Can You Dance the Merengue?
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Cori
SYNOPSIS
Set in San Francisco in 2006, two lesbians have a chance encounter at The Cafe Club’s Latina Chess Night event.
PLAYWRIGHT’S BIO
Cori Diaz is a playwright based in New York, NY. Most recently, she has had her plays workshopped at RE/VENUE NYC, The Tank’s LimeFest, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival and The Workshop Theater’s Winter Playwriting Intensive and was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Writers Retreat and the Stanley Drama Award. She has also been a finalist in Hartford Stage’s Write On!, a selected candidate in Middlebury College’s Young Writers’ Conference at Breadloaf Campus, and a Selected Playwright at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Young Playwrights Festival. Her full-length play, The Word of the Day, will be at the SheNYC Festival this summer at Classic Stage Company. She is a current member of Life Jacket Theatre Company’s 2025 Writer’s Room. She holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
A BIT ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
When did you start writing plays? If you had a moment where you realized you wanted to write, what was it?
I started writing plays at 15 after I won the Hartford Stage Write On competition, a playwriting competition for teens. You submit an idea and a teaching artist helps you write it, and then you have a performance at the end. I realized I wanted to write when I was in the third grade and my teacher thought my essay was so good that she had me read it to the other third grade class as well. I was like, wow, this might be my whole thing.
How did you come to write your OOB play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? How has it developed?
This idea came to me when I stayed with my cousin and her wife at their house in San Francisco. Knowing I was also queer, they took me to see the legendary Castro District where we passed by The Cafe, the club they met at back in 2006 at a Latina Lesbian Night. I was so moved by my cousin describing how she ended up at that club just because she felt like she never did anything for herself and how she was always doing whatever her friends wanted. A few days later, I was at a wine bar by myself in SF and found myself writing out this whole play on a napkin.
What are five words that describe who you are as a playwright?
f*cked up, fastidious, horny, tortured, empathetic.
What/who are some of the major influences on your writing?
In terms of playwrights, I’m a huge fan of Anna Jordan, Mark Ravenhill, Jenny Rachel Weiner, Will Arbery, María Irene Fornés, Sarah Kane, Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman. I’m also a huge fiction reader and take a lot of inspiration from Mary Gaitskill, Dennis Cooper, Donna Tartt, Brett Easton Ellis and Clarice Lispector.
What’s one fact someone would never guess about you?
I was a cheerleader for one full football season in the eighth grade. And then I discovered fan fiction.
What are some of your favorite plays?
The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley, 404 Not Found by Lucas Baisch, Blasted by Sarah Kane, Yen by Anna Jordan, Fefu and Her Friends by María Irene Fornés, Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang, Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery, Red Speedo by Lucas Hnath, Green Eyes by Tennessee Williams, and The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca.
Any new projects you’re working on or shameless plugs?
My full-length play, The Word of the Day, is a part of this year’s SheNYC Festival at Classic Stage Company!
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