MADAM QUEEN at Soul Rep Theatre Company

Written by diannetucker

Soul Rep Theatre Company will spend the next year developing the late Dallas playwright, diannetucker’s final project – a screenplay entitled MADAM QUEEN – for the stage - to be fully produced in 2026 in a multi-disciplinary format. This project is made possible by a TACA New Works grant. This historical drama is inspired by 1920’s Harlem’s Queen of “the numbers” – Stephanie St. Clair – one of the country’s first Black female millionaires.

diannetucker was a prolific writer in the North Texas area and served as an early champion for Soul Rep and mentor to its co-founders. She founded her own theater in 1985, Dallas Drama Company, that operated for 10 years and served as a training ground for two of Soul Rep’s co-founders.

(From an article after her passing in 2022)

Playwright, storyteller, lyricist; the fascinating life of Dianne Tucker began in Marshall, Texas on April 3, 1951. She was the third child born to Azrie and Ellean Tucker. Dianne loved entertaining from the jump. Who else would spend their Saturday mornings recruiting nonunion neighborhood kids to perform her original songs and dances? In the early ’60s, the Tucker family packed up and left the piney woods of East Texas and headed West to Fort Worth.

Dianne went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNT and SMU. S On Dec. 16, 1976, at a Rockwell International company Christmas party, Dianne decided to dance with Roland Young. Well, that must have been quite a dance, because they got married in March of 1980.

Her love of the arts never went away. In the 1985, Dianne and her husband, along with Dianne’s brother Larry Tucker formed Dallas Drama Company, a small nonprofit performing company where Dianne’s original work was produced. The company offered plays until 1995 and then became defunct. 

In 2009, Dianne, her husband Roland along with brother Larry and his wife Wanda opened Tucker’s Blues on Commerce Street. Celebrating local blues acts, the timing was right to be in Deep Ellum. After facing unending challenges, Tucker’s closed its doors in 2013. April of last year friends, family and performers from Dallas Drama Company and Tucker’s Blues got together to celebrate Dianne’s 70th birthday.

Sadly, we lost Dianne on New Year’s day after her battle with cancer.