Stick Fly

Denzel is a theatre director and workshop facilitator. Denzel trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts on the MA theatre directing course.

After graduating in 2017, Denzel was a part of the resident directors’ pool at the Almeida Theatre. Denzel has worked across several different genres and styles of performance, working alongside the CTC Dance Company as the company’s Director. In 2019 Denzel directed the show Identity, which won the award for ‘Exciting New Work’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2020, Denzel was the co-director for Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and the associate director for Dick Whittington at the National Theatre.

‍In 2021, Denzel was awarded the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award.

Lydia R. Diamond is an American playwright and professor. Among her most popular plays are The Bluest Eye (2007); Stick Fly (2008); Harriet Jacobs (2011); and Smart People (2016). Her plays have received national attention and acclaim, receiving the Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Writing, an LA Weekly Theater Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild of America.

She has taught playwriting at DePaul University, Loyola University, Columbia College Chicago, Boston University, and University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also a Huntington Playwright Fellow and a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists.

This play contains strong language and racial slurs, the depiction of drug use and a moment of violence.