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US IB English-Topdog/Underdog: Suzan-Lori Parks

Timeline as a Playwright

1982: Takes a short story class with James Baldwin, who encourages her to write plays. Begins to write The Sinner's Place in Baldwin's class. 

   1984: Park's senior thesis play, The Sinner's Placeis written at Mount Holyoke.

   1985: Graduates Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College with a double major in English and German. Studies in London at London Drama Studio for a year

   1986: Returns to the USA and moves to New York City

   1987: Betting on the Dust Commander premieres at The Gas Station, New York

   1989: Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom premires at BACA Downtown, Brooklyn

   1992: Winns Whiting Writers' Award. Devotees in the Garden of Love is commissioned by Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville.

   1994: The America Play produced at Yale Repertory Theatre and The Joseph Papp Public Theatre/ New York Shakespeare Festival

   1996: Writes the screenplay for Spike Lee's Girl 6. 

   2003: Getting Mother's Body, her first novel is published.

   2005: Their Eyes are Watching God, starring Halle Berry, premiers in March on ABC television. Writes the screenplay for Act V (not produced). Begins writing  the book for the musical Ray, a musical version of the life of Ray Charles.

   2006: Writes the screenplay for The Great Debaters. On 13 November, the individual plays of 365 Days/365 Plays have a 'simultaneous and shared world premiere' when they begin being performed at hundreds of theatres around the USA. 

   2007: 365 Days/365 Plays Completed during week of 12 November. 

Suzan-Lori Parks


Susan Lori Parks, photo by Eric Schwabel CC BY SA

Contact Suzan-Lori Parks

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Contact her:
slp7@nyu.edu
+1 212 998 1940
721 Broadway
Floor 7
New York

Click HERE for her biography as a professor at NYU | TISCH.

The 2002 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Drama

For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500).

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Columbia University President George Rupp presents Suzan-Lori Parks with the
2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

The Creative Works of Suzan-Lori Park

The Creative World of Suzan-Lori Parks

From the Huntington Theater Company:

“She is an original,” said August Wilson of fellow playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. “[Her] fierce intelligence, and fearless approach to craft, subvert theatrical convention and produce a mature and inimitable art that is as exciting as it is fresh.” Inimitable is an apt word for this boundary-crushing artist whose plays earned her the distinction of being the first African American woman playwright to win a Pulitzer Prize. Parks’ bold revisions of familiar figures, innovations in expressing dialogue on paper, and penchant for exploding theatrical norms have cemented her place as a trailblazer in the field. As Vogue magazine put it, “Parks has burst through every known convention to invent a new theatrical language.”

Though her subversive style is often described with words that lend an air of wildness to her work, Parks’ deconstruction is far from reckless. The playwright’s method of transformation stems from a tradition that has a long and rich history in the world of jazz music: repetition and revision.

Known for its improvisational structure, jazz music draws on a medley of sources for inspiration including ragtime, blues, West African musical tradition as well as military songs, and blends them together into a single piece of music. Often, jazz will take a familiar tune and riff on it, altering it slightly with each iteration of the melody — holding notes longer than expected, adding trills and musical detours to make it new. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. summarizes in his seminal book The Signifying Monkey,“when you repeat a prior work of art, you bring it and all its connotations back, so that there are always two dimensions, past and present, repetition and revision, working at the same time.” It is from this rhythmic and explorative aesthetic that Parks developed the process that she has playfully renamed “Rep & Rev.”

To read the full story click HERE.

Major Works

Major Works:

  • The Sinners Place (1984)
  • Betting on the Dust Commander (1990)
  • Imperceptible Mutabilities in the United Kingdom (1989)
  • The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990)
  • The America Play (1993)
  • Girl Six (1995)
  • Venus (1996)
  • In the Blood (1999)
  • Fucking A (2000)
  • Topdog/Underdog (2001)
  • Getting Mother's Body (2003)
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
  • 365 Days/365 Plays (2006)
  • Ray Charles Live! (2007)
  • The Book of Grace (2010)
  • Porgy & Bess (2011), adaptation
  • Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2, 3 (2014)

Awards

Awards:

  • Pulitzer Prize, 2002
  • Best Off-Broadway Play, 1989, 1996
  • PEN-Laura Pels Award for Excellence in Play writing, 2000
  • Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, 1995
  • CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama), 1996
  • Guggenheim Foundation Grant, 2000
  • MacArthur “Genius” Award 2001

Education

  • Attended German high school when her father was stationed in Germany
  • 1985 Mount Holyoke College
    • Majored in English and German; Phi Beta Kappa graduate
    • Took a creative writing class taught by African American novelist James Baldwin who encouraged her to try writing plays
  • 1986 Yale University School of Drama

Watch Me Work June 1, 2020 Episode

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