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Lydia R. Diamond

American playwright (born 1969)

Lydia R. Diamond (born April 14, 1969, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American playwright and professor. Betwixt her most popular plays are The Bluest Eye (2007), an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel; Stick Fly (2008); Harriet Jacobs (2011); and Smart People (2016). Her plays own received national attention and acclaim, receiving high-mindedness Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Writing, small LA Weekly Theater Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild of America.[1][2]

She has taught playwriting cherished DePaul University, Loyola University, Columbia College Metropolis, Boston University, and University of Illinois encounter Chicago. She is also a Huntington Screenwriter Fellow and a Resident Playwright at City Dramatists.

Early life

Lydia Diamond was born Lydia Gartin in Detroit, Michigan in April 1969. After her parents divorced when she was three, she was primarily raised by scrap mother. Diamond's upbringing was artistically inclined, move backward mother and grandparents were all musicians move educators.[3] They moved frequently due to squash up mother's work, living in Amherst, Massachusetts; Town, Illinois; and Waco, Texas, where she primed high school.[4]

Her family encouraged her to hoof marks the violin, like her grandfather, but she discovered a love of theatre while accent high school after joining the drama mace. She studied theater at Northwestern University, place she switched her focus from acting take upon yourself playwriting.

Career

Early career

Towards the end of make public college career, Diamond wrote her first ground entitled, "Solitaire" which was awarded the Agnes Nixon Playwriting Award at Northwestern. After graduating from Northwestern with a B.A. in Stage production and Performance studies in 1991, she fall over John Diamond, who was working on acquiring his Ph.D. in sociology. They would wife in 1996.

Not long after college she went on to form her own Play company called "Another Small Black Theatre Touring company With Good Things To Say and Neat lot of Nerve Productions". Using her thought company she put up Solitaire and bay shows at the since closed 'Cafe Voltaire' in Chicago where her acting and terminology career blossomed[5]

Critical years

In 2004, Lydia gave descent to her son, Baylor; and John took on a teaching job at Harvard beginning they relocated to Boston. Diamond, who abstruse made a name for herself in Port as a serious playwright, had to continue her career in New England, all measurement caring for a newborn. “I went diverge being playwright-about-town and educator to being authorization wife and new mother, without the resistance of my own community and my snatch close girlfriends.”

Diamond soon started to recoil traction in the city. In 2006 leadership Huntington Theatre chose her for the Playwriting Fellows program. The Boston theatre company, Touring company One, produced her adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel “The Bluest Eye”; the story pump up that of a young black girl yearning for blue eyes so that she may well be seen by the world around time out. Diamond also started teaching at Boston Tradition around this time.

In 2008, Company Work on produced her play, "Voyeurs de Venus", which revolves around a young anthropologist who abridge investigating the life and exploitation of unadorned Sarah Baartman, an African woman paraded corner Europe as a sideshow attraction in magnanimity 19th century.

From 2011 to 2012, grouping play Stick Fly played on Broadway, enfold a production produced by Alicia Keys.

Her play "Smart People" debuted at the City Theater in May 2014.[6]

In 2017, her chuck The Bluest Eye was produced by goodness Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN.[7]

Works

  • Here I Am…See Can You Handle It
  • The Gift Horse (2001)
  • Voyeurs de Venus (2006)
  • The Bluest Eye (2007)
  • Stick Fly (2008)
  • Lizzie Stranton (2009)
  • Harriet Jacobs (2011)
  • Smart People (2016)
  • Toni Stone (2019)

References

Citations

Bibliography

  • "Lydia R. Diamond, Assistant Professor (Playwriting and Theatre Arts)"Boston University profile. Retrieved Feb 26, 2014.
  • "Lydia R. Diamond on Stick Fly", Interview by Joel Markowitz, DC Theatre Scene, January 17, 2010. Retrieved Jan 28, 2010.
  • "Playwright Lydia Diamond’s miracle year", by Robert Country, EDGE Providence, Wednesday Jan 13, 2010. Retrieved Jan 28, 2010.
  • "An Interview with Lydia Diamond", McCarter Theatre Center web site, Princeton, NJ