Lydia R. Diamond (born April 14, 1969 in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

) is an American playwright and professor. Among her most popular plays are ''The Bluest Eye'' (2007), an adaptation of

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...

's novel; ''

Stick Fly ''Stick Fly'' is a 2006 play written by Lydia Diamond. It opened on Broadway on December 8, 2011 and closed on February 26, 2012. Synopsis The show takes place at the LeVay Home, in Edgartown, as it is a point of contention where the family resi ...

'' (2008); ''Harriet Jacobs'' (2011); and ''Smart People'' (2016). Her plays have received national attention and acclaim, receiving the Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Writing, an ''LA Weekly'' Theater Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild of America. She has taught playwriting at

DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-centu ...

, Loyola University,

Columbia College Chicago Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, it has 5,928https://about.colum.edu/effectiveness/pdf/spring-2021-student-profile.pdf students pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergra ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

, and

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a Public university, public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side, Chicago, Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus esta ...

. She is also a Huntington Playwright Fellow and a Resident Playwright at Chicago 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 her mother. Diamond's upbringing was artistically-inclined, her mother and grandparents were all musicians and educators. They moved frequently due to her mother's work, living in Amherst, Massachusetts; Carbondale, Illinois; and Waco, Texas, where she completed high school. Her family encouraged her to pursue the violin, like her grandfather, but she discovered a love of theatre while in high school after joining the drama club. She studied theater at Northwestern University, where she switched her focus from acting to playwriting.

Career

Early career

Towards the end of her college career, Diamond wrote her first play entitled, "Solitaire" which was awarded the Agnes Nixon Playwriting Award at Northwestern. After graduating from Northwestern with a B.A. in Theatre and Performance studies in 1991, she met John Diamond, who was working on getting his Ph.D. in sociology. They would marry in 1996. Not long after college she went on to form her own Theatre company called "Another Small Black Theatre Company With Good Things To Say and A lot of Nerve Productions". Using her own company she put up Solitaire and other shows at the since closed 'Cafe Voltaire' in Chicago where her acting and writing career blossomed

Critical years

In 2004, Lydia gave birth to her son, Baylor; and John took on a teaching job at Harvard and they relocated to Boston. Diamond, who had made a name for herself in Chicago as a serious playwright, had to restart her career in New England, all while caring for a newborn. “I went from being playwright-about-town and educator to being faculty wife and new mother, without the buffer of my own community and my very close girlfriends.” Diamond soon started to gain traction in the city, in 2006 The Huntington Theatre chose her for the Playwriting Fellows program. The Boston theatre company, Company One, produced her adaptation of Toni Morrison's

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

“The Bluest Eye”; the story is that of a young black girl longing for blue eyes so that she may be seen by the world around her. Diamond also started teaching at Boston University around this time. In 2008, Company One produced her play, "Voyeurs de Venus", which revolves around a young anthropologist who is investigating the life and exploitation of a

Sarah Baartman Sarah Baartman (; 1789– 29 December 1815), also spelt Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje (), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the n ...

, an African woman paraded through Europe as a sideshow attraction in the 19th century. From 2011–2012, her play ''

'' played on Broadway, in a production produced by Alicia Keys. In 2017, her play ''The Bluest Eye'' was produced by the

Guthrie Theater The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone Gut ...

in Minneapolis, MN.

Works

* ''Here I Am…See Can You Handle It'' * ''The Gift Horse'' (2001) * ''Voyeurs de Venus'' (2006) * ''The Bluest Eye'' (2007) * ''

'' (2008) * ''Lizzie Stranton'' (2009) * ''Harriet Jacobs'' (2011) * ''Smart People'' (2016) * ''Toni Stone'' (2019)

References

"Replenishing and Recycling an Exhausted History in Lydia R. Diamond’s Voyeurs de Venus"
Journal of Literary Studies. Retrieved Jul 15, 2020.

Citations

Bibliography

"Lydia R. Diamond, Assistant Professor (Playwriting and Theatre Arts)"

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 Israel, ''EDGE Providence'', Wednesday Jan 13, 2010. Retrieved Jan 28, 2010.

McCarter Theatre Center web site, Princeton, NJ *http://www.goodmantheatre.org/artists-archive/creative-partners/playwrights/lydia-r-diamond/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Diamond, Lydia R. 1969 births Living people 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights African-American dramatists and playwrights Northwestern University School of Communication alumni 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights American women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Writers from Detroit DePaul University faculty Loyola University Chicago faculty Columbia College Chicago faculty Boston University faculty University of Illinois Chicago faculty American women academics 20th-century African-American women writers 20th-century African-American writers 21st-century African-American women writers 21st-century African-American writers