Kristoffer Diaz speaks on cooking up Broadway’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’
Kristoffer Diaz is the book writer for the Broadway hit, “Hell’s Kitchen,” which tells a story loosely based on Alicia Keys’ life and incorporates some of her biggest hits. This proud Puerto Rican writer, an NYU graduate of both The Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Tisch School of the Arts, worked for over 10 years on “Hell’s Kitchen” with Alicia Keys. He studied playwriting, film and TV writing. He is currently a professor at NYU teaching Playwriting, Musical Theater Writing, and Contemporary Broadway musicals. It was a pleasure and privilege to speak with this accomplished Latino for Hispanic Heritage Month. An in-depth Q&A follows.
AmNews: How did you come to write the book for “Hell’s Kitchen?”
Kristoffer Diaz: I ask myself that sometimes, it’s such a gift. Alicia Keys had an idea for a musical that was based in some ways on her life and she started asking around for people who might be good collaborators, and she had meetings with several folks and she asked folks at William Morris Endeavor, and they recommended me as someone she might hit it off with. I had never written a musical. I’m older than her, but I feel like her music has been in my life forever. I’ve always been a fan. I’m someone who shares the same kind of cultural background as she did and we hit it off from there.
AmNews: The story is referred to as being loosely based on Alicia Keys life. Why did you decide to construct it in the fashion in which you did?
KD: She came in with a specific idea. She wanted to talk about experiences she had when she was a young woman and she didn’t want it to be the kind of biopic musical that tries to tell the whole story of an artist’s life, of an artist’s career. She’s still young and she’s got a long way to go. She wanted to think about experiences she had and things that helped her to decide how she was going to pursue this, and the things that helped her to grow into the artist she was. So, we decided it was going to be something that took place in her youth, something that was going to be set in where she grew up, which was in Manhattan Plaza in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. She wanted to write about growing up surrounded by artists and folks that shared the similar hopes and dreams that she did and we hit it off right away. It was easy to follow that vision and put in some of the greatest songs ever written.
AmNews: How much input did Ms. Keys have, and did she work along with you as you developed the story?
KD: It was her idea and then we worked on it together. We worked on it for several years figuring out what we wanted to do, we then bought in the director Michael Greif. He helped us connect with the Public Theatre. The Public Theatre helped us bring in the choreographer Camille A. Brown, so the team sort of came together over the years. It was 12 years before we started at the Public, 13 before we appeared on Broadway. It was a long slow process because musicals take a long time; also, Alicia had two kids during that period, my wife had two kids and Alicia probably did five world tours. There were a lot of moving pieces.
AmNews: This book has some fun moments, some sexy moments, some teenage moment,s and some rip-your-heart-out touching moments. Where did you go in your mind to create those scenes?
KD: The first step was following the music. She’s written songs that do all those things. Even a song like “You Don’t Know My Name,” which is not a funny song, but it holds space to be funny. It holds space to tap into childhood feelings on love or that first moment when you see the boy that you are interested in, and he’s not going to give you the time of day. He doesn’t even know you’re alive. Then you get a song like “Girl on Fire,” “Empire State of Mind,” they’re going to create certain moods or feelings and you want to recreate them in the story you’re telling. I spent a lot of time talking to Alicia and learning things about her life. She likes to say, ‘it’s not factually true, but it’s emotionally true.’ So we tried to get into what it was like when she first fell in love, what it was like when she was arguing with her mom in the kitchen in Hell’s Kitchen or when she reunited with her father, so it was like the retelling of those events, but it was trying to recapture the emotion and then presenting them in a way that could be universal to anybody, even if you didn’t have that experience on your own.
AmNews: What did you want the audience to see about the relationship between Ali and Jersey?
KD: I like to write about moms and daughters, and their fun relationships. They are complicated because the levels of passion you can get to — nobody fights like a mother and daughter. The teenage girl and her mom are always going to fight, and they fight with intensity. Nobody fights like a mother to make a better life for their kids, and the kids just see it as suffocation. Kids feel like they are overreacting, and they want to spread their wings. We want to explore that feeling. But also the feeling in the end — and hopefully this is not too big a spoiler for the show — but the feeling in the end that no matter what goes on in your life and how heated that reaction may be with your mother, hopefully your mom is going to be there for you. All the things that make you fight are the things that pull you closer together. It’s one of my favorite parts in the show when the mom and daughter get to have that reconciliation and true love at the end.
AmNews: What do you want them to experience with Ali’s relationship with Miss Liza Jane?
KD: It’s a magical relationship that only grew in our production. They think we all — especially if we are artists — we have those creative tendencies, our lives are changed by someone who takes an interest in us, they won’t let us slack, they won’t let us fall short of what we are destined for. I grew up in the post-Civil Rights era, that striver mentality, ‘you’re going get out there, you’re going to live up to your excellence.’ I didn’t know Kecia Lewis well and then she came in and when I saw her performance I said, “I wrote this character for you.” Kecia is kind to everyone in the cast, she mentors everyone. She just embodied the role. It’s true of so many of the characters, whether it is Maleah Joi Moon, Brandon Victor Dixon, Chris Lee or Jackie Leon, who sings “Girl on Fire.” She is my dad’s favorite in the show. I didn’t know most of the actors ahead of time, but once they came in it was magical.
AmNews: As a Hispanic man, what does it mean to you to have written this book and see your work performed on a Broadway stage?
KD: It’s a huge gift and responsibility and a blessing. The line in the show that Kecia says is ‘You are here because the voices of your ancestors requested you,’ and that line gets a big response and I take it seriously. I don’t think that we’re doing what we do just for ourselves. There were a lot of people who made a lot of sacrifices to give me the ability to write musicals for a living. It’s a crazy thing that I get to do as a job and it’s fun and I take that responsibility very seriously, so when I think about being Latino and being a member of that community, I think of my parents, my grandparents. I grew up in Yonkers, my parents grew up in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I have family in every borough. My grandparents came from Puerto Rico when they were young. My nationality is Nuyorican. New York City is its own country. I think that’s how I got the job. Alicia was talking about this early on, people of New York City have all types of backgrounds, if you’re not from here you don’t understand. We tried to put in the culture with the times, the slang, but also the mentality we needed to get across.
AmNews: What advice would you give to other Hispanic youth that would like a life in theater?
KD: The same advice I would give to anybody. It’s very hard, it’s not a lot of money in the early stages. You have to know what you are getting yourself into. But the most important thing is knowing what it is that you can do that someone else can’t.
AmNews: Who were your role models?
KD: I thought theater was Shakespeare or people sitting on a couch. Then I found people doing art for people that looked like me. My mom was a theater fan, she took me to see a lot of things. My mom took me when I was in high school to see a Broadway show called ‘Spic-O-Rama’ with John Leguizamo. John is now a friend, but he was the person who opened the door to me. He put characters on that stage that looked like and sounded like my family. The characters were going through the emotions that I was going through of not feeling authentic enough. Too Latino for some rooms and not Latino enough for other rooms. I feel responsible to John and I have to do right by him. When we were at the Public, when we first did the show, there was a big poster of Raoul Julia, he used to do a lot of work at the Public Theatre, a Puerto Rican actor. I would walk by the poster of him and I got into the habit, before I would see the show, I would put my hand on it and I would just commune with him for a second. Sometimes I would say things in my head. I would say ‘I hope we’re doing justice. You opened the doors and we’re coming through it.’ I don’t think that everybody has to take that responsibility when you’re doing the work. The best way to honor those folks who came before you is to be authentic to who you are and bring the story with your unique voice into the conversation. I came up in the ’90s and there were a lot of solo performances — Danny Hock was a performer and founder of the Hip-Hop [Theater] Festival. In Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, there were folks who looked like me and different from me as well. Luckily I got to be friends with them. I told them they created the expectation in me that I could be up there. So I didn’t feel like I was breaking through the door, I was following in their footsteps. Then there’s Rita Morena and Chita Rivera. Puerto Ricans have an incredible history in the Broadway Theater and in musicals. It was a great lineage for me to be a part of. I hope we can open the doors for the next generation of folks.
AmNews; Who encouraged you in your family?KD: Both of my parents encouraged me, my whole extended family. But, my mom was the one who took me to theater as a kid, theater for young audiences. Once I got into high school I did theater in high school musicals. I found a community there. My dad was always supportive. When I was looking at colleges I was doing a lot of theater, but I was going to go to business school to make money. My dad talked me out of going to business school. He said ‘that’s not your interest.’ He identified I had a passion and he wanted me to follow that passion. He felt my grandfather moved here from Puerto Rico to find a better life for him, his kids, and his grandchildren. My dad recognized I had a chance to live up to that, so he pushed me in a big way to support me to follow my dreams. When your parents have your back like that how are you not going to take it seriously?
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