Dinner Discussion of “Stick Fly” by Lydia R. Diamond
Stick Fly was a great hit at the 2008 Contemporary American Theatre Festival (CATF), held at Shepherdstown, WV, each July. Many of us saw it there. Funny and passionate, Stick Fly is a probing family drama and an up-to-the-minute take on privilege and perception. Stick Fly is a story of racial tensions as played out in the story of an elite African American family, the LaVays, at their beach house at Martha’s Vineyard over a weekend. The race of the characters factors largely into the narrative that unfolds, but it doesn’t end up being the crux of the play. This is not a message play.
Playwright Lydia Diamond astutely examines African-American social aristocracy in a work called “an impressively ambitious play” (Chicago Tribune) and “a refreshingly vital story about relationships and richly complex characters” (Variety).
Lydia Diamond currently teaches playwriting at Boston University’s School of Theatre. She is a Huntington Playwriting Fellow and a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists. Her plays include Stage Black, The Gift Horse, Stick Fly, and The Inside. Lydia’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was presented by Theatre Alliance several seasons ago to critical acclaim.
