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 Benaroya
Hall, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday,
February 7, 2007
Underwritten
by Hoffman Construction Company of Washington
Biography
Excerpt
Selected Works
Links
Lecture
Preview
Biography
Suzan-Lori Parks is playing the role predicted by her mentor James Baldwin:
"an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one
of the most valuable artists of our time." After two early plays
won Obie awards, Parks became the first African American woman to receive
the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Topdog/Underdog (2001), portraying
two hustling brothers pointedly named Lincoln and Booth. Broadway led
to Hollywood: among other credits, Parks wrote the screenplay for Spike
Lee's Girl 6 and an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's classic
Their Eyes Were Watching God. According to the New York Times,
Parks' first novel, Getting Mother's Body (2003), "suggests
her future as a novelist may be as bright as her career in the theater."
Astonishingly prolific, Parks met the challenge she set herself in 2002
to write a play a day for the entire year. She recently completed The
War Anthologies, a collaboration with Tony Kushner and other artists.
While critics note Parks' focus on race and class prejudice, she declares:
"Every play I write is about love and distance. And time. And from
that we can get things like history."
Parks has
also received Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships and a MacArthur Foundation
"genius" award. She taught drama at Yale University and heads
the dramatic writing program at the California Institute of the Arts in
Valencia.
"Her
dislocating stage devices, stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic
images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous."—Time
Excerpt
From
Topdog/Underdog
LINCOLN:
Why you think they left us, man?
BOOTH:
Mom
and Pops? I dont think about it too much.
LINCOLN:
I dont think they liked us.
BOOTH:
Naw, that aint it.
LINCOLN:
I think there was something out there that they liked more than they liked
us and for years they was struggling against moving towards that more
liked something. Each of them had a special something that they was struggling
against. Moms had hers. Pops had his. And they was struggling. We moved
out of that nasty apartment into a house. A whole house. It wernt perfect
but it was a house and theyd bought it and they brought us there and everything
we owned, figuring we could be a family in that house and them things,
them two separate things each of them was struggling against, would just
leave them be. Them things would see thuh house and be impressed and just
leave them be. Would see thuh job Pops had and how he shined his shoes
every night before he went to bed, shining them shoes whether they needed
it or not, and thuh thing he was struggling against would see all that
and just let him be, and thuh thing Moms was struggling against, it would
see the food on the table every night and listen to her voice when sheĠd
read to us sometimes, the clean clothes, the buttons sewed on all right
and it would just let her be. Just let us all be, just regular people
living in a house. That wernt too much to ask.
BOOTH:
Least
we was grown when they split.
LINCOLN:
16 and 11 aint grown.
BOOTH:
16s
grown. Almost. And I was ok cause you was there.
Selected
Works
Drama
Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990)
Venus (1996)
Topdog/Underdog (1999)
In the Blood (2001)
365 Days / 365 Plays (2002)
Fiction
Getting Mother's Body (2003)
Web
Site Links
The
365 Days/Plays Project
Women
of Color Women of Words
PBS
NewsHour
Interview
Seattle
Post Intelligencer
Article
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