Through lively exchanges and simmering wit, the family tackles a history filled with complications both within the family and in the outer world. The volume includes an in-depth interview with Lydia Diamond discussing her work and experience as a woman and African American navigating through the American Theatre. But there is also more than enough human drama, which reaches its climax when an old family secret comes out. Stone, who made history in 1953 when she joined the Negro Leagues, was the first. With such highly - perhaps overly - educated vacationers, the conversation and the barbs fly, on subjects ranging from race to economics to politics. Diamond was commissioned to write a play about Toni Stone, the playwright had never heard of her. 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. A new play by Lydia Diamond, 'Smart People,' dives headfirst into complex issues of race, class and gender just before President Obama’s historic win. 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. With only six characters, she constructs a vivid weekend of crossed pasts and uncertain but optimistic futures.

Adept at capturing the experience of the upper-middle-class African American, Diamond lays out two families' worth of secrets in this precise play.

Post-Show Talks on Sunday, November 12 with special guest artists. And now it has come home, to UIC, where I’ve no doubt our talented students, design team, and faculty will make something beautiful for you to enjoy!”

I had hoped that one day, “smart (and talented) people” in professional theatres and colleges across the country would continue to produce it and find something meaningful in it. Lydia Diamond: “I’m thrilled to be directing Smart People, a play I wrote a decade ago that seems more timely than ever. Lydia Diamond brings these characters together in this sharp, witty play about social and sexual politics. Diamond is probably best known to New York audiences for her play Stick Fly, which was produced on Broadway during the 2011-2012 season.Her other award-winning playsincluding Harriet. But like all smart people, they are also searching for love, success, and identity in their own lives. Four of Harvard University’s brightest a surgeon, an actress, a psychologist, and a neuropsychiatrist, are all interested in different aspects of the brain, particularly how it responds to race.

Lydia diamond plays