Stephanie Diaz is an actor, puppeteer and educator who relocated to Chicago from the west coast four years ago last fall. Since arriving in the midwest, she has had the good fortune to work with 16th St. Theatre, Kansas City Rep, Teatro Vista, Remy Bumppo, ShawChicago, First Stage Milwaukee, Drury Lane Oak Brook, Victory Gardens, Mixed Blood Theatre (Minneapolis), American Theatre Company and Teatro Luna. Her west coast credits include work at Seattle Rep, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, The Magic Theatre (SF), The Village Theatre (Seattle) and 5th Avenue Theatre (Seattle). She is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association.  

As a teaching artist, Stephanie has taught for Seattle Children's Theatre, Intiman Theatre, 5th Avenue Theatre, Old Globe Theatre (San Diego), Auditorium Theatre (Chicago) and is currently on the teaching roster for Lookingglass Theatre. She especially enjoys working with urban, ethnically-diverse student populations and strives to empower young people to find and use their own voices-- whether as writers, actors, visual artists, musicians or just all-around good human beings. She is a Teaching Artist for Pegasus Players' Young Playwrights Festival.

As a puppeteer, Stephanie was trained by Jean Enticknap of Thistle Theatre (Seattle), where she was a company member for several years and was commissioned to write and perform in the company's first-ever bilingual (English/Spanish) show. She specializes in the Bunraku style, but has perfomed rod and shadow puppetry as well. She went on to perform in Seattle's wildly-popular adult puppet extravanganza, "Frankenocchio", with Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab. Last summer, she had the excellent good fortune to perform with Blair Thomas and Company in the critically-acclaimed "A Rabbit's Tale", set to a live piano performance of Modest Mussourgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" in Millennium Park.

Stephanie is proud to be a first-generation Guatemalan-American. Born at Quantico Station to the US Marine Corps' first Latin American woman officer, she was raised on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula, attended UC San Diego, lived in Seattle for four years, and now lives in the Edgewater neighborhood with her Norwegian-American fiancé and their four cats. She is in love with the Windy City and looks forward to raising tri-lingual, "Guate-wegian" kids in this great city.

She is immensely grateful to Ann Filmer and Tanya Saracho for the beautiful experience of Kita y Fernanda, and is thrilled to have an opportunity to work on FIRES IN THE MIRROR, one of her personal Top 5 most influential works of theatre.

She is in love with the Windy City and looks forward to raising tri-lingual, "Guate-wegian" kids in this great city. She is immensely grateful to Ann Filmer and Tanya Saracho for the opportunity to work on Kita y Fernanda.

Ann founded 16th Street Theater in September 2007 thanks to the North Berwyn Park District and Joseph Vallez. For 16th Street Ann has developed and directed the world premieres of Rohina Malik's Unveiled, Susan Hahn's The Scarlet Ibis, Will Dunne's The Ascension of Carlotta, Robert Koon's Menorca and Tony Fitzpatrick's This Train which enjoyed a sold-out, critically-acclaimed remount at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre. She also directed the Jeff-Nominated Kita y Fernanda by Tanya Saracho, Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror and Brett Neveu's The Last Barbecue.

Ann has shared the stage with Tom Wopat, Jennifer Garner and a cactus. Ann made her home in Berwyn with her husband, musician/composer, Barry Bennett and their daughter Hannah. She is very happy to be here.