Diane Baia is a multi-talented playwright, fluent in the realms of the present and of the past. Specializing in the theatre of ideas, her command of both language and human psychology allows her to present striking images of men and women struggling to maintain their personal integrity against forces determined to destroy it. Whether in a terrorist safe house in a Dublin slum, the palace of Lorenzo de’ Medici in Renaissance Florence, the jungles of Cannibal Valley in Papua New Guinea or the twelfth-century monastery of real-life mystic Hildegard von Bingen, Diane’s characters—leavened with wit and humor—inhabit not only their own worlds, but reach out to resonate in our own.
RECENT EVENTS & NEWS:
Diane’s play The Wisdom of Serpents had a concert reading at Mc Henry County College in Crystal Lake, IL, in March, 2011, as part of the college’s Women in History Month program. The Wisdom of Serpents was previously seen in another concert reading at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL in October, 2010, as the closing event to the exhibit, The Once and Future Saint: The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen. The Wisdom of Serpents was also named a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award as one of the top five feminist plays adjudged in 2009, receiving an Honorable Mention.
UPCOMING EVENTS!
Join Diane at a special staged reading of her new play The Fencing Lesson at 3:00 P.M., Sunday, April 15, at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. A feedback session and reception will follow.