J. Nicole Brooks, the author of Black Diamond talks with ArtAntica
From The Black Diamond Issue of ArtAntica
Mentioned in this entry: J Nicole Brooks, Heidi Stillman and Laura Eason
ArtAntica: Who are you and how did you get started with Lookingglass?
J. Nicole Brooks: My name is J. Nicole Brooks and my nom de guerre or pen name is Dr. Slick. I began my career with Lookingglass in 2002. In 2002, Adam Belcuore at the Goodman theatre called me for a workshop. The workshop was for a script called RACE and I got cast in that. And so we developed things for the workshop and so from there my relationship with Lookingglass just grew and grew. And in 2003 I became an artistic associate.
ArtAntica: How did this play become a part of gglassworks (the Lookingglass script development program)?
J. Nicole Brooks: Shortly after I became an artistic associate we actually had an ensemble meeting, sort of an induction of the artistic associates. At that point we just went around and threw out ideas of what we might want to see the company do in the future. And I had read this magazine article probably a month or two before and I was carrying it around with me. And I was like “you guys should make a story out of this article I read about female fighters in Liberia.” I wrote a treatment about it and gave it to Heidi and Laura. They kept asking me about it and I just started typing out a draft. So that’s how it started. It started as an idea and then it moved to a really bad first draft that I gave to them.
ArtAntica: What do audiences need to know about the Liberia before coming?
J. Nicole Brooks: One thing they should know is that Liberia is a West African country but it was, for lack of better words, “colonized” by the United States in the mid to late 1800’s and that it had strong U.S. ties until about 1990. It’s also important for the audience to know that there was a brutal civil war that destabilized quite a bit of the West African region. Some of the things about the war included Diamond mining, running arms and that sort of thing. The audience should know that rape, torture, maiming, a lot of crimes against humanity took place throughout the region and unfortunately still happens.
ArtAntica: How did you decide to approach those topics dramatically?
J. Nicole Brooks: I didn’t want to approach it in a National geographic sense. I didn’t want it to be so heavy that it hits the audience over the head. I didn’t want it to be too didactic. And I didn’t know that at first what the script would be. And it eventually morphed not only into a drama but satire kept slipping in. And the satire was provided by information I would learn about the history of Liberia and its strong ties to the United States. So my approach really was, no matter how bad the idea seemed, just to write it out then go back tinker and explore.
ArtAntica: How true-to-life did you stay in writing the character Black Diamond?
J. Nicole Brooks: Well the character of Black Diamond is based on the fighter Black Diamond she’s a colonel in the Women Artillery Commandos. There isn’t a lot of information about her. You might see a report from CNN that says she was raped at the age of 11 and then you’ll see something from the BBC that says she was raped at the age of 15. So sometimes you found conflict reports. And you just found little sound bytes about her. So what I did as the writer was collect all of that data, and take artistic license but also remain true to who she was. So I had very few puzzle pieces.
ArtAntica: Who do you hope comes to see this play?
J. Nicole Brooks: We already have a great subscriber base, but I’m hoping also that we get the mySpacers in there. I hope we get the broke college students. I hope we get the community activists. I’m hoping we’ll get more of the black community I’m hoping we’ll get an alliance with the African community here in Chicago. I’m hoping that we’ll get people who get charged by political commentary. So I’m definitely hoping for an array of people.
ArtAntica: What do you want audiences to take away from the production?
J. Nicole Brooks: We have a theme in this show that kind of goes along with Pandora’s box. As a western audience we know what Pandora’s box means. I think what we forget is that when all that nastiness escapes out of the box into the world, the thing that’s left is hope. I hope that people won’t remain apathetic. I hope they leave armed with knowledge and can take some good stuff away.
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