Coming to Dartmouth could hardly be considered a minor change for Micaela Diaz '00.
The make-up of students at the College is scarcely the approximately 75 percent Mexican-American and 25 percent African-American mix that attended her high school in San Antonio, Texas.
But as a Mexican-American minority, she has always faced what she calls "a negotiation with identity," and the Dartmouth atmosphere just amplified her struggle to blend with different cultures while retaining her own ethnicity.
The theater has always played a large role in Diaz's focus on her Mexican-American culture.
Her father managed the Guadalupe Theater in San Antonio, and she spent a lot of time there as a child.
"I never really thought of acting, but for long periods of time, the theater was my babysitter," she said.
Diaz acted in her first play when she was five. Even though she played a small part in the play, she enjoyed the experience so much that she literally had to be pulled off the stage after the applause.
Though Diaz has acted in a full range of plays, her focus has been Chicano drama -- a branch of theater largely started by Mexican-American farm workers in California as an "outlet for them to express their struggle with the injustice of the fruit and vegetable corporations," she said.
The theater of the working class, it was often performed on the backs of trucks or on picnic tables.
"What pervades chicano theater is a political struggle and a social struggle -- and in that struggle are triumphs," Diaz said.
Diaz performed in many of the plays at the Guadalupe Theater, and in 1993 she helped organize a youth chicano drama group called Grupo Animo.
Her involvement with the Grupo Animo fostered her first chance to write and direct chicano plays along with acting in them.
Diaz said writing the dramas "came naturally" to her because "a big part of our life and identity is being chicano."
Grupo Animo performed at theater festivals including Teatro Encuentro Nacional de Aztlan (International Festival of Chicano/Latino Theater) in Puerto Rico during the summer of 1994.
When Diaz came to Dartmouth she joined Nuestras Voces, a theater group on campus started by members of the Classes of 1994 and 1995 as a route for bringing the Latino and Hispanic presence at the College to the public forum.
Diaz has played some leading roles with the group. During the Fall term play entitled "Botanica," she played Milagros Botanica, a Puerto Rican girl who goes to school in New Hampshire and wants to assimilate into corporate America.
"Her grandmother wants to teach her the ways of Botanica -- the herbs, remedies and prayers -- but she wants nothing to do with it," Diaz said.
This term, she is one of the four cast women in "Confessions of Women from East L.A.," a play about chicano archetypes -- such as a sex symbol, a scholar and a housewife -- who discuss their experiences in the area.
Natalie Garza '98, who directs Nuestras Voces, said, "she's very energetic and gets very excited about certain things. She's very dedicated to everything she does, especially when it gets to important times during rehearsals for the plays."
Diaz's roles often seem to address her own struggle to create a balance between her own culture and those around her.
She sees both art and life as an "exchange" between different types of people and thought.
Diaz feels it is fine for a person like Milagros Botanica to work in the corporate world and to become and integral part of mainstream society, but that does not mean she has to forget her ethnic background.
"It's fine to assimilate," she said. "But you have to find a balance."
At the College, Diaz tries to create that balance for herself.
Along with acting in Nuestras Voces, she is vice-president of La Alianza Latina, a Latino society that plans cultural activities and social events.
But at the same time, she does not limit herself to friends and experiences solely of her own ethnic background.
She used to be a member of the Untamed Shrews, another theater group on campus, and she was also in "Laughing with You," Shakespeare Alley's production last Winter.
"It's not about 'instead of,' it's about 'in addition to,'" she said.
Diaz's family has played a large role in cultivating her affinity for acting along with her quest for a multicultural experience.
She comes from a family of artists -- her mother is a playwright, her father is an arts administrator who is also a student of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian percussion, and her 11-year-old sister has been studying dance for six years.
Her parents always addressed the need to learn from different cultures. Books "from Chinese ballet to Greek politics" cover their shelves, Diaz said.
She never felt parental pressure to get involved with the arts, but they came naturally to her.
"The arts are like breathing," she said. "Art is everywhere, it's everything -- it's all around us."
Diaz is a history major and drama minor. She hopes to become a college professor, but she knows that art will always be a part of her life.
