Suzan-Lori Parks | |
|---|---|
 Parks in 2006 | |
| Born | (1963-05-10)May 10, 1963 (age 62) Fort Knox, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Occupation | |
| Education | Mount Holyoke College (BA) Drama Studio London |
| Notable works | The America Play (1994) Venus (1996) In The Blood (1999) Fuckin A (2000) Topdog/Underdog (2001) White Noise (2019) |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | Christian Konopka (current) |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| suzanloriparks | |
Suzan-Lori Parks (born May 10, 1963) is an Americanplaywright,screenwriter, andnovelist. Among her most popular plays areThe America Play (1994),Venus (1996),In The Blood (1999),Fuckin A (2000),Topdog/Underdog (2001), andWhite Noise (2019). These works and others have been performed on and offBroadway and theWest End.[1]
Among numerous awards and honors, Parks is the recipient ofMacArthur Fellowship,Guggenheim Fellowship,The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize,The Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, anOuter Critics Circle Award, anObie Award, and twoTony Award.[2] In 2003 she became the first African-American woman to win thePulitzer Prize for Drama.[3]
Parks served as creator andshowrunner for the 2017USA limited seriesGenius: Aretha, which was nominated for threePrimetime Emmy Awards.[4][5] Her screenwriting credits includeGirl 6 (1996),Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005),Native Son (2019), andThe United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).[6] Her work on these films has earned her anNAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Television) and anIndependent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay nomination. In 2023Time magazine named Parks one of the100 Most Influential People in the World.[7]
Parks was born inFort Knox, Kentucky. She grew up with two siblings in a military family. Parks enjoyed writing poems and songs and created a newspaper with her brother, called the "Daily Daily."[8] Parks was raisedCatholic and attended high school inWest Germany, where her father, a career officer in theUnited States Army, was stationed.[8][9] The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign".[8][10] After returning to the U.S., her family relocated frequently and Parks went to school in Kentucky,Texas,California,North Carolina,Maryland, andVermont.[8] She graduated high school fromThe John Carroll School in 1981, while her father was stationed inAberdeen Proving Ground.[11][12]
In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature by at least one teacher, but upon readingVirginia Woolf'sTo the Lighthouse, Parks found herself veering away from her interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.[13] Parks attendedMount Holyoke College and became a member ofPhi Beta Kappa. She graduated in 1985 with a B.A. degree in English and German literature. She studied underJames Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright; Parks was initially resistant to writing for theater, believing it was elitist and cliquey.[13] Parks, at his behest, began to write plays.[14] Baldwin considered her talent as amazing.[12] Parks then studied acting for a year atDrama Studio London.[15][16][17]
Parks was inspired byWendy Wasserstein, who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her playThe Heidi Chronicles,[18] and by her Mount Holyoke professor,Leah Blatt Glasser.[19]
Parks has written three screenplays and numerous stage plays. Her first screenplay was forSpike Lee's 1996 filmGirl 6.[20] She later worked withOprah Winfrey'sHarpo Productions on screenplays forTheir Eyes Were Watching God (2005) andThe Great Debaters (2007).[21][22]
Parks became the first female African American to receive thePulitzer Prize for Drama, which was awarded in 2002 for her playTopdog/Underdog.[a] She has also received a number of grants including theMacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001.[12] She is a winner of the 2017 Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) America Literary Awards in the category Master American Dramatist.[24] She received the 2018 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. This biennial award is given to "established playwrights whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theatre."[25]
AlthoughBetting on the Dust Commander was not the first play Parks wrote, it was the first of her plays to be produced. Her first playThe Sinner's Place, which she wrote for her senior project at Mount Holyoke, was rejected for production by her college's drama department as they considered it too experimental since she wanted to have dirt on the stage during the performance.[26] When her second play,Betting on the Dust Commander, first premiered, it ran for three nights in a bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side calledGas Station.[27] It is a short, one-act play set in Kentucky, centering around the lives of a couple, Mare and Lucius, who have been married for 110 years. The play's title comes from the horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1970,Dust Commander. As the play goes on, we discover that Dust Commander's Derby is responsible for bringing Mare and Lucius together, and through the couple's discussion of him they think back over their many years of memories together. Poet Philip Kolin argues that Parks's incorporation of non-linear time and a repetitive style is reminiscent of African rituals and the way that their retelling of stories often incorporate the past in a literal manner.[28][29]
One of her best-known works isTopdog/Underdog. This play marked a departure from the heightened language she usually wrote.[citation needed] Parks is an admirer ofAbraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves.[30] It tells the story of two African-American brothers: Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln works at a boardwalk arcade, dressing up like Abraham Lincoln and letting the tourists shoot him with plastic guns. He got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before. Author Joshua Wolf Shenk argues that Parks does not judge Lincoln in this play, but rather enjoys bringing him into the other characters' lives and seeing how they are affected.[30] In an interview, Parks said, "Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure. In days of Greek drama, they hadApollo andMedea andOedipus – these larger than life figures that walked the earth and spoke – and they turned them into plays. Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those."[30]
After her bookGetting Mother's Body was published,[citation needed] Parks gave herself the task of writing 365 plays in 365 days, ultimately produced as365 Plays/365 Days.[31]
The plays were presented by 725 performing arts groups, taking turns until the entire cycle was performed.[31] The performances started in 2006 atThe Public Theater in New York City, and included venues such as the Denver Center Theatre Company, colleges in England and Australia and the Steel City Theatre Company inPueblo, Colorado.[31][32] Other venues were theSteppenwolf Theatre Company and theGoodman Theatre in Chicago, and the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles.[31]
Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 premieredoff-Broadway at thePublic Theater in a developmental production in March 2014 and a full production that fall. Directed byJo Bonney, the cast featuredSterling K. Brown,Louis Cancelmi, Peter Jay Fernandez, Russell G. Jones, andJacob Ming-Trent.[33] Jacob Ming-Trent won the 2015Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play[34] and Parks won the 2015Obie Award for playwriting presented by theAmerican Theater Wing.[35] The play, which takes place during theAmerican Civil War, is presented in three parts: Part 1, A Measure of a Man; Part 2, The Battle in the Wilderness; and Part 3, The Union of My Confederate Parts.[36] From September 15 to October 22, 2016, the play had its London premiere at theRoyal Court in a transfer of the Public Theatre production directed by Jo Bonney. The cast featuredSteve Toussaint, Nadine Marshall,Leo Wringer, Sibusiso Mamba,Tom Bateman, andJimmy Akingbola.[37]
The play was a finalist for the 2015Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer committee wrote: "A distinctive and lyrical epic about a slave during the Civil War that deftly takes on questions of identity, power and freedom with a blend of humor and dignity."[38]
The Red Letter Plays refers toFucking A andIn the Blood, two plays incorporating themes fromThe Scarlet Letter.[39] Both plays have a mother named Hester struggling in a society where they put her in the role of outcast.[39] The first play,In the Blood, premiered in 1999 and follows the story of Hester, a penniless mother of five who is condemned by the men who once loved her.In the Blood was a finalist for the 2000Pulitzer Prize for Drama.Fucking A premiered in 2000 and tells the story of Hester, an "abortionist" trying to free her son from prison.[26][40]
In 2017,Signature Theatre Company produced these two plays in the same season.[39] Parks said: "They were conceived from the same idea but until now have lived very separate lives. I can't wait to participate in the dialogue that will come from witnessing these two works in concert."[41]
In October 2022,Sally & Tom, a play aboutThomas Jefferson andSally Hemings, began performances at theGuthrie Theater inMinneapolis.[42]
Plays for the Plague Year, an anthology of plays and songs, described byThe New York Times as "Parks's diaristic musings on the first year of theCOVID-19 pandemic and a coincident string of deaths, including those of Black Americans killed by police officers", was scheduled for a November 2022 premiere atJoe's Pub, with Parks onstage singing and starring.[42][43]
The Harder They Come, Parks's musical adaptation of the1972 Jamaican reggae film was staged at thePublic Theater in 2023.[42]
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In 2001, Parks married blues musicianPaul Oscher; they divorced in 2010.[52] By 2017, she married Christian Konopka, with whom she has a child.[53]
Parks noted in an interview that her name is spelled with a "Z" as the result of a misprint early in her career:
When I was doing one of my first plays inthe East Village, we had fliers printed up and they spelled my name wrong. I was devastated. But the director said, 'Just keep it, honey, and it will be fine.' And it was.[54]
She teaches playwriting atTisch School of the Arts in the Rita & Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.
In 2011, Parks was the Master Writer Chair ofThe Public Theater, where she debuted a performance piece calledWatch Me Work, in which she worked on her newest writing project in the theater's lobby, as part of the 2011Under the Radar Festival. She was the 2013 Waldman Chair Visiting Artist atEmerson College, where she held another performance ofWatch Me Work in the Randall Lobby of Emerson'sParamount Center.[55][56]
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