Edi ya & diamond’s grove
By a.k. payne
Performances
Saturday, JuNE 15 at 2pm–OVATIONS PLUS
Saturday, JuNE 22 at 2:30pm–TheatreSquared
About the play
Set at the edge of an old U.S. mill town, Edi Ya & Diamond’s Grove tells a story about two Black young people working in an amusement park dripping with ghosts. Haunted by stories of the places their grandparents could not enter and memories of long summers spent riding coasters and losing childhood, Edi Ya and Diamond try to make sense of grief in this place of lost dreams.
Edi Ya and Diamond’s Grove was commissioned and initially developed by City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Clare Drobot, Monteze Freeland & Marc Masterson, Co-Artistic Directors; and James McNeel, Managing Director) and made possible by a gift from Kemp Powers, with additional support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.
Edi Ya and Diamond’s Grove is presented by special arrangement with Paradigm Talent Agency.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents, and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a BA in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from the Yale School of Drama. Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and a 2x finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. Their work has been developed with the National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club's "Groundworks Lab." They are a proud graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the “New Jim Crow;” and part of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker.
ABOUT THE CAST & cREative team
Josiah Davis (Director) makes his TheatreSquared debut. He is a multi-disciplinary artist. A director, choreographer, designer and actor, his work intersects expressive movement, live music, emerging technology, and ritual to breathe new life into storytelling while asking, how do we create space for people to be in alignment while being pulled apart by invisible systems? He is a graduate from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, Television and Brown/Trinity MFA Directing 2020. He is a NYTW 2050 fellow, National Black Theatre Soul Directing Resident, Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, Susan Stroman Directing Award recipient, and Associate Artistic Director of On The Verge Theatre Festival in Santa Barbara. Selected credits: Mary Gets Hers (Playwrights Realm/MCC) Omar Offrendum’s Little Syria (BAM), Lessons in Survival (Vineyard Theatre), Amani (Rattlestick/NBT) Clyde’s (Alabama Shakespeare Festival/Arkansas Rep), and Mr. Saturday Night (Broadway).
Emily Johnson (Stage Manager) returns to TheatreSquared, where she has worked since 2021. She works primarily as a lighting technician, but also works with audio, video, scenic, and now stage management! A jack-of-all trades in her own right, she fills in whatever gaps TheatreSquared needs filling. She holds a BA in drama from Northeastern State University (Tahlequah, Oklahoma).
Divinia Shorter (Dramaturg) returns to TheatreSquared. She is a queer, Black, Latina writer, dramaturg, and director freelancing in the DMV and beyond. She is a senior associate with LINK Strategic Partners and the co-founder of Greatest City Collective, a non-profit focused on uplifting artists and the social causes they care about. She is host to the Collective’s podcast Bus Ride Talks. A writer of many forms, her current focus is a YA novel and her full length play Queens. Her dramaturgical writing is available online. Regional credits include TheatreSquared, Nashville Repertory Theatre, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. DC area credits include Round House Theatre, Studio Theatre, Rorschach Theatre Company, Imagination Stage, and Adventure Theatre. Off-Broadway credits include Roundabout Theatre Company. University credits include UC Santa Barbara and Towson University.
Michael Allyn Crawford (G[abriel]) makes his TheatreSquared debut. His credits include Are you There (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Black Like Me (Chautauqua Theatre Company); Merry Wives of Windsor (Elm Shakespeare Company); and Proof, A Raisin in the Sun, and Sister Act (Little Theatre of the Rockies). He holds an MFA in acting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Thais Francis (Diamond) makes her TheatreSquared debut. She is a multihyphenate actor, writer, dancer and singer. Her work in theater as a performer and playwright has been seen at Radio City Music Hall and Historic Warner Theater as well as international stages. Her original stage play OUTCRY has been produced off-off Broadway, at Creative Artist Agency in LA and featured in American Theater Magazine. Her debut short film Late Expectations garnered critical acclaim including the Discover Award from Essence Black Women in Hollywood. She has gone on to lend her talents to companies such as BET Networks and Amazon Studios as a writer and dancer. She holds a BFA in acting from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts.
Anthony Grace (Edi Ya) makes his TheatreSquared debut. Other theatrical credits include: for the honey, you gotta say when (New York Theatre Workshop); a.k. payne’s BURNBABYBURN: an american dream, a.k. payne’s Where Pathways Meet, and Is God Is (Yale Cabaret); In The Blood and Neighbors (Convergence-Continuum); Passing Strange (Long Wharf Theatre); Buried Child (Stocker Arts Center); Twelve Angry Men and The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (Karamu House); The Bomb (Ensemble Theatre); Men Like Us (JAG Productions). X’s plays include: Van Sonata movements one, two, and three (Cleveland Public Theatre and Yale Cabaret); blks n jws or Baldwin’s Lecture on the campus of UMass on February 28th, 1984, an election year; Symbolic Gestures or Michael Jackson prepares for the 26th Annual Grammy Awards on February 28th, 1984, an election year; nightfall; and nu money. X holds an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama.
Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Hattie) makes her TheatreSquared debut. Broadway: The Skin of Our Teeth; In the Next Room, or the vibrator play; and Well. Off-Broadway: Where We Stand (WP Theater/Baltimore Centerstage); Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb); O, Earth (The Foundry Theatre); In the Footprint (The Civilians); and Shipwrecked! An Entertainment (Primary Stages). Film: The Life List, The Book of Henry, Wild Canaries, The English Teacher, and The Wrestler. TV: New Amsterdam, Happy, Rubicon, Mercy, Law and Order: SVU, High Maintenance, The Night Of, Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, A Gifted Man, Law & Order, Law & Order: CI, and The Sopranos. Donnetta is the author of Kudzu Calling, Where We Stand (Lucille Lortel, Drama League, AUDELCO nominee), and Last Night and the Night Before, among others. She is a Whiting Award, Helen Merrill Award, Stavis Award, Lilly Award, Todd McNerney Playwriting Award, and Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award recipient.
Antonio TJ Johnson (Lester) makes his TheatreSquared debut. Currently appearing in August Wilson’s HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED (Carlsbad Playreaders). Professional credits include Uncle Pat in The Ferryman (Dea Hurston New Village Arts Center); Sheldon in Trouble in Mind (Utah Shakespeare Festival); Troy Maxon in Fences (Cygnet Theater, Craig Noel Critics Circle Actor Award); Clayborn in Stories about the Old Days (Blackfriars Theater, Dramalouge Award Actor); and Dodge in Buried Child (North Coast Repertory, Playbill Award Actor). Other credits include Clarence Darrow in Never the Sinner, Hedley/Stool Pigeon in Seven Guitars, and King Hedley 11 in Repertory (Cygnet Theater); A. Phillip Randolph in Blueprints to Freedom (Lajolla Playhouse, Kansas City Repertory); Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing (OLD GLOBE); Morten Kill in Enemy of the People (Intrepid Theater); Booker T Washington in Ragtime (Moonlight Amphitheater); Colonel in Smokefall (Backyard Renaissance Theater); and Preacher Oedipus in Gospel At Colonus (Common Ground Theater).
Eric Lockley (The Singularity) makes his TheatreSquared debut. He is an OBIE award-winning actor, writer and producer. Select stage credits include: #Date Me (Off-Broadway), Choir Boy (Studio Theater), and Black Odyssey (Denver Center). Select on-screen credits include: The Inheritance, First Reformed and Luke Cage. Eric has written plays and solo shows including Blacken the Bubble, Without Trace, Last Laugh, and We The People (Not the Bots).His newest play, an Afrofuturistic triptych entitled Sweet Chariot,has been supported by Berkeley Rep, NYSAF and The Public Theater. Eric’s comedic talk show Percy’s Theater This n Dat features theater artists at play (YouTube). Valuing diverse representation on and off-stage, Eric produces with The Movement Theatre Company (What to Send Up When It Goes Down) and Harlem9 (48Hours in… HARLEM). Lockley holds a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.