting and exploring issues related to race, gender, and the intersectionality of identity (horror and ghosts also tend to be themes in her work).

She has worked as a director, assistant, and collaborator with companies including Playwrights Horizons, CTG, Baltimore Center Stage, Signature Theatre Company, Page 73, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Public, EST, Ars Nova, Radical Evolution, and The 24 Hour Plays. Selected directing credits: Man Cave by John J. Caswell Jr, Tambo & Bones by Dave Harris, The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington by James Ijames (NYT Critic’s Pick), Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally by Noah Diaz, Tough by Margot Connolly, Plano by Will Arbery (Drama Desk nom for Best Director), Songs About Trains (co-directed with Rebecca Martinez), ALLOND(R)A by Gina Femia, Think Before You Holla (creator/deviser), FOOD by Rhonda Marie Khan, Accidental Burlesque by Gina Femia (developed through the Audrey Residency at New Georges).
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She is the 2021 LPTW Lucille Lortel Award recipient, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, 2017-2018 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, and Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab alum. BFA, Carnegie Mellon University. Member of SDC.

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RICHARD & JANE & DICK & SALLY
by Noah Diaz
directed by Taylor Reynolds
​with Noah Averbach-Katz, Michelle Beck, Jay Cobián, Neimah Djourabchi, Treshelle Edmond, Vanessa Kai

scenic design: Stephanie Osin Cohen
costume design: Alicia J. Austin
lighting design: Reza Behjat
sound design / composer: Frederick Kennedy
production stage manager: Danielle Teague-Daniels
casting by: Ada Karamanyan

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highlights

Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally Montage
Baltimore Center Stage YouTube | February 28th, 2020

​'A Quick 5' with Noah Diaz, playwright 'Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally'
MD Theatre | January 25th, 2020

​'Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally' reveals the quotidian miseries of family at Baltimore's Center Stage
DC Theatre Arts | February 15th, 2020