Background
Diana Howie was born in Miami, Florida, United States.
King Edward VII Ave, Cardiff CF10 3NS, United Kingdom
Howie attended the University of Wales at Cardiff, in 1965-1966.
6823 St Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA 70118, United States
Howie earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Tulane University in 1967.
New York, NY 10027, United States
She got a Master of Science at Columbia University, in library science, in 1972.
4800 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Howie earned a Master of Arts in theater arts at the University of Houston, in 1992.
450 Bird Rd, Coral Gables, FL 33146, United States
Diana Howie studied at Coral Gables Senior High.
(Here is a balanced collection of 50 monologues, drawn fro...)
Here is a balanced collection of 50 monologues, drawn from real-life experiences of contemporary teens from all walks of life. Divorce, parents, school, getting in trouble, finding your own way - all loom large in these monologues.
https://www.amazon.com/Tight-Spots-True-Life-Characterizations/dp/1566080541/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Tight+Spots%3A+True-to-Life+Monolog+Characterizations+for+Student+Actors&qid=1578033398&sr=8-1
1999
Diana Howie was born in Miami, Florida, United States.
Diana Howie studied at Coral Gables Senior High. She attended the University of Wales at Cardiff, in 1965-1966. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Tulane University in 1967. She got a Master of Science at Columbia University, in library science, in 1972. She also earned a Master of Arts in theater arts at the University of Houston, in 1992.
Diana Howie was a reference librarian for nearly thirteen years before she discovered a new vocation: writing. She accidentally stumbled upon this new career when she approached editors at the New Jersey Monthly about a magazine article on funding cuts at libraries. Howie ended up writing the piece herself and the article was published as a feature story. She also became a regular contributing editor to the magazine at this point. But it was not until later, when she moved from New Jersey to Houston, Texas, that Howie seriously considered pursuing writing as a career. The fact that her husband was employed and did not mind being “a patron of the arts,” as Howie commented, made the switch easier financially.
The turning point in Howie’s life came one day as she was taking a driving tour of the Hudson River’s west bank. She stopped to read the historical marker at the site where United States Vice President Aaron Burr fought his famous duel with the former secretary of the United States Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in July 1804. Howie found the story fascinating and, while researching its details, began to envision it as a play. She completed the first draft in 1985, yet it was another thirteen years before the play, The Brightest Light, was actually produced.
In the intervening years, Howie completed her studies and wrote six other plays. No one was probably more surprised at this change of career than Howie herself. She commented that although she had always been an enthusiastic audience member, she had never considered writing for the stage, making her choice of taking up playwriting as a full-time occupation surprising even to her. Her first play, Susanna of Stratford, was produced at Edinburgh, Scotland’s famous Fringe Festival in 1990. It is a monologue in which William Shakespeare’s daughter finally comes to terms with the discrepancies between what society at large thinks of her father and what she herself believes. The play has two forty-five minutes acts, with act one able to be staged on its own. Set in title seventeenth century, the play combines the sensibilities of Elizabethan England and the Puritan Revolution and brings them to life for twenty-first-century audiences.
In 1992 came Judy’s Friend, a play about an aging midget who lives in a bookstore now marked for demolition. In an effort to stop the demolition, he puts on a display of Judy Garland memorabilia. Insights about the film industry and Judy Garland’s death are conveyed through the play. Howie wrote a follow-up to Judy’s Friend in 1993, titling it Marilyn’s Boy. In this work, actress Marilyn Monroe’s illegitimate son copes with losing his good looks. In addition to being appropriate vehicles for a one-person performance, both plays can be performed separately or as a combined whole. Critics praised the plays for portraying an authentic picture of the destruction of society while offering a ray of hope at the end from an unlikely source.
In 1993 Howie coauthored You Can’t Wear It Out with Jeanette Wiggins. Produced as Burette at Houston’s Country Playhouse, the play was also considered as a possible Hollywood script for actor James Garner in 1997. It is a comedy in which the central character. Burette Furder, at age eighty-one, gets married for the fifth time. Burette has never lost his zest for life and the play’s action is derived from the perseverance and regeneration of his ever-present desire for romance.
You Can’t Wear It Out was followed by Madame Delicieuse in 1997, a warm-hearted drama about a mother and her two children and their efforts to cope with the absence of the children’s father in their lives. Top Dogs, which also premiered in 1997, was described by Howie in the Houston Chronicle as a “sort of Brechtian Every-man’s tale.” Michael Harrison, the play’s protagonist, is a young, up-and-coming teacher who encounters various levels of power-play at every step of his career. Different character types make their debut through the span of the play to undermine Michael’s attempts to establish a life “without having to compete for every minute of the day.” Reviewers found the play both funny and sadly true, an unfortunate reflection on modern society where human interaction becomes a competition of sorts.
1998 saw the production of The Brightest Light, the play that started it all for Howie. At the core of the play is the duel between Burr and Hamilton, an actual occurrence during which Hamilton was shot and killed by the vice president. Although the shooting occurred in 1804, Howie saw parallels with events occurring within the United States presidency in 1998 - similarities between Hamilton’s and President Bill Clinton’s misfortunes. In her interview for the Houston Chronicle, she explained: “It dovetails with Clinton's problems,” comparing the Democratic president’s sex scandal with Hamilton’s many romantic affairs, affairs that became public and ultimately led to his demise. Critics acknowledged the play as being powerful and noted that it put contemporary events in a whole new perspective.
Howie commented that she usually starts with a story that is rooted in detail; the progress of that story eventually reveals a theme to her. Her No Cash Value, which explores the twin themes of adolescents taking responsibility for themselves and becoming aware of others' needs and the increasing needs of an older man down on his luck, was a departure from her usual method of writing. Here, as the author noted, she started out with “a character with an attitude” and developed a story around him.
Drawing on her former career, Howie’s 2000 play. At Liberty, is set inside a public library and focuses on the chaos that develops when a librarian has a determined attitude to avoid problems. Susan, a young librarian, is more than willing to help people find information but refuses to maintain any kind of order. Unwillingness to handle the increasing number of rowdy library patrons gives rise to a situation of farcical proportions. Howie noted in the Houston Chronicle: “The library is really a metaphor for democracy. It’s like Central Park. It’s a big, public space where no one is really in charge, but everyone has to take responsibility for their actions or the system won’t work.’’
Drawing on Howie' s experience as a juror on a murder trial (the jury was hung, deliberations were fraught), inspired lyrics to yet-to-be-written melodies about jurors' thought-processes, processes having nothing to do with the case at hand but with the jurors' personal concerns as they were trapped for days on the trial. She drafted the book for a musical and found a local collaborator in Anna Fay Williams who composed music and much better lyrics. The resulting musical, The Jury's Out!, uses humor to deal with serious issues: are Americans capable of forgetting their own self-interests for a moment to come together on the big issues facing our society? can we follow our own laws? can we perform the civic duties that are required of us to maintain a free democratic society? can we find the common ground that allows us to listen to one another and find solutions to our society’s problems? In choosing a crime (an accidental killing by a known shooter) that has many precedents in contemporary urban settings, the collaborators found themselves also questioning "How is the prevalence of guns changing us?" When they finally get down to business, the jurors are faced to question the presence of guns in their own lives, and their future need for mercy. At the end the jurors and the audience realize they, too, could be accidental killers, on trial before disinterested jurors.
Wherever Howie has lived, she has wanted to know the history of the place. The New York metropolitan area had its moment with her The Brightest Light, New Orleans with Jackson Square, and now Texas was no different. Inspired by Houston’s history of being created from a mud-hole to a capital city in five months, she delved into what was behind Houston’s legendary “can-do spirit.” Opportunity Knocks, a near-farce, explores who was coming to Houston in those early days, and how they coped.
Hearing of her interest in Texas history, Howie was approached by The Houston Masonic Library and Museum Foundation as they initiated a “Texas History Play Series” to celebrate the events, stories, and individuals involved in Texas winning its independence from Mexico. The Foundation underwrote its first production in 2013 with Howie’s Leaving San Jacinto which had performances in Houston at the former Country Playhouse, followed by a performance at the Dallas Scottish Rite Cathedral Auditorium. Broadway World’s reviewer found the play “An intriguing exploration of three of the most important men to survive the war for Texas’ independence.” (The play featured Sam Houston, Santa Anna, and Lorenzo de Zavala.) A second play in the Series by Howie, Come Hell or High Water, celebrates pioneer women with its focus on Susanna Dickinson, who experienced (with her husband Almeron) much of that Texas road to independence, from the “Come and take it cannon” in Gonzales to the massacre at the Alamo.
In an effort to promote new talent, Howie organized The Country Playhouse’s “New Play Reading Series,” from 1993 - 2013, a program designed to present new plays by local authors. She also edited the Houston theater’s newsletter. She commented in her Houston Chronicle interview that it remains her dream to have high school theater students perform her plays “over and over again until the teachers get sick of them.”
(Here is a balanced collection of 50 monologues, drawn fro...)
1999(By Diana Howie (bookwriter) and Anna Fay Williams (music ...)
2016(Featured in Smith & Kraus "Best Stage Scenes 2005")
2004(The plays and playwrights represented in the 2005 annuals...)
Howie noted that the most important elements she considers when writing her plays are the structure, dramatic action, conflict, syntax, and metaphor. Though she is not actively involved in the production process, she attends auditions and rehearsals for the first productions of her plays and retains approval on casting choices. After the first production closes, Howie often makes revisions to her script, basing her changes on audience reactions and critical feedback.
Diana Howie is a member of Dramatists Guild of America.
Howie has always been an enthusiastic audience member from the time she was five.
Diana Howie is married.