About the actress

Aaron believes that the heart of actor's craft is an ability to be prepared and present enough that one is able to generate moments of electric truth through performance.  She lives for the thrill and insight that inevitably accompany those rare instances of deep human connection.  Her first teachers and directors were her parents and since they first placed her on the stage as a babe she has worked with a bright and talented spectrum of artists.  Recently she has been studying actor’s craft with the inimitable Edward Morehouse at HB Studios, singing and Alexander technique with the wonderful Martha Bernard and dance with the talented faculty of Dance New Amsterdam.  She also teaches yoga and meditation in the heart-opening, mind-expanding Conquering Lion Yoga style. She lives in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn.


Her story

Aaron was born a baby girl.  This to the surprise of her parents, who were not at all disappointed by her sex, but were so partial to the name of her person in the womb, that they couldn’t bear to change it once she’d emerged.

These parents, Patrick Dias and Paula Knowles, met and fell in love as teenaged actors at the Hip Pocket Theatre in Ft. Worth, Texas.  In time their young love produced a young actress.  Even as a babe, Aaron spent her all of her Southern summers there—long ones, from April through October—living amongst the theatre folk and playing on stage, in and out of productions.  

When the family moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland Aaron was 7.  Patrick and Paula quickly became immersed in the lovely local community theatre arts scene there.  The Actors Community Theater in Chestertown and the Washington College Theater Department became Aaron’s new creative incubators.  Paula taught theater at the public schools in the area, bringing a new generation of rural children to love the art.  Aaron was always her avid student, and later her eager assistant.  Meanwhile Patrick was not only directing and/or acting in plays, films and commercials near and far, he was often the man up late during tech week, building the set, rigging the lights and setting the sound cues.  Aaron and her brothers fell asleep contentedly more than one night in the Green Room.

Brief interlude

Aaron spent one year at McCallum High, the Performing Arts Magnet School in Austin, Texas.  In that short time she won the heart of Bill Staples, director of the Theater Program and by spring of that year he was toting her around to local middles schools, tempting their students toward his program with her talents.

University and the universe

At Vassar College Aaron continued to make theater her home, even while she pursued every exciting subject that snagged her academically, especially Western Philosophy, which became her major.  Never passing up an audition and rarely failing to be cast, Aaron slept little and worked hard to balance her love for acting and her love for books.  Her favorite moments were when the two came together so it is no surprise that her most precious pet projects were those she worked on with the incredible ensemble of the Vassar Shakespeare Troupe. She acted in a couple dozen other plays in and out of the Drama Department and even endured acting in a handful of student films.  She also got a fantastic kick being a performer, writer and director in the infamous sketch comedy group No Offense. 

Aaron is currently enrolled in her own school of human kind.  If you have any questions, then she does too.  She believes that making theater, like all arts, is a process of asking the same vital questions over and over again and that this exploration is what makes us human.  She hasn’t come to any conclusive conclusions but she is certain that this search is what makes all that we do beautiful and absurd and fantastically true.