By Bill Schlotter

If a life were structured like a play, one would have to say that Naomi Iizuka’s first act has been quite the smash hit.

Since departing Yale Law School to become a writer—earning an M.F.A. in playwriting at UC San Diego in 1992 —Iizuka has become one of the country’s most prolific, most produced, and most recognized young playwrights.

Now 40, Iizuka, director of the UCSB Playwriting Program since 2002, has no plans to leave the fast track. With classes on campus, her second UCSB Summer Theatre Lab on the horizon, a play that will be in production in 2006, and three more under commission, her life is a juggling act performed in three time zones.

But it is a lifestyle that suits her, Iizuka says. “I am very busy,’ she said. “But it’s good. It’s great.”

Early in the morning, late at night, on airplanes, at home, or in hotel rooms, she still finds time each day to write. And what she writes keeps turning heads.

Her plays, widely produced across the country, include “36 Views,” which was just staged at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, “At the Vanishing Point,” “Polaroid Stories,” “Language of Angels,” “Tattoo Girl,” and others.

Iizuka was in New York this May 14 and 15 as the guest of The Alpert Foundation, who named her a recipient of a 2005 Alpert Awards in the Arts. The Alpert Award is a $50,000 cash award recognizing achievement in the arts. The awards are presented each year to artists in the categories of theater, dance, film/video, music, and visual arts.

Alpert Program Director Irene Borger said the awards panel seeks “risk-taking, early- to mid-career artists” whose work “compels their curiosity.”

“What Naomi (and the other winners) share is imaginative independence, fierce commitment, and the gift for asking deep questions,” Borger said.

As part of the Alpert Award, Iizuka will have a residency at CalArts, an arts college in Valencia.

“It’s very exciting,” said Iizuka.

The honor is the latest in a list of awards that includes a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, a Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant, an NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residence grant, Princeton University’s Hodder Fellowship, and many more.

Speaking to AsianWeek magazine in 2003, prominent theater director Jon Jory, founder of the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, said of Iizuka: “I have nothing but vast, unending praise for Naomi. She is one of the most important playwrights now writing.”

As a teacher, Iizuka finds great satisfaction in helping her students express themselves. “I think in our culture it is very important to encourage students who have a voice and have a desire to write,” Iizuka said. “That’s one of the reasons why I teach.

“I think the world would be much more humane and interesting place if everyone who wanted to write sat down and wrote what they have inside of them.”

	Playwright/teacher Naomi Iizuka