Lydia R. Diamond (born April 14, 1969, in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

) 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 and editor. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically accl ...

's novel; ''

Stick Fly ''Stick Fly'' is a 2006 play written by Lydia R. Diamond. Synopsis The show takes place at the LeVay Home, in Edgartown, as it is a point of contention where the family resides. The family was the first black family on the island, and the show ...

'' (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, United States. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from ...

, Loyola University,

Columbia College Chicago Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 6,493 students (as of fall 2021) pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It i ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

, and

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

. 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 an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

“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 spelled Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje (), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoekhoe woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under ...

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

'' played on Broadway, in a production produced by Alicia Keys. Her play "Smart People" debuted at the Huntington Theater in May 2014. 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 among 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