You Will Get Sick

by Noah Diaz

It starts with your balance, but it begins to spread, as these things often do. Your legs numb, your grip-strength weakens, your arms go limp and soft. Before long, you’re hiring a stranger to say aloud what you can't bear to say yourself: that you got sick. A recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, YOU WILL GET SICK is a new play in second-person about learning how to live within...

It starts with your balance, but it begins to spread, as these things often do. Your legs numb, your grip-strength weakens, your arms go limp and soft. Before long, you’re hiring a stranger to say aloud what you can't bear to say yourself: that you got sick. A recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, YOU WILL GET SICK is a new play in second-person about learning how to live within your body as you find your way home.

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You Will Get Sick

Recommended by

  • Heidi Kraay: You Will Get Sick

    I want to see this play over and over again, for all the reasons in previous recommendations, and because witnessing a 2020 Seven Devils Zoom reading felt like such a perfectly fitting, disembodied experience, the story, images and characters have haunted me ever since. Now I yearn to see the fully embodied version. Mystical, transporting, eviscerating -- ultimately a celebration of life and love, despite, throughout and BECAUSE of any/all/most kinds of sickness (and all their accompanying struggles), so that the play becomes strangely uplifting rather than depressing, connecting rather than...

    I want to see this play over and over again, for all the reasons in previous recommendations, and because witnessing a 2020 Seven Devils Zoom reading felt like such a perfectly fitting, disembodied experience, the story, images and characters have haunted me ever since. Now I yearn to see the fully embodied version. Mystical, transporting, eviscerating -- ultimately a celebration of life and love, despite, throughout and BECAUSE of any/all/most kinds of sickness (and all their accompanying struggles), so that the play becomes strangely uplifting rather than depressing, connecting rather than isolating, thanks to intensive empathy. Beautiful beautiful beautiful.

  • Cheryl Bear: You Will Get Sick

    A moving story of struggling with the hard parts of being human and understanding. Beautifully done.

    A moving story of struggling with the hard parts of being human and understanding. Beautifully done.

  • Conor McShane: You Will Get Sick

    A surreal, fantastical, ultimately very moving journey through a world of economic anxiety, small cash deals, and predatory birds. Parker's struggle with his illness, along with his unlikely friendship with Callan, anchor the story and render it beautifully human. Really terrific stuff.

    A surreal, fantastical, ultimately very moving journey through a world of economic anxiety, small cash deals, and predatory birds. Parker's struggle with his illness, along with his unlikely friendship with Callan, anchor the story and render it beautifully human. Really terrific stuff.

View all 6 recommendations

Development History

  • Type Reading, Organization Roundabout Theatre, Year 2022
  • Type Workshop, Organization Seven Devils New Play Foundry, Year 2020
  • Type Workshop, Organization Yale School of Drama, Year 2019
  • Type Reading, Organization Shelterbelt Theatre, Year 2018

Production History

  • Type Professional, Organization Steppenwolf Theatre, Year 2025
  • Type Professional, Organization Available Light Theatre, Year 2024
  • Type Professional, Organization Salt Lake City Acting Company, Year 2024
  • Type Professional, Organization Roundabout Theatre, Year 2022

Awards