Lydia R. Diamond

Toni Stone is an encyclopedia of baseball stats. She's got a great arm. And she doesn't understand why she can't play with the boys. About the first woman to go pro in the Negro League and featuring a bullpen of players crossing age race and gender to portray all supporting roles Toni Stoneis a vibrant new play about staying in the game playing hard playing smart and playing your own way.NYT Critic's Pick! "Toni Stoneis at its considerable best whenever like its main character it's at its most unconventional." -The New York Times"A compelling must-see play." -TheaterMania"A provocative story of grit and determination." -Newsday

It is the eve of Obama's first election. Four of Harvard University's brightest; a surgeon an actress a psychologist and a neuro-psychiatrist are all interested in different aspects of the brain particularly how it responds to race. But like all smart people they are also searching for love success and identity in their own lives. Lydia Diamond brings these characters together in this sharp witty play about social and sexual politics.

In her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs describes with brutal honesty the hardships she endures under slavery, including the extraordinary choices she makes to be near her children. To survive, she escapes into her imagination and through writing, discovers hope for a better life. Accompanied by the rich musical traditions of slave spirituals, Harriet Jacobs is an inspiring look at a young woman's fascinating journey from slavery to freedom.

Winner! 2010 LA Drama Critics Circle Awards: Best Production Best Direction Best Ensemble PerformanceWinner! 2010 LA Garland and 2009 LA Weekly Theatre Awards for PlaywritingWinner! Boston IRNE AwardWinner! 2006 Black Theatre Alliance Award Best PlayFinalist! 2008 Susan Smith Blackburn PrizeNominee! 2012 Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding New Broadway PlayThe affluent African-American LeVay family is gathering

Adept at capturing the experience of the upper-middle-class African American, Diamond lays out two families' worth of secrets in this precise play. With only six characters, she constructs a vivid weekend of crossed pasts and uncertain but optimistic futures. On Martha's Vineyard, an affluent African American family gathers in their vacation home, joined by the housekeeper's daughter, who is filling in for her mother. The family patriarch is a philandering physician; one of his sons has followed in his footsteps, while the other, after numerous false starts in a variety of careers, is a struggling novelist.Both bring along their current girlfriends, to meet the family for the first time. With such highly - perhaps overly - educated vacationers, the conversation and the barbs fly, on subjects ranging from race to economics to politics. But there is also more than enough human drama, which reaches its climax when an old family secret comes out. Through lively exchanges and simmering wit, the family tackles a history filled with complications both within the family and in the outer world.