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Z Plays Development Program
Playwrights Foundation and Cutting Ball Theater
and the San Francisco arts community present
a
play a day by Suzan-Lori
Parks
November 13, 2006 - November 12, 2007
appearing all over San Francisco
Tickets:
Buy Benefit Tickets Today!
About the project | About the Playwright | Schedule
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About Suzan-Lori Parks
In Suzan-Lori Parks’s writing, the dead and the past are ever-present; bodies are unearthed, family secrets revealed, and historical deceits examined. She has said, "One of my tasks as a playwright is to locate the ancestral burial ground — dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down." Her writing raises historical questions about social and political issues. Suzan-Lori Parks’s works all involve a certain continuity of subject: marginalized men and women struggling with racial and class prejudice. In her talks, with her unique sense of humor, she discusses the process of becoming a writer, following one’s creative voice, and current politics and the American theater, many times offering a performance with guitar and voice.
Parks’s creative writing teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, was among the first to recognize Parks’s dramatic skills and declared that she "may become one of the most valuable artists of our time." After writing several well-received off Broadway plays including In the Blood and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Parks emerged onto the theatrical forefront with the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog — she is the first African-American woman to be awarded the Pulitzer in Theatre. The two-man play is a darkly comic tale, thick with cultural allusions and electric dialogue, featuring two brothers with the adversarial names of Lincoln and Booth. Topdog/Underdog has been performed to great acclaim on Broadway, in theatres throughout the United States and Europe. Her other plays include Fucking A, The Sinners Place, Devotees in the Garden of Love, Betting on the Dust Commander, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), The America Play, Venus (1996 Obie Award), and 365 Plays/365 Days.
Set in the west Texas of her youth, Suzan-Lori Parks’s highly acclaimed first novel, Getting Mother's Body, follows the survivors of Willa Mae Beade who is rumored to be buried with a fortune in jewels. In a series of first person narratives, Willa Mae's scrappy relatives embark on a riotous road trip with the hope of recovering the treasure and transcending their meager circumstances.
Suzan-Lori Parks has taught at several institutions including the Yale School of Drama, and the Dramatic Writing Program at CalArts. Her first feature film screenplay was Spike Lee's Girl 6 and she was commissioned by Oprah Winfrey to write the film version of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God (ABC television, 2005). She is at work on screenplays for Denzel Washington and Brad Pitt.
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“Her dislocating stage devices, stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous.”
—TIME Magazine
Information taken from the Stephen Barclay Agency.
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