Susan (Suzi) Dietz is an American theater producer and director. A five-time Tony nominee, and the winner of a Drama-Logue Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles theater, she was the artistic director of the LA Stage Company, the producing artistic director for the Pasadena Playhouse, and the executive director of the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills. Her Broadway credits include Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane, Fela! by Bill T. Jones and Jim Lewis and Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons.
Early life and education
Dietz was born to Sylvia and Simon Dietz and grew up in Bala Cynwyd. Her father owned a well-known hat store on South Street in Philadelphia. As a student at Lower Merion High School, she was a "theater junkie"—in addition to singing, acting and seeing Broadway tryouts as soon as they came to Philadelphia, she frequently attended performances at Philadelphia's Theater of the Living Arts. There, she saw Harry Noon and Night, by Ronald Ribman, who would later be the subject of her doctoral thesis.
Dietz went to Cornell University and received a BA in English in 1969. She attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, and earned a PhD in English in 1974. Following her graduation, she moved to New York to teach.
Career
LA Stage Company, Pasadena Playhouse, Canon Theater
Finding New York difficult—she said she was "one of those people whom New York defeated"—Dietz moved to Los Angeles with her husband, Lenny Beer, whom she met in 1971. In Los Angeles, she taught at the Harvard School for Boys, which later became the Harvard-Westlake School, where she founded the drama department.
Although she recorded a single, "Waited Much Too Long," released on Capitol in 1974, Dietz lost interest in performing before she moved to Los Angeles and shifted her focus to directing. She directed her first show in professional theater by "doing it herself"—she raised money through family and friends and produced and directed the West Coast premiere of Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others at the Callboard Theater in West Hollywood. In 1981, the show moved to the LA Stage Company, a non-profit Dietz created at the Las Palmas Theater in Hollywood. A succession of hit productions followed, including Nuts and the world premiere of Penn & Teller. During the same time period—by then an "up-and-coming stage entrepreneur"—Dietz established LA Stage Company West at the former Solari Theater. Among other productions, as the artistic director for both theaters, she produced the West Coast premieres of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You by Christopher Durang, Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, Wasserstein's Isn’t it Romantic and Stephen Banks' Home Entertainment Center, which was filmed for Showtine in 1991. In 1984, Dietz revived the theatre's original name, the Canon Theater. By the end of the 1980s, the Canon was known as a "place where shows -- seldom of the serious persuasion -- could sprout their commercial wings."
In November 1986, Dietz and Steven Rothman were named co-producing artistic directors of the Pasadena Playhouse, reviving the theater, which had been defunct for 12 years. In 1987,Los Angeles Daily News wrote that Dietz and Rothman had helped to establish Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles, as a center for the arts. The ’88-89 season won three Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards and 32 Drama-Logue awards. However, Dietz and Rothman had differing artistic visions. Rothman resigned, and Dietz -- still producing shows at the Canon -- became the theater's sole artistic producing director. Among others, the Pasadena Playhouse presented the world premiere of Mail, the world premiere of Accomplice, Carnal Knowledge, Steel Magnolias and Stepping Out during Dietz' tenure. In 1988, Dietz brought Mail to the Music Box Theater in New York. It was her first credit as a producer on Broadway.
Dietz ran the Canon Theater for 21 years, producing well-received and well-attended shows including Love Letters, with a revolving cast that featured Charlton Heston, Whoopi Goldberg, Sharon Stone, Matthew Broderick, Helen Hunt, and others, which ran for two years; Dick Shawn's The Second Greatest Entertainer in the World, two separate runs of Forever Plaid, Lynn Redgrave's Shakespeare for My Father, Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues , Andrea Martin's one woman show Nude Nude Totally Nude. and Lorna Luft's Songs My Mother Taught Me. She continued to work on productions at other venues throughout the time she ran the Canon, most notably the West Coast premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Henry Fonda Theater.