Eva Noblezada is a Grammy Award-winning and two-time Tony Award-nominated actress, with a wide-ranging repertoire in theater, film and television. Best known for starring in musicals like “Miss Saigon” and “Hadestown,” Noblezada chronicles her musical theater journey in her one-woman, three-night show, “Nostalgia: A Love Letter to NYC.”
From a young age, Noblezada said she always knew she was destined for the arts. She immersed herself in stories from television shows and movies. Her father, a music teacher, played artists like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Santana around the house to encourage her musicality.
“He was the first person to put me next to a piano and work with me on my arpeggios,” Noblezada said. “So my dad is really the reason why I started to get really serious about it when I was a kid.”
A San Diego native, Noblezada references her early upbringing in Chula Vista in her show. She lived down the street from both sides of her family — her mother is Mexican and her father is Filipino — which helped her feel whole within both cultures. They later moved to North Carolina, where she attended a performing arts school.
Then in 2013, she became a finalist in the National Musical High School Theatre Awards, otherwise known as the Jimmy Awards. The ceremony takes place at the Minskoff Theatre in New York — the same theater Noblezada saw her first Broadway show, “The Lion King.” It turned out to be a full circle moment.
“I remember as the animals walked down the aisle, I was bawling out my eyes. And I just remember thinking, ‘I’m going to do this one day. I’m going to be in a Broadway show,’” Noblezada said. “And that was the stage that I ended up making my Broadway stage debut on because of the Jimmy Awards.”
Her performance of “With You” from “Ghost” caught the attention of Tara Rubin, a prestigious casting agent. Rubin also happened to be a friend of Noblezada’s high school theater teacher. They set up Noblezada to audition for the first ever revival of “Miss Saigon” on the West End in London.
After a whirlwind audition process, she earned the lead role as Kim, a young Vietnamese mother. As a high school senior, it changed her world almost immediately — she went from choosing between colleges to moving to London at just 17 years old.
When asked about what it was like to be catapulted into the spotlight, Noblezada said she initially found it exciting. But she had a difficult time adjusting to the rigorous show schedule and the demands made of her and her body, particularly when it came to her weight and skin.
“I think when you're really passionate about something and you don't put up certain boundaries that are really healthy for yourself, you tend to, I guess, over give,” Noblezada said. “And I definitely was being asked way more than I should have been asked at such a young age.”
She is currently starring in the highly acclaimed “Hadestown,” which chronicles the love story between the mythological couple Orpheus and Eurydice. The show premiered on Broadway in 2019.
But like many other theater productions, “Hadestown” shut down for 18 months due to the pandemic lockdown. Being separated from a job gave Noblezada the time to reflect on her relationship to her craft and, in turn, her character Eurydice. She now approaches the role with more gratitude.
“I just felt like I grew as a person. If the actor is growing and if the vessel is changing, then the connection to anything else is going to change as well. And if anything, it made it better, I think. I hope it made it better,” Noblezada said.
Her final performance in “Hadestown” will be on Aug. 13.
Aside from performing, Noblezada’s decade of experience in the theater industry also informs her activism. She is an advocate of mental health and has opened up about her anxiety in backstage vlogs, interviews and on social media. It’s one important way she uses her platform.
“If I'm going to be an artist, I feel like part of my responsibility is creating an out-source for people to see that they're not alone, and then maybe share a laugh and maybe be inspired by something, then we go on our merry way,” Noblezada said. “For me, that’s the best part about being an artist.”
“Nostalgia: A Love Letter to NYC” isn’t Noblezada’s first one-woman show, having performed in cabarets before. However, it was her first time performing solo in a theater for three nights in a row, all of which sold out. She describes it as a learning experience.
When asked what she would say to a younger version of herself, Noblezada said she thinks of herself as someone who feels deeply, almost thinking of life as tragic and dramatic. Her advice: Use those emotions and turn them into something greater than yourself.
“If you can find a way to source that out, to transform that tragedy into something beautiful for yourself, that is the ultimate superpower. That's the ultimate magic that you can create for yourself,” Noblezada said. “And those three evenings of doing 'Nostalgia' was the perfect way to do that for me.”
The full show of “Nostalgia: A Love Letter to NYC” is available on Audible.
