Diana Burbano, a Colombian immigrant and punk rock playwright, is always true to herself. She is always herself; I never am.
Her latest play, The Color of Life, is staged at the New York Stage and Film.
We chatted with this smart, talented woman, who has recently won awards from the Independent Theater Critics Association and the Lucille Lortel Awards as well as the Dramatists Guild’s Helen Hayes Award, about a new play she recently wrote, the process of writing it and her time as an immigrant in America.
A few minutes after that first question she was done, so we decided to move the interview into an open-ended format, since it gave her time to give thoughtful answers.
Bizarre, isn’t it? But a real rarity, because many times in this interview, we end up talking about a book or a play, and then Diana brings up the latest film, or, worse case, a novel or a musical (“my favorite new play by Joe DiPietro [The Big Sleep],” she said).
In fairness, she is not the first of us to bring up a book from the past or a play from the past. I am. It’s just the first time I have seen her do it so frequently.
I’ve always seen you as a smart, independent thinker. I see you as an incredibly curious person. How do you find the time to write?
The time is all over me. The last two books I really finished in two or three days. The Color of Life is, like it says, “a nonfiction novel” about immigration, it’s something you don’t want to rush. That takes a lot of time and a lot of money.
Diana, I know you’re a woman. Do you give into your body more easily than men?
When you are very young, you have an impulse of having a baby in your stomach, right there, and then you have a baby and it comes out in a cesarean. They put the baby in a glass jar, then you put a light bulb for them to see, and you watch them come out of the belly, and the light bulb was the first thing they asked.
So, in my case, yes, it’s
