“I’m just excited to see how my spark lights a fire for many kids after me,” Diego Andres Rodriguez tells me, leaning forward with excitement as he flashes his boyish smile. The Evita star has had a pretty magnificent run since graduating from the University of Michigan in 2024. His role as Artie Green in SUNSET BLVD. while understudying for the lead character catapulted him across the ocean to a critically-acclaimed West End run of Evita. The Olivier Award-nominated actor beams with gratitude and a razor-sharp vision for how he wants to shape theater for the better.

Rodriguez was raised in McAllen, Texas, a predominantly Latino border town where he grew up playing the cello and singing with his family. “I understood music as a way to help my community gather,” he says, adding that “theater was not really a big thing down there.” In high school, he swam and played water polo, but when his school chose to put on the Alvaro Saar Rios play Luchadora, a Mulan-inspired tale of Mexican wrestling, it interested the 16-year-old athlete. “You’re dealing with the toxic masculinity and machismo culture, and I’m so grateful they decided to do that show at that time,” says Rodriguez. “It pulled me in as someone from that world to be invited to be vulnerable in theater through the guise of it being this athletic show.” The high-flying, backflip-demanding performance served as a catalyst for Rodriguez to study theater in college; by the time he graduated, he had already been cast in Jamie Lloyd’s acclaimed revival of SUNSET BLVD. on Broadway.

Rodriguez was soon crossing the Atlantic to star alongside Rachel Zegler and James Olivas in the West End’s production of Evita, a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly. “To now be this person to carry the torch of this thing and redefine it for a new generation, […] that was very powerful,” he says. “Me, James, Rachel, it was really cool to peek over our shoulders at each other, and be like, ‘hey, the way that we’re doing this now is gonna influence how people remember it.’ And that’s a really cool honor.”

When we chatted this past summer, Rodriguez was preparing to depart to Germany for the Ruhrtriennale festival, where he would star in a more experimental work: REBEL REBEL, a retelling of George Orwell’s novel 1984 backed by the sounds of David Bowie and directed by Belgian avant-garde theater master Ivo van Hove. As he and I sheltered from an ongoing heatwave in a uniquely global moment for New York City, Rodriguez looked to the horizon. “With the beauty of the World Cup happening right now, there’s all these Latino people coming out and being loud and proud in the streets,” he says. “I’m excited to be a voice that uses my artistry, not only to do that, but to hopefully inspire future generations of Latinos and bring more to the theater.”

This story appears in the pages of VMAN 57: now available for purchase!

Photography Isaac Anthony

Fashion Arut Arustamyan

Grooming Ben Jones (The Only Agency) using Oribe & MERIT

Editor Kev Ponce

Fashion Market Editor Gabby Buchan

Executive Producer Kevin Warner (WAK Creative)

Production Manager Nick Lambrakis

Production Coordinator Drew Bosset

Lighting Technician Andrew Beadsworth

Digital Technician Katelyn Markham O’Halloran

Styling Assistant Galina Vyrva, Sienna Young, Copelyn Bengel

Grooming Assistant Marin Mullen

Production Assistant Juliet Lloyd

Director of Editorial Film Mynxii White

Location Minetta Lane Theatre