The Enterprise, May 21, 2010: In her NTP debut, Diaz delivers Vivian, and through her 'W;t'

Friday, May 21, 2010
By DICKSON MERCER
Staff writer

"W;t" (or "Wit") was written by Margaret Edson, a kindergarten teacher living in Atlanta. It was her first play.  

The drama debuted in California in the mid-1990s and was next performed in New Haven, Conn., with Kathleen Chalfant performing the lead role: Dr. Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old English professor undergoing an experimental, and ultimately doomed, radiation therapy for metastatic ovarian cancer. Chalfant reprised the part in 1998 when the play debuted Off-Broadway, received great reviews and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and more.

Now it's onstage at Three Notch Theatre. Dawna Diaz, 47, of Great Mills, a mission controller at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, has the lead role, as a hardboiled scholar of 17th-century English poetry and John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Vivian has chosen pure criticism, a kind untainted by emotion, over people, and seems to have no relationships of any kind. Her course is the hardest on campus.

All we really know, however, is her current state. We learn quickly that the play is one act which lasts for almost two hours and that Vivian has as much time left to live. We know, too, that for eight months she has lived through as many cycles of treatments and has been handled by staff how she handled Holy Sonnetts: from a distance, coldly, without feeling.

For five years, the Newtowne Players has brought you lots of comedy. Even with the dramas, and with some of the stuff you might call borderline edgy, there has alway been a space where you could sneak off to for spell, throw your head back and laugh.

Says Thom Esposito, the head of NTP's play selection committee, "‘W;t,' to me, is a very emotional, very draining show. You don't leave here with your belly hurting because you laughed so much. … It's a change for us because we generally lean to the lighter side of things … I think our audience will allow us to do this one."

Those who do, meanwhile, will not experience the demystification of Vivian. They will, however, be privy to her end-of-life revelation, which is also the play's emotional floodgate.

In that sense, they will not come to know Vivian better, really. It's more like entering one's physical space — staying there, listening, staying there.

For two hours, Vivian, and Diaz, will not once leave the stage. Through Diaz, you will know Vivian, because this much I can tell you: Diaz, though very much a people person, has taken Vivian's experience and melded it into her own.

It might come as a surprise, though, that this is Diaz' first time on stage without a script in her hands.

She grew up in Wichita, Kan., and moved to St. Mary's County in 1981, after she had joined the U.S. Navy and was hired on the base. Eight years ago, at the College of Southern Maryland, she got involved with a readers theater group that no longer exists.

She learned about the role of Vivian from her son (from her first marriage), Stephen Rumpf, who plays a tech in "W;t" and recently held the lead role in NTP's staging of the Italian comedy "Over the River and Through the Woods." Diaz ordered the script, read it. "It was just such a great part to flop in and out of so many emotions," she says before a press review. "It's so complex and so difficult. I wanted that piece. I didn't want a fluff-type piece."

A decade after moving to the county, Diaz was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Her thyroid was removed, and she received one high dose of radiation. Her life since has been one of trying to get it right: She takes thyroid medication daily, and sudden shifts in diet or weight can send her spiraling into a state of hyperthyroidism.

After her radiation procedure she had to wait in a room by herself until her radiation level subsided. For a short time, she was told to stay away from young children and pregnant women and to only eat using plastic silverware.

She did not, however, lose her hair.

She lost her hair, and her eyebrows, when the director, Missy Bell, choose her among 30 who auditioned to take on the role of Dr. Vivian Bearing.

A couple hours before the last rehearsal, Diaz' husband, Domingo Diaz (he goes by Ming), opens the door to their home. Inside, Diaz, dressed in pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt, races down the steps and sits down at the kitchen table, where rests a coconut cream pie she promised to her father and Ming's makeup kit. Diaz sits down and closes her eyes as Ming applies a layer of white powder. Around town, Diaz explains, she's been wearing a wig.

Ming, an electronics consultant who has long been involved with theater, handles makeup for some local productions and also has a side business doing clown makeup. He's self-taught, he says, while applying lines and shadowing to achieve an emaciated, cadaverous look.

The night before last was a press preview. Tonight is a dress rehearsal. Tomorrow is sponsor's night. Then it's opening night.

When a visitor suggests Diaz might be exhausted, she and Ming chuckle, in part, it seems, because they're always so busy. For one, they're the co-presidents of the Aqua Squares Dance Club. "I've put my whole life on hold right now," says Diaz, "so I can be rested and in the right mind to do this."

"It seems like a lot of people would prefer to start with a fluff-type role," the visitor suggests.

"This is the kind of role that doesn't come along often," she explains. "So while I probably would have liked a smaller role to start, the timing of this was just perfect."

Speaking of timing, it becomes apparent that Diaz' parents have arrived from Kansas. Their rental car has pulled up in the driveway.

"Turn around 180," Ming says softly to his wife. "All the way around."

Over at Three Notch, the stage is barren, the back of it wrapped with black cloth from floor to ceiling. Until now, the spinning set has been typically used, to rotate sets. For "W;t," though, three or four people backstage will be ready to spin the set by hand to deliver a prop from the rear of the stage to beneath the spotlight, or to create the impression of moving without moving at all.

Before Diaz arrives, you find Bell's husband, Michael Bell, the technical director, tinkering with a crucial part of the set. Minutes later, Missy arrives with their two children in tow. And as more actors, tech people, producers and general helpers enter the theater, it fills steadily with chatter and a palpable energy.

Someone sweeps the stage. Someone procures a purple Popsicle.

In "W;t," Vivian says pacing is her preferred mode of exercise. A couple minutes before the rehearsal starts, Diaz, too, is pacing with her script, whispering lines, her body wrapped in two hospital gowns. A ball cap covers her head. She has not yet slipped off her moccasins.

When it's time, the lights go up; the stage fills up with swirling, kaleidoscopic lights. An IV bag hangs off the hook of a pole on wheels that Diaz drags with her across the stage.

Lately, Diaz wakes up some mornings and wonders if she can go to "the dark place" so many nights? What will the toll be on her psyche, her body?

Still, it's fairly clear she possesses the fortitude.

Vivian stands center-stage, at the edge, looks out blankly and delivers the first line of the play — a question.

"Hi. How are you feeling today?"

If you go Directed by Missy Bell, the Newtowne Players's production of "W;t" will continue through May 30. Performances will be held at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15, $12 for senior citizens, students and military and $10 for groups of 10 or more. Thursday tickets are $10. The theater is at 21744 S. Coral Drive, Lexington Park. Call 301-737-5447. Go towww.newtowneplayers.org.